borrowed light. Acting on this theory, he assumed the post of arbiter in the contentions of nations, and claimed the right to dethrone kings at his pleasure. Thus he interposed to decide the disputed imperial election in Germany; and when Otho IV., the emperor whom he had placed in power, proved false to his pledges respecting the papal see, he excommunicated and deposed him, and brought forward Frederic II. in his stead. In his conflict with John, King of England, Innocent laid his kingdom under an interdict, excommunicated him, and finally gave his dominions to the sovereign. of France; and John, after the most abject humiliation, received them back in fee from the Pope. In the Church he assumed the character of universal bishop, under the theory that all episcopal power was originally deposited in Peter and his successors, and communicated through this source to bishops, who were thus only the vicars of the Pope, and might be deposed at will. To him belonged all legislative authority, councils having merely a deliberative power, while the right to convoke them and to ratify or annul their proceedings belonged exclusively to him. He alone was not bound by the laws, and might dispense with them in the case of others. Even the doctrine of papal infallibility began to spread, and seems implied, if not explicitly avowed, in the teaching of the most eminent theologian of the age, Thomas Aquinas. The ecclesiastical revolution by which the powers that of old had been distributed through the Church were now absorbed and concentrated in the Pope, was analogous to the political change in which the feudal system gradually gave place to monarchy. The right to confirm the appointment of all bishops, the right even to nominate bishops and to dispose of all benefices, the exclusive right of absolution, canonization, and dispensation, the right to tax the churches such were some of the enormous preroga tives, for the enforcement of which papal legates, clothed

DEVELOPMENT OF THE LAY SPIRIT.

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with ample powers, were sent into all the countries of Europe, to override the authority of bishops and of local ecclesiastical tribunals. The establishment of the famous mendicant orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic raised up a swarm of itinerant preachers who were closely attached to the Pope, and ready to defend papal prerogatives and papal extortions against whatever opposition might arise from the secular clergy. Gaining a foothold in the universities, they defined and defended in lectures and scholastic systems that conception of the papal institution in which all these usurpations and abuses were contained.

But at the same time that the Papacy was achieving its victory over the Empire, a power was at work in the bosom of society, which was destined to render that victory a barren one, and to wrest the sceptre from the hand of the conqueror. This power may be described as

nationalism, or the tendency to centralization, which involved an expansion of intelligence and an end of the exclusive domination of religious and ecclesiastical interests. The secularizing and centralizing tendency, a necessary step in the progress of civilization, was a force adverse to the papal dominion. The enfranchisement of the towns, which dates from the eleventh century, and the growth of their power; the rise of commerce; the crusades, which in various ways lent a powerful impulse to the new crystallization of European society; the conception of monarchy in its European form, which entered the minds of men as early as the twelfth century these are some of the principal signs of the advent of a new order of things. Before the end of

1 "The gradual but slow reaction of the national feeling (des staatlichen Geistes) against ecclesiastical government in Europe (europäische kirchenrecht), is, in general, the most weighty element in the history of the Middle Age; it appears in every period under different forms and names, particularly in the struggle about investitures and the conflict of the Hohenstaufen, is continued in the Reformation, in the French Revolution, and is still visible in the most recent Concordats and in the antagonisms of our own time."-Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, v. 561.

the thirteenth century, the last Syrian town in the hands of the Christians was yielded to the Saracens, and the peculiar enthusiasm which had driven multitudes by an irresistible force to the conquest of the holy places had vanished. The struggle of the Papacy with the Empire had been really itself a contest between the ecclesiastical and the lay elements of society. The triumph of the Papacy had been owing to the peculiar constitution and intrinsic weakness of the German monarchy. It had been effected by the aid of the German princes; but they, in their turn, were found ready to resist papal encroachments. From the time of the barbarian invasions, Europe had formed, so to speak, one family, united by the bond of religion, under the tutelage of the Papacy. All other influences tended to division and isolation. The empire of Charlemagne formed but a temporary breakwater in opposition to these tendencies. The German spirit of independence was unfavorable to political unity. The feudal system was an atomic condition of political society. In this state of things, the Church, through its hierarchical organization under one chief, did a beneficent work for civilization by fusing the peoples, as far as its influence went, into a single community, and subjecting them to a uniform training. The mediæval Papacy, whatever evils may have been connected with it, saved Europe from anarchy and lawlessness. "Providence might have otherwise ordained, but it is impossible for man to imagine by what other organizing or consolidating force, the commonwealth of the Western nations could have grown up to a discordant, indeed, and conflicting league, but still to a league, with that unity and conformity of manners, usages, laws, religion, which have made their rivalries, oppugnancies, and even their long, ceaseless wars, on the whole to issue in the noblest, highest, most intellectual form of civilization known to man." But the time must come for the diversifying of 1 Milman, History of Latin Christianity, ii. 43. See also iii. 360.

