[9]. Suid. p. 977. Socr. ibid.
[10]. Socr. ibid.
Thus far the History of the Popes has been merely Ecclesiastical, and therefore less entertaining: but, in the next Volume, the Affairs of the Church will begin very soon to be so interwoven with those of the State, as to render the History both Ecclesiastic and Civil. The Popes will soon make a very different Figure from that which they have hitherto made; no longer mere Bishops, but Bishops and Princes; and the Bishop almost intirely lost in the Prince; no longer contending only with their Collegues for Spiritual Power and Jurisdiction, but, at the same time, with the greatest Monarchs for Dominion and Empire; nay, employing the Sword as well as the Keys, and heading, as directed by their Ambition or Interest, both Councils and Armies. We shall see the Western Empire utterly extinct, and Italy successively invaded, and partly held by the Heruli, by the Goths, by the Greeks, the Lombards, the French, the Italians, the Germans, and the Normans; and the Popes managing their Affairs, in all these Revolutions, with so much Art and Address, as to reap, from most of them, some considerable Advantage for themselves. Events more interesting, though, in reality, not more important, than those which the present Volume relates; and which, to the very End of this History, will be succeeded by others, equally proper to excite the Attention even of such Readers as seek for Amusement alone.
The END of the First Volume.
[1]. Bellar. Præf. de Sum. Pont.
[2]. The authors he thus copied were Anastasius Bibliothecarius, from St. Peter, or rather Linus, to Nicolas I. Gulielmus, likewise Bibliothecarius, from Nicolas I. to Alexander II. Pandulphus Pisanus, from Alexander II. to Honorius II. Martinus Polonus, from Honorius II. to Honorius IV. Theodorus of Niem, from Honorius IV. to Urban VI. and from Urban VI. to Martin V. who died in 1431, other writers, whose works are extant, but their names unknown. He likewise borrowed a great deal of Ptolemæus Lucensis, a Dominican Frier, who flourished, and compiled the Lives of the Popes, in the time of Boniface VIII. chosen in the year 1294.
[3]. Gregory IX. Innocent IV. Alexander IV. Nicolas III. Martin IV. Nicolas IV. Clement V.
[4]. That the Franciscan Friers had no property, in common or in private; a question, if any ever was, de lana caprina. What was it to mankind? what to the Christian Religion, whether a few Friers had, or had not any property? No man was the better for believing they had, no man the worse for believing they had not. And yet to read the bulls of the Popes one would think, that the whole of Christianity had been at stake.