PART I.

In the times of which I have been lately speaking, the power of the popes had grown far beyond what it was in the days of Gregory the Great.

I have told you Gregory was very much displeased because a patriarch of Constantinople had styled himself _Universal Bishop_.[68] But since that time the popes had taken to calling themselves by this very title, and they meant a great deal more by it than the patriarchs of Constantinople had meant; for people in the East are fond of big words, so that, when a patriarch called himself _Universal Bishop_, he did not mean anything in particular, but merely to give himself a title which would sound grandly. And thus, although he claimed to be universal, he would have allowed the bishops of Rome to be universal too. But when the popes called themselves _Universal Bishops_, they meant that they were bishops of the whole church, and that all other bishops were under them.

[68] Part I., p. 159.

They had friends, too, who were ready to say anything to raise their power and greatness. Thus, about the year 800, when the popes had begun to get some land of their own, through the gifts of Pipin and Charlemagne,[69] a story was got up that the first Christian emperor, Constantine, when he built his city of Constantinople, and went to live in the East, made over Rome to the pope, and gave him also all Italy, with other countries of the West, and the right of wearing a golden crown. And this story of Constantine's gift (or _donation_, as it was called), although it was quite false, was commonly believed in those days of ignorance.

[69] See p. 178.

About fifty years later another monstrous falsehood was put forth, which helped the popes greatly. Somebody, who took the name of Isidore, a famous Spanish bishop who had been dead more than two hundred years, made a collection of Church law and of popes' letters; and he mixed up with the true letters a quantity which he had himself forged, but which pretended to have been written by bishops of Rome from the very time of the Apostles. And in these letters it was made to appear that the pope had been appointed by our Lord Himself to be head of the whole Church, and to govern it as he liked; and that the popes had always used this power from the beginning. This collection of laws is known by the name of the _False Decretals_; but nobody in those times had any notion that they were false, and so they were believed by every one, and the pope got all that they claimed for him.

But in course of time the popes would not be contented even with this. In former ages nobody could be made pope without the emperor's consent, and we have seen how Otho the Great, his grandson, Otho III., and afterwards Henry III., had thought that they might call popes to account for their conduct; how these emperors brought some popes before councils for trial, and turned them out of their office when they misbehaved.[70] But just after Henry III., as we have read, had got rid of three popes at once, a great change began, which was meant to set the popes above the emperors. The chief mover in this change was Hildebrand, who is said to have been the son of a carpenter in a little Tuscan town, and was born between the years 1010 and 1020.

[70] Pp. 184, 185.