its strength and support on the throne. In the fifth century the barbarians of the north made an irruption into the south, and overthrew the Roman empire. The kingdoms which arose after the destruction of the Roman beast in the West were organised by degrees under the auspices of the Church; and for some time they bowed down. submissively to the authority of their spiritual mother, obeying faithfully her injunctions, and following the constitution which they had received from her. But if the Church enjoyed some peace in the West, she met great trials and persecutions in the East from the Byzantine emperors, who paved the way to the Greek schism; and still more from the Mahomedan kingdom, which set itself up in direct opposition to Christ and his Church. So things went on until the thirteenth century, when the western kings, after the example of the Byzantine or eastern emperors, began to shake off the yoke of subjection to the Church and to draw all power to themselves. An American writer, highly distinguished for his learning and zeal in the cause of religion, thus describes the conduct of temporal powers towards the Church during the last six hundred years: "In the thirteenth century we see a movement on the part of the sovereigns to get rid of this constitution (the constitution which the kings had received from the Church) and to centralize the power in the crown. This movement in France begins with the reign of Philip Augustus, the real founder of the French monarchy. A similar movement is made by the German emperors, which only partially succeeds, and by the English kings, which succeeds only under the Tudors of the fifteenth century. The aim was to centralize and consolidate mo

narchy, and to render the monarch absolute, after the model of the Byzantine or eastern emperors.

“The chief obstacle the monarchs, as well as nationalism, had to overcome in this enterprise, was the Papal constitution of the Church. To attain their end they must trample on vested rights, rights of the Church herself, rights of their vassals, and rights of the municipalities; and the Church always and everywhere insists on the inviolability of all rights, whether natural or acquired. The first thing to be done was therefore to break the power of the Church, which could be done only by destroying or abasing the Papacy. Hence the sovereigns, for centuries, with varying success, but with little relaxation, carried on a war against the Papacy, the divinely instituted guardian of all rights, and thus gave to royalism an anti-Papal character, and made the temporal sovereign the antagonist of the Pope. In this sacrilegious war they appealed to national pride, national jealousies, prejudices, ambition, and intolerance to sustain them. They placed the nation before the Church, and studied to make themselves national. They appealed to the sentiment of national independence, national power, and national glory, and made of royalism, as representing the nation, a species of popular idolatry. Courtly prelates held their peace, or smiled assent, and courtly lawyers searched the Institutes, Pandects, and Codes, and turned over Ulpian and Papinian to find, which was not difficult, maxims favourable to the royal power. Whoever refused to bow down and worship the new idol that was set up was declared disloyal, an enemy to the king, and worthy of exile or death. Quod placuit principi, id legis habet vigorem, be

came the fundamental maxim of the new Cæsarism, as it had been of the old; and the pleasure of the prince was to be done, let the Church say what she might to the contrary. The Church was in the royal and popular mind subordinated to the nation, and the Pope to the temporal monarch. The head of the Church must give way to the pleasure of the head of the state, and the good citizen or subject, in case of conflict, must obey the king in preference to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. The lawyers and courtly prelates and doctors even found out that a Catholic, at the command of the king, might lawfully bear arms against the visible head of his Church! The person of the king was sacred and inviolable, but not that of the Pope, at least in the estimation of the degenerate grandson of St. Louis and his courtiers, as was proved in his treatment of Boniface the Eighth.

"The monarch, in carrying on his war against the Papacy, used both the Lords and the Commons. The feudal lords, being in their own feudal territories petty sovereigns, imagined that their interests and those of the monarch were the same, and they sustained him till he felt himself strong enough to attack them in their privileges, and then they found that they were to weak to resist him. The people, finding often a protector in their king against their more immediate masters, and being the depositaries of all that is exclusive in nationality, supported him with right good will,— their time to set up for themselves and to treat him as he treated the Pope not having yet come. Thus aided, royalism emancipated itself from all spiritual direction, and supplanted in the national mind and heart the Papacy. Those who adhered

to the party of the Pope against the party of the king were, as a term of reproach, called Papiste, or Papists. Royalism encroached everywhere on the spiritual power. The king obtained the nomination of the bishops, and filled the sees with his creatures; he passed statutes of præmunire and against provisors, and dictated the terms on which he would tolerate the Church in his dominions. He denied the authority of the Church over her own temporalities; and, as far as was possible without open schism, deprived her of all external authority. He made her all but national in his kingdom, and himself her external head, very nearly her Pontifex Maximus. It would seem that in all, save mere form, the bishops depended upon the sovereign, and in no case were they to obey the Pope without the royal permission. Hence the Church in each nation seems to hold from the temporal lord, and to be bound to consult the royal pleasure. It is royal, not papal, and it is only by the royal condescension that the Pope is permitted to interfere in its affairs. The people look no longer to Rome for direction; they look only to their sovereign, and care little what they do believe, if sure of his approbation or connivance.

"Such was the state of things throughout no small part of Europe at the epoch of the Reformation. Luther hesitates not through fear of the Pope, or dread of spiritual censures, at which he mocks, but only through fear of his temporal sovereign; and he speaks out boldly as soon as he has made sure of the protection of the powerful Elector of Saxony. The whole history of the Church proves that there is little to fear from heresy, when unaided or unprotected by

the civil power. Every heresy that has made much progress has been a heresy that enlisted on its side either royalism or nationalism, and found some temporal prince or authority to protect it, if not openly, at least secretly. The history of the Reformation proves that heresy is formidable only when it assumes the form of royalism or nationalism, and appeals to national exclusiveness and temporal supremacy." 1

The opposition which the kings raised against the Church, up to the time of the Reformation, did not end with it; but it continued to be carried on under various shapes, and it still continues to fill the heart of our spiritual mother with grief.o "For six hundred years," says Mr. Brownson, "scarcely a European court has rendered the Church any service but at the price of some concession from her, which weakened her power and strengthened that of her royal rival. To the officious support and officious interference of royalism, as well as to its arbitrary measures against her, we owe most of the scandals which stand out on the canvas of her history, and which are so often and so maliciously cited against her. In a spiritual as well as in a temporal point of view, royalism for six hundred years has been the curse of Europe, and that it has not been a greater curse is owing to the superhuman struggle of the Papacy against

Brownson's Quarterly Review, January 1855.-Luther and the Reformation.

2 Our remarks are general, and affect secular principalities and powers, whether Christian or infidel, Catholic or heretical, as a body. We acknowledge that there have been, and there are still now, some kings and kingdoms which by their religion and zeal have been, and are, an ornament to the Church. But what are they when compared to the number of those which have caused the Church so much anguish and grief?