It is agreed that, in the eighth century, their dominion was founded on rebellion, and that the rebellion was produced and justified by the heresy of the Iconoclasts"* or breakers of images. True to the character of an apostate church, and giving palpable demonstration of a falling away from the simplicity and spirituality of the Christian faith, the papal power, in defending and maintaining the worship of images, triumphed over the Imperial, which was exerted in vain for the suppression of idolatry. The edicts against image-worship, issued by the emperor Leo IV., were met by a sentence of excommunication, and an appeal to arms on the part of the "Father of the Church." "The Byzantine writers," in the words of Gibbon, "unanimously declare that, after a fruitless admonition, they (Popes Gregory I. and II.) pronounced the separation of the East and West, and deprived the sacrilegious tyrant of the revenue and sovereignty of Italy. Their excommunication is still more clearly expressed by the Greeks, who beheld the accomplishment of the papal triumphs. The modern champions of Rome are eager to accept the praise and the precedent : this great and glorious example of the deposition of royal heretics is celebrated by the cardinals Baronius and Bellarmine." The "two original epistles from Gregory II. to the emperor Leo, are still extant; and they exhibit the portrait, or at least the mask, of the founder of the papal MONARCHY. The limits of civil and ecclesiastical powers are defined by the pontiff. To the former he appropriates the

* Gibbon's Hist. vol. ix. c. 49. p. 131.

† Ibid. pp. 131, 132. The words of Baronius are, "Sic dignum posteris reliquit exemplum ni in Ecclesia Christi regnare sinerentur hæretici principes, si, sæpe moniti, in errore persistere obstinato animo invenirentur." Baron. A. D. 730. § 40. "He thus left a worthy example to posterity, that, in the church of Christ, heretical princes should not be permitted to reign, if after repeated admonitions, they should be found to persist obstinately in error.

body; to the latter the soul: the sword of justice is in the hands of the magistrates: the more formidable weapon of excommunication is intrusted to the clergy; and in the exercise of their divine commission, a zealous son will not spare his offending father: the successor of St. Peter may lawfully chastise the kings of the earth."*

The papal monarchy was thus founded: the supremacy of Rome was thus restored; the imperial power bowed down before the papal triumphs; and the pope, magnifying himself above either a Gothic king or a Roman emperor, became "lord of the ascendant." Out of the fourth monarchy, or Roman empire, the king, (a term used in other instances to denote a form of government, or succession of rulers,) diverse from the rest, did according to his will; he exalted himself and magnified himself against every god. The pope not only exalted and magnified himself against earthly governors, or kings, (to whom the designation of gods is applied in Scripture, Ps. lxxxii. 6; John x. 34; 1 Cor. viii. 5.) and assumed the right of "lawfully chastising them," but as the successor of St. Peter he laid claim to far higher authority. All the dignities and prerogatives of the apostle, in utter forgetfulness of the true character of the followers of the meek and lowly Jesus, were held as the possession and patrimony of the pope of Rome. And magnifying his office infinitely beyond any other, Gregory II., in writing to the emperor, maintained that "all the kingdoms of the West held the apostle Peter as a GOD upon earth."+

It was not merely in name that the pope exalted and magnified himself. From the assumption of

* Gibbon's Hist. ib. pp. 134, 135.

† Ον ἄι πασαι βασιλεῖαι της δύσεως ὥς ΘΕΟΝ ἐπίγειου EXOUG. Greg. II. Epist. i. Bin. Tom. 5. P. 508.

spiritual authority, he attained a temporal dominion. "His alms, his sermons, his correspondence with the kings and potentates of the West, his recent services, their gratitude, an oath, accustomed the Romans to consider him as the first magistrate or prince of the city. The Christian humility of the popes was not offended by the name of Dominus, or Lord; and the face and inscription are apparent on the most ancient coins. Their temporal dominion is now confirmed by the reverence of 1000 years.'

