traditions, all the excessive pretensions, by which he could support his
supremacy. It was, in a manner, the abridged code of his domination--the
laws of servitude that he proposed to the world at large. Here are the
terms of this charter of theocracy: 'The Roman Church is founded by God
alone. The Roman pontiff alone can legitimately take the title of
universal ... There shall be no intercourse whatever held with persons
excommunicated by the Pope, and none may dwell in the same house with
them.... He alone may wear the imperial insignia. All the princes of the
earth shall kiss the feet of the Pope, but of none other.... He has the
right of deposing emperors.... The sentence of the Pope can be revoked
by none, and he alone can revoke the sentences passed by others. He can
be judged by none. None may dare to pronounce sentence on one who
appeals to the See Apostolic. To it shall be referred all major causes
by the whole Church. The Church of Rome never has erred, and never can
err, as Scripture warrants. A Roman pontiff, canonically ordained, at
once becomes, by the merit of Saint Peter, indubitably holy. By his
order and with his permission it is lawful for subjects to accuse
princes.... The Pope can loose subjects from the oath of fealty.' Such
are the fundamental articles promulgated by Gregory VII. in the Council
of Rome, which the official historian of the Church reproduced in the
commencement of the seventeenth century as being authentic and
legitimate, and Rome has never disavowed it. Borrowed in part from the
false Decretals, resting, most of them, on the fabulous donation of
Constantine, and on the successive impostures and usurpations of the
first barbarous ages, they received from the hand of Gregory VII. a new
character of force and unity. That pontiff stamped them with the
sanction of his own genius. Such authority had never before been
created: it made every other power useless and subaltern" ("Life of
Gregory VII.," by Villemain, trans. by Brockley, vol. ii., pp. 53-55).
Thus the struggle became inevitable between the temporal and the