rope. After a century of struggle with barbarism, how faithfully and bravely waged it must have been, and backed by how slender forces surviving from the wreck of the old civilization, we may guess from the pages of Gregory of Tours, the spiritual power of the Church is secure, as against the claims of any known rival; and it sends out its champions to the swift conquests of the outlying Paganism. The noble and touching legends connected with the mission of Augustine in England, of Boniface in Germany, of Anschar in Scandinavia, are among the more familiar memories of this early history. They occupy successively the three succeeding centuries, the seventh, eighth, and ninth, during which the relations of the Church were getting settled with the new powers of the world, and the dignitaries of the Church were getting soiled with the first corruptions of their new secular alliances, and the boundaries of modern states were getting traced, dimly, in the realm of Charlemagne. Stately and grand to see, even at this distance of time, was that first Christian empire of the Franks, yet resting on a treacherous flood of barbarism only half subdued, and soon broken up, by the chafing of that wild tide, into the chaos of fragments which we know as the origin of Feudalism.

We reckon, from St. Peter's legendary sojourn in the great Babylon of Rome, a full thousand years for the complete growth of the papal power, five hundred years from the complete disappearance of the old Empire before the irresistible flood of barbarism. This latter period of five centuries— which we call the Dark Age by way of distinction from the Middle Age offers, perhaps, as little to detain the careless reader as any equal length of time in all known history. To the Christian student, who traces the divine kingdom founded by the Son of Man in its conflict with sin and death, it is perhaps full as instructive as any. Besides the points we have just touched, it includes the first well-marked struggle between the centralism of Rome and the pride of nationality, represented by the names of Nicolas I. and the great prelate Hincmar, who ranks worthily at the head and origin of the Gallic Church. It includes the gradual attenuating and the final rupture of the vital cord which bound Latin to Greek, Western

to Eastern Christendom. It includes the story of the great forgery of the "Isidorian Decretals," the most famous and successful falsehood of all history, — which by hardy invention made up what was lacking in tradition, and furnished, for six centuries together, the legal or documentary basis of ecclesiastical power. It includes the distinct, clear development of a liberal philosophy by Erigena, and the controversy of divine grace and human will waged in so sorrowful earnest by Gottschalk. It includes the tragical passage, through the disorders of the tenth century, to that most sombre moment of recorded time, when men everywhere believed that the end of the world was close at hand; and the new hope, the grander ambition, that dawned upon them like clear morning out of that night of black despair, when Europe suddenly was "studded with cathedrals," and began to robe itself in the new pomps and splendors of what we know as the Middle Age.

Christian empire has now And still, in the clash and gathering conflicts of the

For near a thousand years the been advancing towards maturity. jar of feudal strife, in the rise and great Western monarchies, in the dependence of bishops on feudal chiefs, and especially in the weakness and corruption of the heads of the Church itself, it might seem as if the structure for which so many ages had been preparing must remain unbuilt, and that grand vision which had rapt the thought of so many generations must pass away as a shadow or a dream. For during this century the Popedom had been at its lowest degradation, — subject to licentious priests and imbecile boys, and the sacrilege of a sinful woman, and a false priest taught in Saracen arts of magic, seated by fraud in St. Peter's chair, - so men were ready to believe; so that for very scandal the strong arm of Otho had interfered, and Rome had become a fief of the German throne. It still required a long and apparently hopeless struggle a war, as Hallam says, of "fraud against force," we should rather say, of ecclesiastical zeal against feudal violence to vindicate the independence of the Church; a still more hopeless and at length fatal struggle, to vindicate its purity. That struggle marks the third great period of ecclesiastical history.

Mr. Milman divides his ground into fourteen sections, partitioning them by dates sufficiently important in the eyes of a student of these things. But the general reader is most content with a simpler partition, which gives him a few large outlines and conspicuous points of rest. So, having cloven his thousand years midway, somewhere about the middle of the eleventh century, we shall proceed to divide the five remaining centuries before the Reformation into two periods nearly equal, -that of the glory of the Papacy, and that of its decline. Of these, the former- from the middle of the eleventh to the end of the thirteenth century is marked, at the beginning, middle, and end, by three eminent names, Gregory VII., Innocent III., and Boniface VIII.,-one marking the rise of papal supremacy, another its highest power and glory, and the last its most extravagant pretensions. With the latter date begins the reaction, and the long decline, lasting more than two centuries, to the Reformation. In so large a field, the eye naturally seeks for points of prominence and rest. Instead, therefore, of attempting to trace the author's course in detail, we shall dwell a little on the topics of special interest associated with those three memorable names.

