An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

by James Harvey Robinson

Resemblance of the Church to a state.

3. It is obvious, moreover, that the mediæval Church was not merely a religious body, as churches are to-day. Of course it maintained places of worship, conducted devotional exercises, and cultivated the spiritual life; but it did far more. It was, in a way, a state, for it had an elaborate system of law, and its own courts, in which it tried many cases which are now settled in our ordinary tribunals.[134] It had also its prisons, to which it might sentence offenders to lifelong detention.

Unity of organization in the Church.

4. The Church not only performed the functions of a state; it had the organization of a state. Unlike the Protestant ministers of to-day, all churchmen and religious associations of mediæval Europe were under one supreme head, who made laws for all and controlled every church officer, wherever he might be, whether in Italy or Germany, Spain or Ireland. The whole Church had one official language, Latin, in which all communications were dispatched and in which its services were everywhere conducted.

The mediæval Church a monarchy in its form of government.

79. The mediæval Church may, therefore, properly be called a monarchy in its government. The pope was its all-powerful and absolute head and concentrated in his person its entire spiritual and disciplinary authority. He was the supreme lawgiver. No council of the Church, no matter how large and important, could make laws against his will, for its decrees, to be valid, required his sanction.

Dispensations.

The pope might, moreover, set aside or abrogate any law of the Church, no matter how ancient, so long as it was not ordained by the Scriptures or by Nature. He might, for good reasons, make exceptions to all merely human laws; as, for instance, permit cousins to marry, or free a monk from his vows. Such exceptions were known as dispensations.

The pope the supreme judge of Christendom.

The pope was not merely the supreme lawgiver; he was the supreme judge. As a distinguished legal writer has said, the whole of western Europe was subject to the jurisdiction of one tribunal of last resort, the pope's court at Rome. Any one, whether clergyman or layman, in any part of Europe, could appeal to him at any stage in the trial of a large class of cases. Obviously this system had serious drawbacks. Grave injustice might be done by carrying to Rome a case which ought to have been settled in Edinburgh or Cologne, where the facts were best known. The rich, moreover, always had the advantage, as they alone could afford to bring suits before so distant a court.