The Bishops of Rome.
[Footnote 42]
[Footnote 42: Harper's New Monthly Magazine. The Bishops of Rome. New York: Harper and Brothers, January, 1869.]
Harper's Magazine, we are told, has a wide circulation, and some merit as a magazine of light literature; but it does not appear to have much aptitude for the scholarly discussion of serious questions, whatever the matter to which they relate, and it is guilty of great rashness in attempting to treat a subject of such grave and important relations to religion and civilization, society and the church, as the history of the bishops of Rome. The subject is not within its competence, and the historical value of its essay to those who know something of the history of the popes and of mediaeval Europe is less than null.
Of course, Harper's Magazine throws no new light on any disputed passage in the history of the bishops of Rome, and brings out no fact not well known, or at least often repeated before; it does nothing more than compress within a brief magazine article the principal inventions, calumnies, and slanders vented for centuries against the Roman pontiffs by personal or national antipathy, disappointed ambition, political and partisan animosity, and heretical and sectarian wrath and bitterness, so adroitly arranged and mixed with facts and probabilities as to gain easy credence with persons predisposed to believe them, and to produce on ignorant and prejudiced readers a totally false impression. The magazine, judging from this article, has not a single qualification for studying and appreciating the history of the popes. It has no key to the meaning of the facts it encounters, and is utterly unable or indisposed to place itself at the point of view from which the truth is discernible. Its animus, at least in this article, is decidedly anti-Christian, and proves that it has no Christian conscience, no Christian sympathy, no faith in the supernatural, no reverence for our Lord and his apostles, and no respect even for the authority of the Holy Scriptures.
The magazine, under pretence of writing history, simply appeals to anti-Catholic prejudice, and repeats what Dr. Newman calls "the Protestant tradition." Its aim is not historical truth, or a sound historical judgment on the character of the Roman pontiffs, but to confirm the unfounded prejudices of its readers against them. It proceeds as if the presumption were that every pope is antichrist or a horribly wicked man, and therefore every doubtful fact must be interpreted against him, till he is proved innocent. Everything that has been said against a pope, no matter by whom or on what authority, is presumptively true; everything said in favor of a Roman pontiff must be presumed to be false or unworthy of consideration. It supposes the popes to have had the temper and disposition of non-Catholics, and from what it believes, perhaps very justly, a Protestant would do—if, per impossibile, he were elevated to the papal chair, and clothed with papal authority—concludes what the popes have actually done. It forgets the rule of logic, Argumentum a genere ad genus, non valet. The pope and the Protestant are not of the same genus. We have never encountered in history a single pope that did not sincerely believe in his mission from Christ, and take it seriously. We have encountered weakness; too great complaisance to the civil power, even slowness in crushing out, in its very inception, an insurgent error; sometimes also too great a regard to the temporal, to the real or apparent neglect of the spiritual, and two or three instances in which the personal conduct of a pope was not much better than that of the average of secular princes; but never a pope who did not recognize the important trusts confided to his care, and the weighty responsibilities of his high office.
We have studied the history of the Roman pontiffs with probably more care and diligence than the flippant writer in Harper's Magazine has done, and studied it, too, both as an anti-papist and as a papist, with an earnest desire to find facts against the popes, and with an equally earnest desire to ascertain the exact historical truth; and we reject as unworthy of the most fanatic sectarian the absurd rule of judging them which the magazine adopts, if it does not avow and hold that the presumption is the other way, and that everything that reflects injuriously on the character of a bishop of Rome is presumptively false, and to be accepted only on the most indubitable evidence. We can judge in this matter more impartially and disinterestedly than the anti-catholic. The impeccability of the pontiff, or even his infallibility in matters of mere human prudence, is no article of Catholic faith. The personal conduct of a pontiff may be objectionable; but unless he officially teaches error in doctrine, or enjoins an immoral practice on the faithful, it cannot disturb us. There are no instances in which a pope has done this. No pope has ever taught or enjoined vice for virtue, error for truth, or officially sanctioned a false principle or a false motive of action. With one exception, we might, then, concede all the magazine alleges, and ask, What then? What can you conclude? But, in fact, we concede nothing. What it alleges against the bishops of Rome is either historically false, or if not, is, when rightly understood, nothing against them in their official capacity.
