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Whenever great troubles arose, or serious calamities threatened either the church or social order, the Roman Pontiffs judged it opportune to convoke general councils, in order that with the advice and assistance of the bishops of the Catholic world, whom the Holy Ghost hath established to rule the Church of God, they might, in their united wisdom and forethought, so dispose everything as to define the doctrines of faith, to secure the destruction of the most prevalent errors, defend, illustrate and develop Catholic teaching, restore and promote ecclesiastical discipline and the reformation of morals.
Among other difficulties that the Roman Pontiffs had to contend with, was that of obtaining an outlet towards the sea, whilst ancient Rome commanded all the seas and lands of the known world. Surely it does not require a Solomon to understand that without access to the Mediterranean, it is physically impossible to drain and cultivate such low-lying lands as the Pontine Marshes.
Philip, to say nothing of the present day; but this we did not then know. Moreover, from Froude I learned to admire the great medieval Pontiffs; and, of course, when I had come to consider the Council of Trent to be the turning-point of the history of Christian Rome, I found myself as free, as I was rejoiced, to speak in their praise.
De Maistre, on the other hand, believed that the old authority of kings and Christian pontiffs was divine, and any attempt to supersede it in either case would have seemed to him as desperate as it seemed impious. Elsewhere he maintains to the same effect, that royal families in the true sense of the word 'are growths of nature, and differ from others, as a tree differs from a shrub.
In each of these cases, then, the same circumstances of vagueness and uncertainty throw doubt on all investigation, and render a conjectural estimate impossible. Moreover, there remain no documents to prove what he may have gained, directly or indirectly, from succeeding Pontiffs.
"I never pass it without going in," she said, "to pay my homage at the tomb of Raphael." "Nor I," said Kenyon, "without stopping to admire the noblest edifice which the barbarism of the early ages, and the more barbarous pontiffs and princes of later ones, have spared to us."
He contemplated also the erection of vast public works. His knowledge of astronomy led him to accomplish one important change, for which we have reason to remember him to-day. This made the adaptation of the nominal year to the actual a matter of great intricacy, the duty being intrusted to the chief pontiffs.
The man whose armies sacked Rome, who laid his sacrilegious hands on Christ's vicegerent, and kept the infallible head of the Church a prisoner to serve his own political ends, was then no bigot. He believed in nothing; save that when the course of his imperial will was impeded, and the interests of his imperial house in jeopardy, pontiffs were to succumb as well as anabaptists.
He had recognised the influence of Rabbet, being skilful to discern the gods who send diseases; and to cure Salammbo he had her apartment watered with lotions of vervain, and maidenhair; she ate mandrakes every morning; she slept with her head on a cushion filled with aromatics blended by the pontiffs; he had even employed baaras, a fiery-coloured root which drives back fatal geniuses into the North; lastly, turning towards the polar star, he murmured thrice the mysterious name of Tanith; but Salammbo still suffered and her anguish deepened.
So, at least, tradition says. From that bridge the Roman pontiffs had taken their title, 'Pontifex, a bridge-maker, because it was one of their chief duties to keep it in repair, when it was the only means of crossing the Tiber, and the safety of the city might depend upon it at any time; and for many centuries the bridge was built of oak, and without nails or bolts of iron, in memory of the first bridge which Horatius had kept.
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