A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 04

by Voltaire

Such were the first rights to the crown of the two Sicilies. The bishops of Rome could no more give those states in fief than the kingdoms of Boutan or Cachemire. They could not even grant the investiture which would have been demanded of them; for, in the time of the anarchy of the fiefs, when a lord would hold his free land as a fief for his protection, he could only address himself to the sovereign or the chief of the country in which it was situated. And certainly the pope was neither the sovereign of Naples, Apulia, nor Calabria.

Much has been written about this pretended vassalage, but the source has never been discovered. I dare say that it is as much the fault of the lawyers as of the theologians. Every one deduces from a received principle consequences the most favorable to himself or his party. But is the principle true? Is the first fact by which it is supported incontestable? It is this which should be examined. It resembles our ancient romance writers, who all take it for granted that Francus brought the helmet of Hector to France. This casque was impenetrable, no doubt; but had Hector really worn it? The holy Virgin's milk is also very respectable; but do the twenty sacristies, who boast of having a gill of it, really possess it?

Men of the present time, as wicked as foolish, do not shrink from the greatest crimes, and yet fear an excommunication, which would render them execrable to people still more wicked and foolish than themselves.

Robert and Richard Guiscard, the conquerors of Apulia and Calabria, were excommunicated by Pope Leo IX. They were declared vassals of the empire; but the emperor, Henry III., discontented with these feudatory conquerors, engaged Leo IX. to launch the excommunication at the head of an army of Germans. The Normans, who did not fear these thunderbolts like the princes of Italy, beat the Germans and took the pope prisoner. But to prevent the popes and emperors hereafter from coming to trouble them in their possessions, they offered their conquests to the Church under the name of oblata. It was thus that England paid the Peter's pence; that the first kings of Spain and Portugal, on recovering their states from the Saracens, promised two pounds of gold a year to the Church of Rome. But England, Spain, nor Portugal never regarded the pope as their sovereign master.

Duke Robert, oblat of the Church, was therefore no feudatory of the pope; he could not be so, since the popes were not the sovereigns of Rome. This city was then governed by its senate, and the bishop possessed only influence. The pope was at Rome precisely what the elector is at Cologne. There is a prodigious difference between the oblat of a saint and the feudatory of a bishop.

Baronius, in his "Acts," relates the pretended homage done by Robert, duke of Apulia and Calabria, to Nicholas II.; but this deed is suspected, like many others; it has never been seen, it has never been found in any archives. Robert entitled himself "duke by the grace of God and St. Peter"; but certainly St. Peter had given him nothing, nor was that saint king of Rome.

The other popes, who were kings no more than St. Peter, received without difficulty the homage of all the princes who presented themselves to reign over Naples, particularly when these princes were the most powerful.

Donation of England and Ireland to the Popes by King John.

In 1213, King John, vulgarly called Lackland, or more properly Lackvirtue, being excommunicated and seeing his kingdom laid under an interdict, gave it away to Pope Innocent III. and his successors. "Not constrained with fear, but with my full consent and the advice of my barons, for the remission of my sins against God and the Church, I resign England and Ireland to God, St. Peter, St. Paul, and our lord the Pope Innocent, and to his successors in the apostolic chair."

He declared himself feudatory lieutenant of the pope, paid about eight thousand pounds sterling in ready money to the legate Pandulph, promised to pay a thousand more every year, gave the first year in advance to the legate who trampled upon him, and swore on his knees that he submitted to lose all in the event of not paying at the time appointed. The jest of this ceremony was that the legate departed with the money and forgot to remove the excommunication.