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Gregory's successors imposed this oath by degrees on all bishops, and thus gradually substituted the Pope for the Metropolitan. The Dictatus Papae claimed for the Pope the right of deposing or reinstating bishops without reference to a synod; of transferring a bishop from one see to another; of dividing a wealthy see or joining together poor bishoprics.
The Pope also gradually established his authority as supreme and sole lawgiver within the Church. The Dictatus Papae asserts that for him alone it is lawful to frame new laws to meet the needs of the time. Meanwhile the Forged Decretals had found their place in the various collections of the Canons made in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries.
The Dictatus Papae asserts that the Pope's legates take precedence of all bishops in a council even though they may be of inferior rank, and Gregory VII applies to their authority the text "He that heareth you heareth me."
In the first place, he who had grown from the Vicar of St. Peter to be directly the Vicar of God naturally surrounded himself with an increasing amount of ceremony. The Dictatus Papae claims that the Pope alone can use imperial insignia, and that it is his feet alone that all princes should kiss.
The magnitude of the task which the popes had undertaken first became fully apparent when Hildebrand himself ascended the papal throne, in 1073, as Gregory VII. Among the writings of Gregory VII there is a very brief statement, called the Dictatus, of the powers which he believed the popes to possess.
For the Lord Jesus says, 'I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not." And in accordance with this principle the Dictatus Papae lays it down that "the Roman Church has never erred, nor, as Scripture testifies, will it ever err."
There was no room in such a theory for any effective co-operation of ecclesiastical Councils, however representative. The Dictatus Papae declares that no General Council can be held without the papal command.
"Nay, Paolo, my brother; it is written in the nineteenth maxim of the 'Dictatus Papae' 'That none may judge the Pope." "My brother, who gave thee thy conscience and thine intellect?" Fra Paolo questioned sternly.
The Dictatus Papae asserts not only that the Pope should be judged by no one, but that the "greater causes" of every Church should be referred to him, that none should dare to condemn any one who appealed to Rome, and that no one except the Pope himself can interfere with a papal sentence.
Two centuries later another document of doubtful authenticity, called Dictatus Papae, sets forth in a sufficiently true spirit the principles proclaimed by Gregory VII. This states, among other things, that the Roman pontiff can alone be called Universal, that his name is unique in the world, that he ought to be judged by none; and it ascribes to him, without the intervention of any intermediary, the supreme and immediate power in all executive, legislative, and judicial matters.
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