The exception mentioned is that of St. Liberius. The magazine repeats, with some variations, the exploded fable that this Holy Pope, won by favors or terrified by threats, consented to a condemnation of the doctrine of Athanasius, that is, signed an Arian formula of faith. It has not invented the slander, but it has, after what historical criticism has established on the subject, no right to repeat it as if it were not denied. We have no space now to treat the question at length; but we assert, after a very full investigation, that St. Liberius never signed an Arian formula, never in any shape or manner condemned the doctrine defended by St. Athanasius, and consequently never recanted, for he had nothing to recant. The most, if so much, that can be maintained is, that he approved a sentence condemning the special error of the Eunomians, in which was not inserted the word "consubstantial," because it was not necessary to the condemnation of their special error, and the error they held in common with all Arians had already been condemned by the council of Nicaea. Not a word can be truly alleged against the persistent orthodoxy of this great and holy pontiff, who deserves, as he has always received, the veneration of the church.
The magazine repeats the slander of an anonymous writer, a bitter enemy of the popes, against St. Victor, St. Zethyrinus, and St. Callistus, three popes whom the Church of Rome has held, and still holds, in high esteem and veneration for their virtues and saintly character. It refers to the Philosophoumena, a work published a few years ago by M. E. Miller, of Paris, variously attributed to Origen, to St. Hippolytus, bishop of Porto, near Rome, to Caius, a Roman Presbyter, and to Tertullian. The late Abbé Cruice—an Irishman by birth, we believe, but brought up and naturalized in France, where he was, shortly before his death, promoted to the episcopate—a profoundly learned man and an acute critic, has unanswerably proved that these are all unsustainable hypotheses, and that historical science is in no condition to say who was its author. Who wrote it, or where it was written, is absolutely unknown, but from internal evidence the writer was a contemporary of the three popes named, and was probably some Oriental schismatic, of unsound faith, and a bitter enemy of the popes. The work is not of the slightest authority against the bishops of Rome, but is of very great value as proving, by an enemy, that the papacy was fully developed—if that is the word—claiming and exercising in the universal church the same supreme authority that it claims and exercises now, and was as regular in its action in the last half of the second century, or within fifty or sixty years of the death of the apostle St. John, as it is under Pope Pius IX. now gloriously reigning. [Footnote 43]
[Footnote 43: Vide Histoire de l'Eglise de Rome sous les Pontificats de St. Victor, de St. Zephirin, et St. Calliste. Par L'Abbé M. P. Cruice. Paris: Didot Frères. 1856.]
When the magazine has nothing else to allege against the popes, it accuses them of "a fierce, ungovernable pride."
"The fourth century brought important changes in the condition of the bishops of Rome. It is a singular trait of the corrupt Christianity of this period that the chief characteristic of the eminent prelates was a fierce and ungovernable pride. Humility had long ceased to be numbered among the Christian virtues. The four great rulers of the Church, Bishop of Rome, and the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria, were engaged in a constant struggle for supremacy. Even the inferior bishops assumed a princely state, and surrounded themselves with their sacred courts. The vices of pride and arrogance descended to the lower orders of clergy; the emperor himself was declared to be inferior in dignity to the simple presbyter, and in all public entertainments and ceremonious assemblies the proudest layman was expected to take his place below the haughty churchman, As learning declined and the world sank into a new barbarism, the clergy elevated themselves into a ruling caste, and were looked upon as half divine by the rude Goths and the degraded Romans. It is even said that the pagan nations of the west transferred to the priest and monk the same awestruck reverence which they had been accustomed to pay to their Druid teachers. The Pope took the place of their Chief Druid, and was worshipped with idolatrous devotion; the meanest presbyter, however vicious and degraded, seemed, to the ignorant savages, a true messenger from the skies."
