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Still the whole transaction was of vast importance, because it launched him for the first time upon Rome, where he was destined to spend the larger part of his long life, and to serve a succession of Pontiffs in their most ambitious undertakings. Before passing to the events of his sojourn at Rome, I will wind up the story of the Cupid.
He answered, with so much strength and judgment, the philosophers of his day, who attacked the Mendicant Orders, despite of the Sovereign Pontiffs, by whom they were approved, that his works, with those of the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, will ever cover with confusion whosoever may attempt to renew the former disputes on this head. The exertions which St.
But it would take a whole day to refer even briefly to all that the Catholic Church and her Supreme Pontiffs have done to dissipate ignorance, and to improve and enlighten the mind of man.
When one of the consuls was immolating the first victim, the head of the liver was wanting. These prodigies were expiated with victims of the larger kind. The college of pontiffs gave out to what gods sacrifice was to be made. After these matters were finished, the consuls and praetors set out for their provinces.
The pontiffs were presided over by one called Pontifex Maximus, a title shrewdly assumed by Caesar to gain control of the popular worship, and still surviving in the title of the Pope of Rome with his college of cardinals. There were augurs and haruspices to discover the will of the gods, according to entrails and the flight of birds.
Sometimes, as under Popes like Gregory VII. and Innocent III., it laid claim to the mastership of the world, and sometimes, as with the majority of the pontiffs during the two centuries before the Reformation, it became mainly the appanage of a party or faction or family. Throughout all this history, there appeared in the Church two great currents of efficient thought.
It is the Sovereign Pontiffs who, by opening new avenues for modern art, have brought it to the point of perfection, embodied in the master-pieces of Raphael and Michael Angelo. They alone support in Rome that unique assemblage of all that is beautiful in every order, that splendid intellectual galaxy in whose light the artists of every land are formed.
Cicero's house on the Palatine Hill had been pulled down and the area dedicated so at least Clodius alleged to the Goddess of Liberty. If this was true, it was sacred forever; it could not be restored. The question was, Was it true? This question was referred to the Pontiffs as judges of such matters. Cicero argued the case before them, and they pronounced in his favor.
No citizen can lie down secure that he shall not be roused by the alarum-bell, to repel or avenge an injury. In such petty quarrels Greece squandered the blood which might have purchased for her the permanent empire of the world, and Italy wasted the energy and the abilities which would have enabled her to defend her independence against the Pontiffs and the Caesars.
RELIGION. Worship in families was conducted by the head of the household, the paterfamilias, who offered the regular sacrifices. But, as regards the whole people, worship was under the direction of the pontiffs, with the chief pontiff, the Pontifex Maximus, at their head, and in the hands of the priests.
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