The vision of the Church as a Christian empire, or organized spiritual power, independent and supreme among the powers of the world, might have remained an empty vision or an impotent wish but for the indomitable will of one man, Gregory VII., the greatest of the Popes, whose reign began A. D. 1073. For five-and-twenty years, under the name of the monk Hildebrand, he had been the ruling spirit at Rome. In his remote convent in France, he had long brooded in secret over the vassalage and corruption of the Church, until his vision had become a fervid and imperious faith, which no delay, defeat, or resistance could ever conquer. By his courageous counsel, Leo IX. had refused to accept the papal office as the Emperor's gift; and when, in town and village, men looked for the pompous procession that should accompany him to Rome, they saw only two monks journeying barefoot, the new Pope elect, and the strong-hearted Hildebrand, his counsellor. Not till the authority of the Church had sanctioned the choice would Leo assume the robes or style of office. A new spirit of en

ergy and force was breathed through the policy of the papal court. At every fresh proof of bold and sagacious counsel, men said, "It is Hildebrand, the lord of our lord the Pope." For five-and-twenty years, under Leo, Victor, Stephen, Nicolas, and Alexander, Hildebrand now held the reins of power. When, at Alexander's death, the people, with one voice, cried that none but he should sit in St. Peter's chair, he shrank a while, in seeming, perhaps real, awe of the high responsibility; then for eleven years so firmly, proudly, and powerfully he bore it, that the Church feels the pressure of his hand to this day.

The task of Hildebrand was to secure, first, the entire independence of the Church on any human power; and, secondly, the absolute devotion of its priesthood. On these two, and his sense of the imperative need of them, hinge the characteristics of his rule, his uncompromising severity, his subtile and double-dealing policy, his implacable cruelty at need, his deference to the strong, his vindictive arrogance to the defeated and weak. We shall understand him best, and judge him most fairly, if we see his work from his own point of view, not ours. If the visible Church is verily God's kingdom upon earth, it must assert its divine supremacy over all human law, and its claim to execute the Divine justice upon its adversaries.

The immediate peril as well as the chief scandal of the Church lay in the corruption of the clergy. Many, of the higher orders, were mere feudal chiefs and barons, - fighting, tyrannizing, hunting, revelling, after the type of those halfbarbaric chiefs. The priesthood had become a refuge for landless lords and younger sons. It was a rank in the state,— a rank rapidly growing into a caste, more hateful and tyrannous than the priestly caste of Hindostan. A bishopric would descend by birthright to the eldest son; a church would be given as dowry with a portionless daughter. Ecclesiastical dignities were openly bought and sold. A child of five or six years would be installed into the sacred office, and, "stammering two words of his Catechism" for response, be invested with the charge of souls; while, in the lower orders, the ignorance was such that many a priest would "scarce know A

from B." This great scandal and danger, the degrading and secularizing of the clergy, its tendency to become a rude, feudal, despotic caste, severed from the life and central authority of the Church, and hopelessly unfit for its sacred function, -this was the evil which Gregory would meet; and at all cost and hazard he would strike at its very root.

That root, as with deep sagacity he saw, was close entangled with a married and hereditary priesthood. Against this he declared unrelenting war. It was his hardest battle,-one so implacably waged, that, when an abbot had torn out the eyes and tongues of certain non-conforming priests, Gregory upheld and approved and promoted him for it. From a very early time, spite of St. Peter's example and St. Paul's advice, the marriage of priests had been held a scandal; at best an indulgence, needing special penance or dispensation, and in the more popular view a crime, to be forbidden altogether. In England and Germany alone the people's good sense and domestic feeling gave another turn, and the best of the humbler clergy at least were married men. The monk Hildebrand shared in the general ascetic notion. The Pope Gregory saw the policy of attaching the clergy solely and absolutely to the Church. For them there must be no interest, no affection, no human tie or duty, but what they should find in that. True, it was waging war with the most powerful motives of human nature; but what should the monk, who held all austerities acceptable service, know of that? True, wherever the experiment was tried, and as long as the experiment was tried, it led to horrible scandals, and sins such as may not be even named. What was that to the Pope, strong in his conviction that he could put down all irregularity, at any rate pardon it, and who saw the strict need of making the clergy a body of partisans, immoral perhaps, fanatic or sceptic, worldly or devout, cunning or mystical, as the case might be, but at any rate thorough-going partisans, the more unscrupulous the better, mere limbs of the one organization, tools to be handled by the one executive will? He saw that family ties, like feudal ties, would diminish so much from blind allegiance

*See Gieseler.

VOL. LXXII. - 5TH 8. VOL. X. NO. I.

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