There was no patriarch of Constantinople in the fourth century, and it was only in 330 that the city of Constantinople absorbed Byzantium. The bishop of Byzantium was not a patriarch, or even a metropolitan, but was a suffragan of the bishop of Heraclea. It was not till long after the fourth century that the bishop of Constantinople was recognized as patriarch, not, in fact, till the eighth general council. There was no struggle in the fourth nor in any subsequent century, for the supremacy, between Rome and Antioch, or Rome and Alexandria; neither the patriarch of Antioch nor the patriarch of Alexandria ever claimed the primacy; but both acknowledged that it belonged to the bishop of Rome, as do the schismatic churches of the East even now, though they take the liberty of disobeying their lawful superior. In the fifth Century, when St. Leo the Great was pope, the bishop of Constantinople claimed the second rank, or the first after the bishop of Rome, on the ground that Constantinople was the new Rome, the second capital of the empire. St. Leo repulsed his claim, not in defence of his own rights, for it did not interfere with his supremacy, or primacy, as they said then, but in defence of the rights of the churches of Antioch and Alexandria. He also did it because the claim was urged on a false principle—that the authority of a bishop is derived from the civil importance of the city in which his see is established.
It is not strange that the magazine should complain that the pontifical dignity was placed above the imperial, and that the simple presbyter took the step of the proudest layman; yet whoever believes in the spiritual order at all, believes it superior to the secular order, and therefore that they who represent the spiritual are in dignity above those who represent only the secular. When the writer of this was a Protestant minister, he took, and was expected to take, precedence of the laity. The common sense of mankind gives the precedence to those held to be invested with the sacred functions of religion, or clothed with spiritual authority.
That St. Jerome, from his monastic cell near Jerusalem, inveighs against the vices and corruptions of the Roman clergy, as alleged in the paragraph following the one we have quoted, is very true; but his declamations must be taken with some grains of allowance. St. Jerome was not accustomed to measure his words when denouncing wrong, and saints generally are not. St. Peter Damian reported, after his official visit to Spain, that there was but one worthy priest in the whole kingdom, which really meant no more than that he found only one who came, in all respects, up to his lofty ideal of what a priest should be. Yet there might have been, and probably were, large numbers of others who, though not faultless, were very worthy men, and upon the whole, faithful priests. We must never take the exaggerations of saintly reformers, burning with zeal for the faith and the salvation of souls, as literal historical facts. St. Jerome, in his ardent love of the church and his high ideal of sacerdotal purity, vigilance, fidelity, and zeal, no doubt exaggerated.
There can be nothing more offensive to every right and honorable feeling than the exultation of the magazine over the abuse, cruelties, and outrages inflicted on a bishop of Rome by civil tyrants. The writer, had he lived under the persecuting pagan emperors, would have joined his voice to that of those who exclaimed, Christianos ad leones; or had he been present when our Lord was arrested and brought as a malefactor before Pontius Pilate, none louder than he would have cried out, Crucifige eum! crucifige eum! His sympathies are uniformly with the oppressor, never, as we can discover, with the oppressed; with the tyrant, never with his innocent victim, especially if that victim be a bishop of Rome. He feels only gratification in recording the wrongs and sufferings of Pope St. Silverus. This pope was raised to the papacy by the tyranny of the Arian king Theodotus, and ordained by force, without the necessary subscription of the clergy. But after his consecration, the clergy, by their subscription, healed the irregularity of his election, as Anastasius the Librarian tells us, so as to preserve the unity of the church and religion. He appears to have been a holy man and a worthy pope; but he was not acceptable to Vigilius, who expected, by favor of the imperial court, to be made pope himself, nor to those two profligate women, the Empress Theodora and her friend Antonina, the wife of the patrician Belisarius. Vigilius and these two infamous women compelled Belisarius to depose him, strip him of his pontifical robes, clothe him with the habit of a monk, and send him into exile; where, as some say, he was assassinated, and, as others say, perished of hunger. The magazine relates this to show how low and unworthy the bishops of Rome had become! Vigilius succeeded St. Silverus, and it continues:
"Stained with crime, a false witness and a murderer, Vigilius had obtained his holy office through the power of two profligate women who now ruled the Roman world. Theodora, the dissolute wife of Justinian, and Antonina, her devoted servant, assumed to determine the faith and the destinies of the Christian Church. Vigilius failed to satisfy the exacting demands of his casuistical mistresses; he even ventured to differ from them upon some obscure points of doctrine. His punishment soon followed, and the bishop of Rome is said to have been dragged through the streets of Constantinople with a rope around his neck, to have been imprisoned in a common dungeon and fed on bread and water. The papal chair, filled by such unworthy occupants, must have sunk low in the popular esteem, had not Gregory the Great, toward the close of sixth century, revived the dignity of the office."