THE VERNACULAR LITERATURE.

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this unity, for the development of the nations in their separate individuality. This was a change equally indispensable.

The development of the national languages which follows the chaotic period of the ninth and tenth centuries, is an interesting sign of that new stage in the advancement of civilization, upon which Europe was preparing to enter. It is worthy of notice that the earliest vernacular literature in Italy, Germany, France, and England involved to so great an extent satires and invectives against ecclesiastics. Many of the writers in the living tongues were laymen. A class of lay readers sprang up, so that it was no longer the case that "clerk " was a synonym for one who is able to read and write. "The greater part of literature in the Middle Ages," says Hallam, "at least from the twelfth century, may be considered as artillery leveled against the clergy." In Spain, the contest with the Moors infused into the earliest literary productions the mingled sentiments of loyalty and religion.2 But in Germany the minnesingers abound in hostile allusions to the wealth and tyranny of ecclesiastics. Walter von der Vogelweide, the greatest of the lyric poets of his time, a warm champion of the imperial side against the popes, denounces freely the riches and usurpations of the Church. It is true that the brute epic, of which Reynard the Fox may be considered the blossom, which figures largely in the early literature of Germany and the neighboring countries, was not didactic or satirical in its design. But it was later converted into this use and turned into a vehicle for chastising the faults of priests and monks.5 The Provençal bards were bold and

1 Literature of Europe, i. 150.

2 Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, i. 103.

Kurtz, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, i. 48 seq., where passages are given.

4 Vilmar, Gsch. d. deutsch. Lit., p. 296 seq.

5 See Gervinus, Gsch. d. deutschen Lit., i. 141.

unsparing in their treatment of the hierarchy until they were silenced by the Albigensian crusade. In Italy, Dante and Petrarch signalized the beginning of a national literature by their denunciation of the vices and usurpations of the Papacy; while in the prose of Boccacio the popular religious teachers are a mark for unbounded ridicule. English poetry begins with contemptuous and indignant censure of the monks and higher clergy, with the boldest manifestations of the anti-hierarchical tendency. "Teutonism," says Milman, "is now holding its first initiatory struggle with Latin Christianity."1 "The Vision of Piers' Ploughman," by William Langland, which bears the date of 1362, is from the pen of an earnest reformer who values reason and conscience as the guides of the soul, and attributes the sorrows and calamities of the world to the wealth and worldly temper of the clergy, and especially of the mendicant orders. The poem ends with an assertion of the small value of popes' pardons and the superiority of a righteous life over trust in indulgences. "Pierce the Ploughman's Crede," is a poem from another hand, and supposed to have been written in 1394. The poet introduces a plain man who is acquainted with the rudiments of Christian knowledge and wants to learn his creed. He applies successively to the four orders of mendicant friars, who give him no satisfaction, but rail at each other, and are absorbed in riches and sensual indulgence. Leaving them, he finds an honest ploughman, who inveighs against the monastic orders and gives him the instruction which he desires.3 The author is an avowed

2

1 History of Latin Christianity, viii. 372. In this and in the three preceding chapters, Milman gives an interesting description of the early vernacular literatures. In ch. iv. he speaks of the satirical Latin poems that sprang up among the clergy and within the walls of convents.

2 The poem is among the publications of the Early English Text Society. It is analyzed in the preface of Part I. Text A. See also, Warton, History of English Poetry, sect. viii. (vol. ii. 44).

The poem is published by the Early English Text Society (1867). Warton, sect. ix. (ii. 87).