United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Sclavonic and Scandinavian kingdoms, which had been converted by the Latin missionaries, were exposed, it is true, to the spiritual jurisdiction and temporal claims of the popes; but they were united in language and religious worship, with each other, and with Rome; they imbibed the free and generous spirit of the European republic, and gradually shared the light of knowledge which arose on the western world.
And the work, begun by pride, prompted by the ambition of surpassing the Rome of the Caesars and the Popes, the determination to make the eternal, predestined city the queen and centre of the world once more, was completed by speculation, one of those extraordinary gambling frenzies, those tempests which arise, rage, destroy, and carry everything away without premonitory warning or possibility of arresting their course.
And if you recall the fact that the unhappy youth is a spoiled child of eight-and-twenty, surrounded by flatterers, without parents, without friends, without counsellors, that he risked his patrimony on the Bourse among thieves of the integrity of Monsieur Hafner, that all the wealth collected by that succession of popes, of cardinals, of warriors, of diplomatists, has served to enrich ignoble men, you would think the occurrence too lamentable to have any share in it, even as a spectator.
And that supernormal giantism showed itself almost for the last time in the building of Saint Peter's, when the Latin race had reached its last great development, and the power of the Latin popes overshadowed the whole world, and was itself about to be humbled.
Gregory surrounded himself with monks, and did everything in his power to promote their interests. He increased the novitiate to two years, and exempted certain monasteries from the control of the bishops. Other popes added to these exemptions, and thus widened the breach which already existed between the secular clergy and the monks.
The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention.
Neither must we transfer to the Popes what belongs to the true Church, namely, that they are pillars of the truth, that they do not err. Those words of Christ teach us not to be offended by the unworthiness of the ministers.
Fortunately we have the record of one great English surgeon of the period worthy to be placed beside even the writers already mentioned. This is John Ardern, whose name is probably a modification of the more familiar Arden, whose career well deserves attention. I have given a sketch of his work in "The Popes and Science." He was educated at Montpellier, and practised surgery for a time in France.
The mutual obligations of the popes and the Carlovingian family form the important link of ancient and modern, of civil and ecclesiastical, history. In the conquest of Italy, the champions of the Roman church obtained a favorable occasion, a specious title, the wishes of the people, the prayers and intrigues of the clergy.
For when the barbarian hordes poured down upon Europe from the Caspian Mountains, it was the Popes who saved civilization. They collected, in the Vatican, the manuscripts of the ancient authors, gathered from all parts of the earth at enormous expense. The barbarians, who destroyed everything by fire and sword, had already advanced as far as Rome.
Word Of The Day