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ESSAY VII.

HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ROME TILL THE RISE OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS.

THE history of the Church of Rome bears, in some respects, a curious resemblance to the history of Rome under the rule of the republic and the empire; both the civil and the ecclesiastical government have been distinguished by the eminence of men of great virtue; the purity of Paulus Æmilius and Marcus Aurelius may vie with the charity and benevolence of Gregory the Great. So, likewise, with the female characters of republican and imperial Rome on the one hand, and of spiritual and ecclesiastical Rome on the other, Volumnia and Cornelia may be matched by Paula and her daughter. The sublime phrase of Arria, It does not hurt Pœtus,' will find its parallel in the fortitude of Agatha and other female martyrs of the Christian Church. So, likewise, in the extreme of vice, Clodia and Messalina have their match in Theodora and her daughter. In other respects, likewise, heathen and Christian Rome have their simliarity, Republican Rome was at the lowest degree of depression after the battle of Cannæ, when the Roman ensign bade his troops fix his standard in the ground in the hearing of the senate, and a confident patriot did not

hesitate to purchase the ground on which Hannibal was encamped. Sacred Rome, both in ancient and in modern times, has had its reverses and its revivals; Charles V. and his legions made a prisoner of the pope; Napoleon I. ordered one of his generals to enter the Vatican, and send pope Pius VII. a prisoner to France. Yet all the experience of humiliation has hitherto been succeeded by the hallelujah and triumphant shouts of the faithful clergy of the holy pontiff, echoed by millions of spiritual subjects throughout the civilised world.

I am about to touch briefly on some of these revolutions, to join in the admiration which is inspired by temperance and sobriety, by disinterested care for the welfare of the Roman people, and to fix the stigma of reprobation on those popes who made their palaces the scenes of libidinous excess and infamous usurpation.

To begin with a bright example. Gregory the Great was of a senatorial family, his father bore the name of Gordian; his mother that of Sylvia. He inherited considerable estates in Sicily, the produce of which he used to supply from his own resources the poor of the Roman people, who in previous centuries had obtained from the bounty or policy of the emperor a supply from the annual fleet from Egypt. The whole time of Gregory was passed in prayer, reading, writing, and dictation. Fabulous legends commemorated the boundless extent of his charity. The successive visits of a shipwrecked sailor exhausted all he had, except a silver vessel set apart for the use of his mother; this he likewise gave, and the mendicant sailor at length

revealed himself to be an angel. Gregory became an abbot, and his severity was not less conspicuous than his benevolence. His brother Justus, who became a monk, had concealed, against the law of the monastery, three pieces of gold; when he was dying he confessed his crime. Gregory prohibited all approach to the bed of his brother, and when he was dead commanded his body to be cast out upon the dunghill. It was not till the end of sixty days that Gregory proclaimed that his prayers had been successful in releasing his brother from the flames of hell.

I need not repeat the story of the fair-haired boys who were exposed for sale in the slave-market of Rome, and of whom Gregory said, when told that they were Angli, Non Angli sed Angeli.'

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In a time of the deepest calamity, when the Tiber had overflowed its banks and a dreadful pestilence was added to the miseries caused by the inundation, Gregory was called upon by the public voice, which he could not permanently resist, to ascend the papal throne. In performing the duties and elevating the reputation of the Holy See, Gregory surpassed all who had gone before him. The ritual of the Church assumed more perfect form and magnificence; the chant, which took its name from the pontiff, was more full and more rich than that of Ambrose at Milan, and the Pope condescended himself to instruct whole schools of singers.

The revenues of the Papal See were greatly increased and enlarged. When collected they were distributed for the relief of the poor, and for abundant

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charities and endowments. The administration of the Pope was unimpeachably just and humane. While intent on relieving the peasantry and all the subjects of the Roman See from oppressive exactions and illegal demands, Gregory kept up a correspondence with the most distant regions. He converted the Lombards from the Arian heresy, and sent Augustine to convert the English to Christianity. Gregory died in the fulness of his fame, leaving the reputation of a rigid adherent to the ecclesiastical rules of which he was in great part the founder, of a wise administrator of the power and the influence to which the Roman See had already attained, of a ruler who denied himself every sinful indulgence, of a sovereign more powerful than the Emperor of the East, of an author whose writings would have enabled him in a private station to guide the opinions of the world.

We have now to lament the change which disgraced the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth century.

The immorality of the Holy See during the middle ages is well painted by the Cardinal Baronius :- What was the appearance of the Holy Roman Church when powerful and base prostitutes governed Rome? by whose will sees were changed, bishops were assigned, and, what is shocking and horrible to relate, their lovers were introduced pontiffs into the seat of Peter, and who are by no means to be counted in the number of the popes of Rome, unless as marking the succession. For who can call those legitimate Roman pontiffs who were thus introduced by harlots

without the sanction of law? For there is no mention of the clergy in the election, or even as consenting to the confirmation of them. All the canons suppressed in silence, the decrees of the popes strangled, the ancient traditions and the old customs for the election of popes proscribed, the sacred rites and former usages nearly extinct. This lust of ambition, trusting to the secular power, insane with the passion of reigning, drew everything to itself.'

The late Dean of St. Paul's appears to doubt the representation of Baronius, and to think that the rigour of a puritanical sect has mixed itself with the fidelity of the historian. Yet the names of Theodora and Marozia remain, and no one seems to doubt that the one was the mistress and the other the mother of a pope. Indeed the titles of John X. and John XI. remain in the roll of the holy pontiffs, and they were as much entitled to the worship of the cardinals and the claim of infallibility as Gregory the Great and Pius VI.

The whole stream of history has been rendered foul and turbid by a crime, which is perhaps of more importance to the world than the vices or illegitimacy of two or three of the popes, however flagrant and however notorious.

In the year 867, Nicholas I., a very able and distinguished pope, died. During the time he filled the papal throne appeared the record of the gift of the sovereignty of Italy by Constantine the Great to Pope Sylvester. This gift is now acknowledged to have been a forgery. By the time of Ariosto it had become