We know of nothing that can be said in defence of the conduct of Vigilius prior to his accession to the papal throne. His intrigues with Theodora to be made pope, and his promises to her to restore, when he should be pope, Anthemus, deposed from the see of Constantinople by St. Agapitus for heresy, and to set aside the council of Chalcedon, were most scandalous; and his treatment of St. Silverus, whether he actually exiled him and had a hand in his death or not, admits, as far as we are informed, of no palliation; but his conduct thus far was not the conduct of the pope; and after he became bishop of Rome, at least after the death of his deposed predecessor, his conduct was, upon the whole, irreproachable. He conceded much for the sake of peace, and was much blamed; but he conceded nothing of the faith; he refused to fulfill the improper promises he had made, before becoming pope, to the empress, confessed that he had made them, said he was wrong in making them, retracted them, and resisted with rare firmness and persistence the emperor Justinian in the matter of the three chapters, and fully expiated the offences committed prior to his elevation, by enduring for seven long years the brutal outrages an indignities offered him by the half-savage Justinian, the imperial courtiers, and intriguing and unscrupulous prelates of the court party—outrages and sufferings of which he died after his liberation on his journey back from Constantinople to Rome.
We have touched on these details for the purpose of showing that the principal offenders in the transactions related were not the bishops of Rome, but the civil authorities and their adherents, that deprived the Roman clergy and the popes of their proper freedom. If the papal chair was filled with unworthy occupants, and had sunk low in the public esteem, it was because the emperor or empress at Constantinople and the Arian and barbarian kings in Italy sought to raise to it creatures of their own. They deprived the Roman clergy, the senate, and people of the free exercise of their right to elect the pope; and the pope, after his election, of his freedom of action, if he refused to conform to their wishes, usually criminal, and always base. Yet Harper's Magazine lays all the blame to the popes themselves, and seems to hold them responsible for the crimes and tyranny, the profligacy and lawless will of which they were the victims. If the wolf devoured the lamb, was it not the lamb's fault?
St. Gregory the Great was of a wealthy and illustrious family, and therefore finds some favor with the magazine; yet it calls him "a half-maddened enthusiast," and accuses him of "unsparing severity," and "excessive cruelty" in the treatment of his monks before his elevation to the papal chair. But his complaisance to the usurper Phocas, which we find it hard to excuse, and especially his disclaiming the title of "Universal Bishop," redeem him in its estimation.
"A faint trace of modesty and humility still characterized the Roman bishops, and they expressly disclaimed any right to the supremacy of the Christian world. The patriarch of Constantinople, who seems to have looked with a polished contempt upon his western brother, the tenant of fallen Rome and the bishop of the barbarians, now declared himself the Universal Bishop and the head of the subject Church. But Gregory repelled his usurpation with vigor. Whoever calls himself Universal Bishop is Antichrist,' he exclaimed; and he compares the patriarch to Satan, who in his pride had aspired to be higher than the angels."
