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The Papacy had by this time become far less of an ecclesiastical than a political force; the weapons of the Church were there, but they were being employed for the furtherance not of churchly, but of worldly aims. If the Pontiffs in the pages of this history remembered or evoked their spiritual authority, it was but to employ it as an instrument for the advancement of their temporal schemes.
He took up a quill, and wrote with labour, for princes are notoriously poor scholars: "I, Don Sebastian, by the Grace of God King of Portugal, take to wife the most serene Dona ulna of Austria, daughter of the most serene Prince, Don John of Austria, by virtue of the dispensation which I hold from two pontiffs."
But the dignity of their sacred character was still protected by the laws, and manners of their country; and they still continued, more especially the college of pontiffs, to exercise in the capital, and sometimes in the provinces, the rights of their ecclesiastical and civil jurisdiction.
For cup or fruit work he found ladies the only possible agents. No one in Nona would dream of taking wine from a man; and as for presents of figs, Grifone was maturely of opinion that the last and present Pontiffs had exhausted that pretty artifice. Finally, you can easily understand how useful Duke Amilcare found a demure lad of this kind in the matter of moulding his new State.
The Latin festival was repeated in pursuance of a decree of the pontiffs, because ambassadors from Ardea had complained to the senate, that during the said solemnity they had not been supplied with meat as usual on the Alban mount. From Suessa an account was brought, that two of the gates, and the wall between them, had been struck with lightning.
At that time the Archdeacon of the Roman Church was the famous Hildebrand. This extraordinary man, fit fellow- spirit to Lanfranc, nursed one darling project, the success of which indeed founded the true temporal power of the Roman pontiffs. It was no less than that of converting the mere religious ascendancy of the Holy See into the actual sovereignty over the states of Christendom.
At first this contrast was scarcely marked, and the very oracles of Apollo which were destined to undermine Juppiter's omnipotence were stored in Juppiter's temple and under his protection. The difference was felt more strongly as the priesthood of the Sibylline books began to grow in influence alongside of the pontiffs, the priests of the Juppiter cults.
I was required to ask the virtue of such, and how they might be obtained; this thing, therefore, I did long since, and I have received a reply to this effect, namely: "That no man may know fully the virtue and extent of these Indulgences, because from the time of St. Peter onward, Indulgences beyond number have been given and granted by divers Pontiffs."
But the thunders of Roman pontiffs did not trouble the worthy bookseller, who laughed at their threats, and exclaimed, "I perspired so freely at Rome in the flame, that I must take a larger draught, as it is necessary to extinguish that flame." The same fatality befell Robert Stephanus, the Parisian printer.
The space between Nestorius and Eutyches was filled by a thousand shades of language and opinion; the acephali of Egypt, and the Roman pontiffs, of equal valor, though of unequal strength, may be found at the two extremities of the theological scale.
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