The rights of suzerainty exercised by the Papacy also formed part of the public law of Europe. In those wild, lawless days, when robber barons enjoyed the privilege of being highwaymen on their own estates, and often extended their depredations to those of their neighbours, property rights had no sanction, and the weaker succumbed to the stronger in virtue of the “fist right,” which we now translate variously by “the right of the strongest,” political “majorities,” and the “survival of the fittest.”
The practice then arose among weak owners of dedicating their lands to the Church, in order to obtain spiritual or moral protection against the brute force of stronger neighbours. What private owners did in a small way was done by princes on a larger scale.
Referring to the peculiar incidents when roving Norman pirates, in possession of Sicily and Naples, seized the person of the Pope and insisted on becoming his vassal, Voltaire writes as follows:—“Robert Guiscard, wishing to be independent of the German Emperor, resorted to a precaution which private owners took in those days of trouble and rapine. The latter gave their property to the Church under the name of Oblata, and, paying a slight tax, continued to enjoy the use of it. The Normans resorted to this custom, placing under the protection of the Church in the hands of Nicholas II (1059) not only what they held, but also their future conquests (on the Saracens). This homage was an act of political piety like Peter’s Pence; the two pence of gold paid by the Kings of Portugal; like the voluntary submission of so many kingdoms” (Essai sur les mœurs, II, 44).
It was thus that England became a fief of the Holy See, a most unfortunate circumstance, as the temporal pecuniary obligations arising therefrom were exploited to estrange the English from the See of Peter, in the following centuries.
“In 1329,” continues Voltaire, “the King of Sweden, who wished to conquer Denmark, addressed the Pope as follows: ‘Your Holiness knows that Denmark depends on the Roman See and not on the German Emperor.’ ... I only wish to show,” Voltaire adds, “how every prince who wished to recover or usurp a domain appealed to the Pope.... In this case the Pope defended Denmark, and said he could only decide on the justice of the case when the parties had appeared before his tribunal, according to the ancient usage.”
Nor did Christians alone appeal to this spiritual tribunal. The bull of Innocent III, cited by Hurter, is an excellent exponent of the mind of the Church in all times. “As they (the Jews) claim our succour against their persecutors, we take them under our special protection, following in this the example of our predecessors, Calixtus, Eugenius, Alexander, Clement, and Celestin. We forbid every one to force a Jew to be baptized, for he who is compelled cannot be said to have the faith. No Christian must dare commit any violence against them, nor seize their property, without a legal judgment. Let no one trouble them on their feast days by striking or throwing stones at them,” etc.
It will be objected that the fulcrum of Western civilization was a spiritual despotism. But these terms exclude each other. Can we call an authority despotic which had no material force, and rested only on a divine commission and the common sense of prince and people, recognizing its credentials—on public opinion in fact?
It was a fundamental law of every state that any one, no matter what his rank, who impugned the Unity of the Faith, or committed offences so heinous as to justify the supposition that he was no longer a Christian, fell under the ban of the Church and became outlawed, if at the end of a year he had not been absolved. In his Historia Imperatorum Schafnaburg explains the wintry flight of Henry IV across the Alps to Canossa by his eagerness to be absolved before the year had revolved, because otherwise he would have forfeited his crown. Ut ante hanc diem non absolveretur, deinceps juxta Palatinas leges indignus regio honore habeatur.
Three causes were generally admitted as sufficient for the excommunication of a sovereign. First, if he fell from the faith. Second, if he ravaged or seized ecclesiastical lands or desecrated churches. Third, if he repudiated his own wife or appropriated his neighbour’s. This latter point, as Voltaire and Montesquieu have pointed out, was the cause of nearly all the quarrels between the French kings and the Papacy, a fact which our Jacobins, in the Chambers and elsewhere, deliberately ignore, when they mendaciously misrepresent the Church as having constantly encroached on the civil power. The case of Philippe Augustus and the hapless Ingleburge of Denmark was a test case, so to speak.
“It was not,” writes Hurter, “a question of contested claims of the Papacy, but of this great question, Is the sovereign subject to the laws of Christianity? It had to be decided whether the royal will should triumph or not over the force regarded as constituting the unity of Christendom” (Life of Innocent III). Montesquieu’s testimony is unimpeachable when he testifies that this Public Law of Europe was universally recognized. “All the sovereigns,” he writes, “with inconceivable blindness, themselves accredited and sanctioned, in public opinion, which had no force except by it.”