John Jejunator, bishop of Constantinople, did not claim the primacy, which belonged to the bishop of Rome, nor did Gregory disclaim it; but called himself "oecumenical patriarch." The title he assumed derogated not from the rights and privileges of the apostolic see, but from those of the sees of Antioch and Alexandria. It was unauthorized, and showed culpable ambition and an encroaching disposition. St. Gregory, therefore, rebuked the bishop of Constantinople, and alleged the example of his predecessor, St. Leo the Great, who refused the title of "oecumenical bishop" when it was offered him by the Fathers of Chalcedon. It is a title never assumed or borne by a bishop of Rome, who, in his capacity as bishop, is the equal, and only the equal, of his brother bishops. All bishops are equal, as St. John Chrysostom tells us. The authority which the pope exercises over the bishops of the Catholic Church is not the episcopal, but the apostolical authority which he inherits from Peter, the prince of the apostles. St. Gregory disclaimed and condemned the title of "universal bishop," which was appropriate neither to him nor to any other bishop; but he did not disclaim the apostolic authority held as the successor of Peter. He actually claimed and exercised it in the very letter in which he rebukes the bishop of Constantinople. The magazine is wholly mistaken in asserting that Gregory disclaimed the papal supremacy. He did no such thing; he both claimed and exercised it, and few popes have exercised it more extensively or more vigorously.
The magazine is also mistaken in asserting that St. Leo III. crowned Charlemagne "Emperor of the West." Charlemagne was already hereditary patrician of Rome, and bound by his office to maintain order in the city and territories of Rome, and to defend the Holy See, or the Roman Church, against its enemies. All the pope did was to raise the patrician to the imperial dignity, without any territorial title. Charles never assumed or bore the title of Emperor of the West. His official title was "Rex Francorum et Longobardorum Imperator." The title of "Emperor of the West," or "Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire," which his German successors assumed, was never conferred by the pope, but only acquiesced in after it had been usurped. The pope conferred on Charlemagne no authority out of the papal states.
We have no space to discuss the origin of the temporal sovereignty of the bishops of Rome, nor the ground of that arbitratorship which the popes, during several ages, unquestionably exercised with regard to the sovereign princes bound by their profession and the constitution of their states to profess and protect the Catholic religion. We have already done the latter in an article on Church and State in our magazine for April, 1867. But we can tell Harper's Magazine that it entirely misapprehends the character of St. Gregory VII., and the nature and motive of the struggle between him and Henry III., or Henry IV., as some reckon, king of the Germans, for emperor he never was. Gregory was no innovator; he introduced, and attempted to introduce, no change in the doctrine or discipline of the church, nor in the relations of church and state. He only sought to correct abuses, to restore the ancient discipline which had, through various causes, become relaxed, and to assert and maintain the freedom and independence of the church in the government of her own spiritual subjects in all matters spiritual.
"His elevation was the signal for the most wonderful change in the character and purposes of the church. The pope aspired to rule mankind. He claimed an absolute power over the conduct of kings, priests, and nations, and he enforced his decrees by the terrible weapons of anathema and excommunication. He denounced the marriages of the clergy as impious, and at once there arose all over Europe a fearful struggle between the ties of natural affection and the iron will of Gregory. Heretofore the secular priests and bishops had married, raised families, and lived blamelessly as husbands or fathers, in the enjoyment of marital and filial love. But suddenly all this was changed. The married priests were declared polluted and degraded, and were branded with ignominy and shame. Wives were torn from their devoted husbands, children were declared bastards, and the ruthless monk, in the face of the fiercest opposition, made celibacy the rule of the church. The most painful consequences followed. The wretched women, thus degraded and accursed, were often driven to suicide in their despair. Some threw themselves into the flames; others were found dead in there beds, the victims of grief or of their own resolution not to survive their shame, while the monkish chroniclers exult over their misfortunes, and triumphantly consign them to eternal woe.
"Thus the clergy under Gregory's guidance became a monastic order, wholly separated from all temporal interests; and bound in a perfect obedience to the church. He next forebade all lay investitures or appointments to bishoprics or other clerical offices, and declared himself the supreme ruler of the ecclesiastical affairs of nations. No temporal sovereign could fill the great European sees, or claim any dominion over the extensive territories held by eminent churchmen in right of their spiritual power. It was against this claim that the Emperor of Germany, Henry IV., rebelled. The great bishoprics of his empire, Cologne, Bremen, Treves, and many others, were his most important feudatories, and should he suffer the imperious pope to govern them at will, his own dominion would be reduced to a shadow. And now began the famous contest between Hildebrand and Henry, between the carpenter's son and the successor of Charlemagne, between the Emperor of Germany and the Head of the Church."
