It seems to be certain that some of the Norwegians from Greenland discovered a part of the American continent, although no traces of them remained there when the country was again discovered by Europeans, hundreds of years later.
NOTES
[ [67]See Part I., [chap. XVI.]
CHAPTER VIII.
POPE GREGORY THE SEVENTH.
PART I.
In the times of which I have been lately speaking, the power of the popes had grown far beyond what it was in the days of Gregory the Great.
I have told you Gregory was very much displeased because a patriarch of Constantinople had styled himself Universal Bishop.[68] But since that time the popes had taken to calling themselves by this very title, and they meant a great deal more by it than the patriarchs of Constantinople had meant; for people in the East are fond of big words, so that, when a patriarch called himself Universal Bishop, he did not mean anything in particular, but merely to give himself a title which would sound grandly. And thus, although he claimed to be universal, he would have allowed the bishops of Rome to be universal too. But when the popes called themselves Universal Bishops, they meant that they were bishops of the whole church, and that all other bishops were under them.
They had friends, too, who were ready to say anything to raise their power and greatness. Thus, about the year 800, when the popes had begun to get some land of their own, through the gifts of Pipin and Charlemagne,[69] a story was got up that the first Christian emperor, Constantine, when he built his city of Constantinople, and went to live in the East, made over Rome to the pope, and gave him also all Italy, with other countries of the West, and the right of wearing a golden crown. And this story of Constantine's gift (or donation, as it was called), although it was quite false, was commonly believed in those days of ignorance.