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Updated: May 16, 2025
Jacqueline, the daughter and heiress of William, Count of Holland and Hainault, had originally wedded John, Duke of Brabant; but after a few years of strife she had procured a divorce from one of the three claimants who now disputed the Papacy, and at the close of Henry the Fifth's reign she had sought shelter in England.
The Romish church assigns the honour to Peter, and on this grounds an argument in favour of the claims of the Papacy. But strict search in and about all the obtainable sources of knowledge, it does give no sufficient reason for believing that Peter was ever even so much as within the walls of Rome.
Throughout France the followers of John Calvin of Geneva organized themselves into a powerful Protestant party. The Reformation in Germany had been aristocratic in tendency, since it was mainly upheld by princes whose politics led them to oppose the Papacy. The teaching of Calvin appealed more directly to the ignorant, for his creed was stern and simple.
It was weighty, lucid, pungent, and deeply in earnest, in every part asserting fidelity to the Church and loyalty to the papacy, but setting completely at naught the main claim of Pope Paul: the Doge solemnly declaring himself "a prince who, in temporal matters, recognizes no superior save the Divine Majesty." The victory of the friar soon began to be recognized far and near.
During the days of papacy in England, fish was an article not of optional, but compulsive consumption, and this rendered the business of a fishmonger one of the principal trades of London.
As late as the year 1300 the first great jubilee of the Church was celebrated and brought hundreds of thousands of pilgrims flocking to Rome. The papacy, though sorely pressed by many enemies, still proudly asserted its political supremacy.
The only moment which was really fraught with danger when Charles VIII was in Italy went by with unexpected fortune, and even then it was not the Papacy as such that was in peril, but Alexander, who risked being supplanted by a more respectable Pope. The great, permanent, and increasing danger for the Papacy lay in Alexander himself, and, above all, in his son Cesare Borgia.
But casuistry of this kind has never prospered indefinitely, and few historians will doubt that this temporal development led directly to that degradation of the Papacy which rendered it unfit to exercise moral influence on Europe.
The speech in which one of the fair deputation expressed the sentiments of her fellows has been unfortunately suppressed, but the letter of Pope Pius to the Bishop of Orleans explains the secret of this dramatic reconciliation, and the terms of the Concordat which has been arranged between Woman and the Papacy. A common danger has driven the two Powers to this fresh alliance.
It is only of late years that this feeling has worn off, and that we, as a nation, have begun to doubt whether, in his struggle with the Papacy, the Corsican usurper, as it was the fashion then to style him, may not have been in the right after all.
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