This heart-rending picture is, to a great extent, a fancy piece. The celibacy of the clergy was the law of the church and of the German empire; and every priest knew it before taking orders. These pretended marriages were, in both the ecclesiastical courts and the civil courts, no marriages at all; and these dispairing wives of priests were simply concubines. What did Gregory do, but his best to enforce the law which the emperors had suffered to fall into desuetude? The right of investiture was always in the pope, and it was only by his authority that the emperors had ever exercised it. The pope had authorized them to give investiture of bishops at a time of disorder, and when it was for the good of the church that they should be so authorized. But when they abused the trust, and used it only to fill the sees with creatures of their own, or sold the investiture for money to the unworthy and the profligate, and intruded them into sees, in violation of the canons, and sheltered them from the discipline of the church—causing, thus, gross corruption of morals and manners, the neglect of religious instruction, and dangers to souls—it was the right and the duty of the pontiff to revoke the authorization given, to dismiss his unworthy agents, and to forbid the emperors henceforth to give investiture.
The magazine says that if the emperor should suffer the imperious pope to be allowed to govern at will the great bishoprics of Cologne, Bremen, Treves, and many others, which were the most important feudatories of his empire, his own dominion would be reduced to a shadow. But if the emperor could fill them with creatures of his own, make bishops at his will, and depose them and sequester their revenues if they resisted his tyranny, or sell them, as he did, to the highest bidder—thrusting out the lawful occupants, and intruding men who could have been only usurpers, and who really were criminals in the eye of the law, and usually dissolute and scandalous in morals—where would have been the rightful freedom and independence of the church? How could the pope have maintained order and discipline in the church, and protected the interests of religion? At worst, the imperious will of the pontiff was as legitimate and as trustworthy as the imperious will of such a brutal tyrant and moral monster as was Henry. The pope did but claim his rights and the rights of the faithful people. It was no less important that the spiritual authority should govern in spirituals than it was that the secular authority should govern in temporals. The pope did not interfere, nor propose to interfere, with the emperor in the exercise of his authority in temporals; but he claimed the right, which the emperor could not deny, to govern in spirituals; and resisted the attempt of Henry to exercise any authority in the church, which, whatever infidels and secularists may pretend, is of more importance than the state, for it maintains the state. He never pretended to any authority in the fiefs of the empire, or to subject to his will matters not confessedly within his jurisdiction.
Does the writer in the magazine maintain that the Methodist General Conference would be wrong to claim the right of choosing and appointing its own bishops, and assigning the pastors, elders, and preachers to their respective circuits; and that it could justly be accused of seeking to dominate over the state if it resisted, with all its power, the attempt of the state to take that matter into its own hands, and appoint for all the Methodist local conferences, districts, and circuits, bishops and pastors, itinerant and local preachers, and should appoint men of profligate lives, who scorned the Book of Discipline, Unitarians, Universalists, rationalists, and infidels, or the bitter enemies of Methodism; those who would neglect every spiritual duty, and seek only to plunder the funds and churches to provide for their own lawless pleasures, or to pay the bribes by which they obtained their appointment? We think not. And yet this is only a mild statement of what Henry did, and of what Gregory resisted. The pope claimed and sought to obtain no more for the church in Germany than is the acknowledged right of every professedly Christian sect in this country, and which every sect fully enjoys, without any let or hindrance from the state. Why, then, this outcry against Gregory VII.? Do these men who are so bitter against him, and gnash their teeth at him, know what they do? Have they ever for a moment reflected how much the modern world owes for its freedom and civilization to just such great popes as Hildebrand, who asserted energetically the rights of God, the freedom of religion, and made the royal and imperial despots and brutal tyrants who would trample on all laws, human and divine, feel that, if they would wear their crowns, they must study to restrain their power within its proper limits, and to rule justly for the common good, according to the law of God?
