Saint Bartholomew; think of gunpowder plots and inquisitions, and Jesuit
intrigues and Dominican tortures, of which history accuses the Papal
Church,--barbarities worse than those of savages, inflicted at the
command of the ministers of a gospel of love!

I am compelled to allude to these things; I do not dwell on them, since
they were the result of the intolerance of human nature as much as the
bigotry of the Church,--faults of an age, more than of a religion;
although, whether exaggerated or not, more disgraceful than the
persecutions of Christians by Roman emperors.

As for the supreme rulers of this contradictory Church, so benevolent
and yet so cruel, so enlightened and yet so fanatical, so humble and yet
so proud,--this institution of blended piety and fraud, equally renowned
for saints, theologians, statesmen, drivellers, and fanatics; the joy
and the reproach, the glory and the shame of earth,--there never were
greater geniuses or greater fools: saints of almost preternatural
sanctity, like the first Leo and Gregory, or hounds like Boniface VIII.
or Alexander VI.; an array of scholars and dunces, ascetics and
gluttons, men who adorned and men who scandalized their lofty position;
and yet, on the whole, we are forced to admit, the most remarkable body
of rulers any empire has known, since they were elevated by their peers,
and generally for talents or services, at a period of life when
character is formed and experience is matured. They were not greater
than their Church or their age, like the Charlemagnes and Peters of
secular history, but they were the picked men, the best representatives
of their Church; ambitious, doubtless, and worldly, as great potentates
generally are, but made so by the circumstances which controlled them.
Who can wield irresponsible power and not become arrogant, and perhaps
self-indulgent? It requires the almost superhuman virtue of a Marcus