As an independent sovereign the pope has the power to issue absolute decrees. The papal bulls, apostolic briefs, and encyclical letters, are the exercise of sovereign power. From the despotic tone of these documents, sometimes moderated by fear, but never from inclination, the pope evidently claims the right of interfering not only in the ecclesiastical, but also in the political affairs of all nations.
As an independent sovereign the pope has a system of jurisprudence and administrative justice. The canonical law by which he governs his monarchy consists of the Concordantia Discordantium or Decretium Gratiani; the Decratales Gregorii Noni; the Liber Sextus, by Boniface VIII; the Extravagantes Johannis XXII; the Extravagantes Communes, and the Clementinus; all of which are known under the general name of Cor-pus Juris Canonica; and all except the Extravagantes have the full authority of law. The papal system of administrative justice consists of a chief court, a civil court, and an apostolical court. The apostolical court regulates the pope's domains and collects the taxes. The members of the court are always bishops, and the presiding officer is generally a cardinal.
As an independent sovereign the pope has exercised the governmental prerogative of coining money. The papal coins have various devices. They all have the cross-keys; most of them the triple crown; and some of them are inscribed with the word Dominus.
As an independent sovereign the pope has always maintained, when possible, an army and a navy. Pope Clement VIII. elected in 1523, raised an army of regulars and volunteers of thirty thousand foot and three thousand cavalry. Pope Leo IX. commanded an army consisting of Italian volunteers, several bands of robbers, and seven hundred Suabians. Pope Alexander VI. at the head of a powerful army conquered Bologna, Ancona, Ravenna and Ferrara. After the return of the pope to Rome from Avignon, in 1577, a standing army was formed consisting of cavalry and infantry.
The papal military organizations have been of the most formidable description. The Dominican Knights, the Teutonic Knights, the Knights of St. John, and the Knight Templars, instituted for the defence and propagation of Catholicism by the force of arms, were skilfully organized and rigorously disciplined. They assumed the vows of celibacy, poverty and unconditional obedience. They were interdicted, by the terms of their charter, from acknowledging any protector but the pope, and were made independent of any other authority. Upon becoming initiated into their orders, the pope absolved them from all human obligations, and they were required to sunder all human ties. They enjoyed all the immunities and privileges of the religious orders; and in conjunction with them formed a standing army of three hundred thousand men, fully equipped for war, exclusively devoted to the pope's interest, and ready at his call to serve him by land or sea.
As an independent sovereign the pope has a national revenue. This revenue is domestic and foreign. From official reports the pope's domestic revenue, in 1853, amounted to 13,000,000 florins; his foreign revenue is not publicly known. In the dark ages half of the ecclesiastical revenues of Europe flowed into the church treasury at Rome; but at present the various streams of wealth destined for the church, are diverted to convenient localities, situated in different parts of the world, to be disbursed according to regulations prescribed by the holy father. As the subject is somewhat curious, we are tempted to inquire into some of the sources of the papal revenue.
One source of the pope's revenue is the sale of indulgences. St. Peter's Church, at Rome, which cost 45,000,000 crowns, was chiefly built from the proceeds of this species of traffic. William Hogan furnishes some singular facts respecting this ingenious device, by which the church accommodates the wishes of the members in the commission of sin, to her pecuniary advantage. He says:
"They (the pope and the propagandi) resolved that indulgences should, in the future, be called scapulus, and thus piously enable all Catholic priests and bishops to swear on the Holy Evangelists that no indulgences were sold in the United States..... The scapula costs the purchaser one dollar. The priest who sells it tells him that in order to make it thoroughly efficacious, it is necessary that he should cause some masses to be said.... I may safely say that, on an average, every scapula sold in the United States costs at least five dollars."—Synopsis, pp. 176, 177.
The number of Catholics in the world is computed, by Catholic authority, at 150,000,000. Some of the papal subjects would not, perhaps, purchase a scapula in a year, while others might purchase a hundred; but at the moderate estimate of one scapula annually to each Catholic, the pope would derive from this source an annual revenue of 750,000,000 dollars. The sale of the scapula would; of course, be in proportion to the wickedness of the church members; the more virtuous they were the less would they be necessitated to contribute to the coffers of the church; and as merchants and traders always scheme to create a demand for their goods, it is not reasonable that either the pope or his priests would encourage their Catholic subjects in conduct that would render them of no value to them; and that would injure the sale and lessen the demand of their articles of trade, by which their treasure and luxuries are so much augmented.
Another source of the pope's revenue are the masses which the church requires to be said for the deliverance of the souls of deceased Catholics out of purgatory. These masses were sold before the rebellion at fifty cents a piece; whether they have since risen in value in proportion to other articles, I have not the means of ascertaining. What number of masses are requisite for conjuring a Catholic layman's soul up from purgatory, I am not informed; but there is a will of a priest recorded in Towsontown, Md.. which bequeaths to a brother priest the sum of one hundred dollars to pay for two hundred masses, "to be said for the benefit of his poor soul." If the church will not release the soul of a priest from purgatory for less than one hundred dollars, how much does she demand of a layman for a similar purpose? It would seem that the sanctity of a priest ought enable her to get him out of the purgatorial fire, and release him from the clutches of the devil for a much less sum of money than would be requisite for the same purpose in the case of an un-anointed layman.. This traffic in the souls of dead men by the church, has been prosecuted in such an oppressive manner thai her members have sometimes been provoked to remonstrate. I once knew of a young Catholic who charged his priest with having forged a will in order to swindle him out of a great portion of his maternal inheritance. The pretext on which this pious fraud was attempted to be based was a plea that the mother of the youth had bequeathed to the priest a house of hers, in payment of a sufficient number of masses for the release of her soul from purgatory. The annual revenue derived by the pope for his service in opening the gates of purgatory to the devout must be prodigious; but the secrecy with which it is veiled renders a reliable computation exceedingly difficult. If we consider the number of Catholics that are in the world, and the probable annual number of deaths that occur among them, and calculate the sum of money which would be necessary to deliver the average number that die yearly out of the flames of purgatory, we may form some conception of the vast-ness of this resource of papal revenue. Wars, pestilence, bereavements of friends, which are calamities to families and nations, are pecuniary advantages to the church; and in proportion to the mortality of her members, she has cause to rejoice over the improvement of her finances.