What Germany thought of the conduct of Henry is evinced by the fact that when Gregory struck him with the sword of Peter and Paul, everybody abandoned him but his deeply injured wife and one faithful attendant. The whole nation felt a sense of relief and breathed freely. An incubus which oppressed its breast was thrown off. The picture of the sufferings of Henry traversing the Alps in the winter and standing shivering with cold in his thin garb, as a penitent before the door of the pontiff, is greatly exaggerated, and the attempt to excite sympathy for him and indignation against the pontiff can have no success with those who have studied with some care the history of the times. Henry was a bad man; a capricious, unprincipled, tyrannical, and brutal ruler, and his cause was bad. The pope was in the right; he was on the side of truth and justice, of God and humanity, pure morals and just liberty. Leo the historian, a Protestant, and Voigt, a Protestant minister, both Germans, have each completely vindicated Gregory's conduct toward Henry of Germany, though Harper's historian is probably ignorant of that fact, as he is of some others.
As to the pope's subjecting Henry to the discipline of the church, and depriving him of his crown, all we need say is, that all men are equal before God and the church, and kings and kaisers are as much amenable to the discipline of the church, acknowledged by them to be Christ's kingdom, as the meanest of their subjects. The pope assumed no more than the kirk session assumed when it sent their King Charles II. to the "cuttie stool." The revolutionists of Spain have just deprived Isabella Segunda of her crown and throne, with the general applause of the non-Catholic world, and no pope ever deprived a prince who denied his jurisdiction, or his legal right to sit in judgment on his case, nor, till after a fair trial had been had, and a judicial sentence was rendered according to the existing laws of his principality. We see not why, then, the popes should be decried for doing legally, and after trial, what revolutionists are applauded for doing without trial and against all law, human and divine—unless it be because the pope deprived only base and profligate monsters, stained with the worst of crimes; and the revolutionists deprive the guiltless, who violate no law of the state or of the church, The pope deprived for crime; the revolutionists usually for virtue or innocence, only under pretence of ameliorating the state, which they subvert.
But our space is nearly exhausted, and we must hurry on. Innocent III. is another of those great bishops of Rome that excite the wrath of Harper's Magazine—probably because he was really a great pope, energetic in asserting the faith, in removing scandals, in enforcing discipline on kings and princes as well as on their subjects; in repressing sects, like the Albigenses, that struck at the very foundations of religion and society, or of the moral order; in defending the purity of morals and the sanctity of marriage, and in espousing the cause of the weak against the strong, of oppressed innocence against oppressive guilt. This is too much for the endurance of the magazine. It indeed does not say that Innocent did not espouse the cause of justice in the case of Philip Augustus and his injured queen, Ingeburga; but it contends that he did it from unworthy motives, for the sake of extending and consolidating the papal authority over kings and princes. Though he admits John Lackland was a moral monster, and opened negotiations with a Mohammedan prince to the scandal of Christendom, offered to make himself a Mussulman, and would have embraced Islamism if the infidel prince had not repelled him with indignation and contempt; it yet finds that Innocent was altogether wrong in taking effective measures to restrain his tyranny, cruelty, licentiousness, and plunder of the churches and robbery of his subjects. His motive was simply to monopolize power and profit for the papal see. He also, for like reasons, was wrong in resisting Frederic II. of Germany, who, he says, preferred Islamism to Christianity, as itself probably prefers it to Catholicity.