In the middle of the eighth century the fate of kingdoms was influenced by the decision of the pope. "The mutual obligations of the popes and the Carlovingian family (i. e. the family of Charlemagne, or Charles the Great,) form the important link of ancient and modern, of civil and ecclesiastical history. The most essential gifts of the popes to the Carlovingian race were the dignities of king of France, and of patrician of Rome. Under the sacerdotal monarchy of St. Peter, the nations began to resume the practice of seeking, on the banks of the Tiber, their kings, their laws, and the oracles of their fate." The ambassadors of France, in the name of the nobles, petitioned the Roman Pontiff to absolve them from their oath of fidelity to Childeric, the last descendant of Clovis, and to sanction the nomination of Pepin, the first of the Carlovingian princes. The rights of sovereignty yielded to the interests of the Church. And as the temporal authority of the pope had begun by an act of rebellion in the defence of images, it was consolidated ▲ into an actual dominion, by Pepin and Charlemagne, because Pope Zachary, the "worthy" successor of the first of the Gregories, disannulled throughout a nation the sacred sanction of an oath, dethroned and degraded a monarch, in the first papal application of † Ibid. pp. 150, 151.

* Gibbon's Hist. vol ix. p. 144.

the royal unction, and anointed an usurper in his stead.

"The gratitude of the Carlovingians was adequate to these obligations, and their names are consecrated as the saviours and benefactors of the Roman church. Her ancient patrimony of farms and houses was transformed by their bounty into the temporal dominion of cities and provinces; and the donation of the exarchate of Ravenna was the first fruits of the conquests of Pepin. The ample measure of the exarchate might comprise all the provinces of Italy which had obeyed the emperor and his vicegerent; but its strict and proper limits were included in the territories of Ravenna, Bologna, and Ferrara; its inseparable. dependency was the Pentapolis, which stretched along the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona, and advanced into the midland country as far as the ridges of the Appenine. The splendid donation was granted in supreme and absolute dominion, and the world beheld for the first time a Christian bishop invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince, the choice of magistrates, the exercise of justice, the imposition of taxes, and the wealth of the palace of Ravenna. In the dissolution of the Lombard kingdom, the inhabitants of the dutchy of Spoleto sought a refuge from the storm, shaved their heads after the Roman fashion, declared themselves the servants and subjects of St. Peter, and completed, by this voluntary surrender, the present circle of the ecclesiastical state."*

"Fraud is the resource of weakness and cunning; and the strong, though ignorant, barbarian was often entangled in the net of sacerdotal policy. The Vatican and Lateral were an arsenal and manufacture, which, according to the occasion, have produced or concealed a various collection of false or

* Gibbon's Hist. pp. 156, 157..

genuine, of corrupt or suspicious acts, as they tended to promote the interests of the Roman church. Before the end of the eighth century some apostolical scribe, perhaps the notorious Isidore, composed the decretals and donation of Constantine, the two magic pillars of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the popes. This memorable donation was introduced to the world by an epistle of Adrian I., who exhorts Charlemagne to imitate the liberality, and revive the name, of the great Constantine. According to the legend, the first of the Christian emperors was healed of the leprosy, and purified in the waters of baptism, by St. Sylvester, the Roman bishop; and never was a physician more gloriously recompensed. His royal proselyte withdrew from his seat and patrimony of St. Peter, declared his resolution of founding a new capital in the east, and resigned to the popes the free and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the West. This fiction was productive of the most beneficial effects. The Greek princes were convicted of the guilt of usurpation, and the revolt of Gregory was the claim of his lawful inheritance. The popes were delivered from their debt of gratitude, and the nominal gifts of the Carlovingians were no more than the just and irrevocable restitution of a scanty portion of the ecclesiastical state. The sovereignty of Rome no longer depended on the choice of a fickle people; and the successors of St. Peter and Constantine were invested with the purple and the prerogatives of the Cæsars. So deep was the ignorance and credulity of the times, that the most absurd of fables was received with equal reverence in Greece and in France, and is still enrolled among the decrees of the canon law. The emperors and the Romans were incapable of discerning a forgery that subverted their rights and freedom; and the only opposition proceeded from