Consequently the new civil societies made the maintenance of religious unity the foremost object of their policy. It became the public law of all Europe and the common law of each state. To impugn this unity was considered a most heinous offence not against God only, but against the nation and against all Christendom.
“Thus,” writes another great Protestant, “Christianity became crystallized into a single bond embracing all nations, and giving to all life, civilization, and all the riches of the mind” (Hurter, Life of Innocent III, I, 38).
A corollary of this system of an universal Christian society was the recognition of a supreme tribunal. “One of the most elevated principles of the age,” writes the same eminent German, “was that, in the struggles between the peoples and their rulers, there should be a superior authority charged to recall laws not made by men, though their interpreter were himself a man.” Referring to the fiercely contested election of Othon, he continues: “Othon was the first to have recourse to Rome, the tribunal with whom rested the decision in these matters, when the parties did not wish to resort to the arbitrament of war.”
In France we find the great Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, remonstrating with the Bishop of the free chartered city of Beauvais, brother of the King, with whom he was often at odds.
“I beseech you not to raise a guilty hand against the King ... for you must see the consequences of armed insurrection against the King, especially if it be without consulting the Sovereign Pontiff.... If the King, drawn aside by evil counsellors, has not acted rightly, it was proper to have informed him by the bishops and notables, or rather by our Holy Father the Pope, who is at the head of the whole Church, and could easily have reconciled all differences.”
In England we have many instances of both laymen and clergy appealing to the arbitrament of the Papacy.
“The recognition of some principle of right, powerful enough to form a bond of lasting concord, has always been the dream of statesmen and philosophers,” writes Lecky. “Hildebrand sought it in the supremacy of the spiritual power, and in the consequent ascendency of moral law” (History of Rationalism, 245).
Voltaire pays homage to this public policy of the Middle Ages. “The interests of the human race required a controlling power to restrain sovereigns and protect the lives of peoples. This controlling power of religion could well be placed in the hands of the Papacy. The Sovereign Pontiffs warning princes and people of their duties, appeasing quarrels, rebuking crimes, might always have been regarded as the images of God on earth. But men, alas, are reduced to the protection of laws without force” (Essai sur les mœurs, II).
He describes what really did exist for centuries, though, of course, papal arbitration was not always efficacious. Every great institution needs time to develop and mature. It would not be great were it otherwise. Moreover there were, unfortunately, many troublous times between the sixth and the fifteenth century, in which the Papacy itself was captive, buffeted, demeaned, and exiled by the struggles and ambitions of turbulent political factions in Rome itself. The very day on which Gregory VII excommunicated the German Emperor, he was seized and imprisoned by a noble Roman bandit, until his people were able to deliver him by main force.
“Another corollary of this universal Christian Society was that right found a protector in the common Father of the faithful; in the grand idea of a supreme chief who without employing material force judged in last resort.... What great misfortunes would France and all Europe have been spared if, in the reign of Louis XVI, an Innocent III had been Pope. His rôle would have been to save the lives of the people” (Hurter’s Innocent III, II, 200-23). To German Protestant writers like Hurter, Voigt, Neander, etc., is due the honour of vindicating the true rôle of the Papacy in the Middle Ages.