The article closes with a tirade against Alexander VI., and his children, Caesar and Lucretia Borgia, Roscoe, a Protestant or rationalist, has vindicated the character of Lucretia, that accomplished, capable, and most grossly calumniated woman, who, in her real history, appears to have been not less eminent for her virtues than for her beauty and abilities. Caesar Borgia we have no disposition to defend, though we have ample grounds for believing that he was by no means so black as Italian hatred and malice have painted him. Alexander was originally in the army of Spain, and his manners and morals were such as we oftener associate with military men than with ecclesiastics, He lived with a woman who was another man's wife, and had two or three children by her. But this was while he was a soldier, and before he was an ecclesiastic or thought of taking orders. He was called to Rome for his eminent administrative ability, by his uncle, Pope Callixtus III.; took, in honor of his uncle, the name of Borgia; became an ecclesiastic; was, after some time, made cardinal, and finally raised to the papal throne under the name of Alexander VI. After he was made cardinal, if, indeed, after he became an ecclesiastic, nothing discreditable to his morals has been proved against him; and his moral character, during his entire pontificate, was, according to the best authorities, irreproachable. The Borgias had, however, the damning sin of being Spaniards, not Italians; and of seeking to reduce the Italian robber barons to submission and obedience to law, and to govern Italy in the interests of public order. They had, therefore, many bitter and powerful enemies; hence, the aspersions of their character, and the numerous fables against them, and which but too many historians have taken for authenticated facts. The alleged poisonings of Alexander and his daughter Lucretia are none of them proved, and are inventions of Italian hatred and malice. Yet, though Alexander's conduct as pope was irreproachable, and his administration able and vigorous, his antecedents were such that his election to the papal throne was a questionable policy, and Savonarola held it to be irregular and null.
The magazine indulges in the old cant about the contrast between the poverty and humility of Peter and the wealth and grandeur of his successors; the simplicity of the primitive worship, and the pomp and splendor of the Roman service. There is no need of answering this. When the Messrs. Harper Brothers started the printing business in this city, we presume their establishment was in striking contrast to their present magnificent establishment in Cliff street. When the world was converted to the church, and the supreme pontiff had to sustain relations with sovereign princes, to receive their ambassadors, and send his legates to every court in Christendom to look after the interests of religion—the chief interest of both society and individuals—larger accommodations than were afforded by that "upper room" in Jerusalem were needed, and a more imposing establishment than St. Peter may have had was a necessity of the altered state of things. Even our Methodist friends, we notice, find it inconvenient to observe the plainness and simplicity in dress and manners prescribed by John Wesley their founder. He forbids, we believe, splendid churches, with steeples and bells; and the earliest houses for Methodist meetings, even we remember, were very different from the elegant structures they are now erecting. We heard a waggish minister say of one of them, "Call you this the Lord's house? you should rather call it the Lord's barn."
The Catholic Church continues and fulfils the synagogue, and her service is, to a great extent, modelled after the Jewish, which was prescribed by God himself. The dress of the pontiff, when he celebrates the Holy Sacrifice, is less gorgeous than that of the Jewish high-priest. St. Peter's is larger than was Solomon's temple, but it is not more gorgeous; and the Catholic service, except in the infinite superiority of the victim immolated upon the altar, is not more splendid, grand, or imposing than was the divinely prescribed temple service of the Hebrews. The magazine appears to think with Judas Iscariot, that the costly ointment with which a woman that had been a sinner anointed the feet of Jesus, after she had washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair, was a great waste, and might have been put to a better use. But our Lord did not think so, and Judas Iscariot did not become the prince of the apostles. We owe all we have to God, and it is but fitting that we should employ the best we have in his service.
Here we must close. We have not replied to all the misstatements, misrepresentations, perversions, and insinuations of the article in Harper's Magazine. We could not do it in a brief article like the present. It would require volumes to do it. We have touched only on a few salient points that struck us in glancing over it; but we have said enough to show its animus and to expose its untrustworthiness. Refuted it we have not, for there really is nothing in it to refute, It lays down no principles, states no premises, draws no conclusions. It leaves all that to be supplied by the ignorance and prejudices of its readers. It is a mere series of statements that require no answer but a flat denial. It is not strange that the magazine should calumniate the popes, and seek to pervert their history. Our Lord built his church on Peter, being himself the chief cornerstone; and nothing is more natural than that they who hate the church should strike their heads against the papacy. The popes have always been the chief object of attack, and have had to bear the brunt of the battle. Yet they have labored, suffered, been persecuted, imprisoned, exiled, and martyred for the salvation of mankind. What depth of meaning in the dying words of the exiled Gregory VII., "I have loved justice, and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile." Alas! the world knows not its benefactors, and crucifies its redeemers!