dared to assert the co-equality, the supremacy of Constantinople to Rome, as the legitimate Patriarch.

A.D. 886.

C

Photius fell again at the death of his new patron. Leo the Philosopher, the son of Basil, once more ignominiously expelled him from his throne. Yet, though accused of treason, Photius was acquitted, and withdrew into honoured retirement. He did not live to witness or profit by another revolution. Though the schism of thirty years, properly speaking, expired in his person, and again a kind of approximation to Rome took place, yet the links were broken which united the two Churches. The articles of difference, from which neither would depart, had been defined and hardened into rigid dogmas. During the dark times of the Papacy which followed the disruption, even the intercourse became more and more precarious. The Popes of the next century were too busy in defending their territories or their lives to regard the affairs of the East. The darkness which gathered round both Churches shrouded them from each other's sight.

Nicolas the Great had not lived to triumph even in the first fall of Photius. In the West his success was more complete; he had the full enjoyment of conscious power exercised in a righteous cause. Not merely did he behold one of Charlemagne's successors prostrate at his feet, obliged to abandon to papal censure and to degradation even his high ecclesiastical partisans, but in

succession the greatest prelates of the West, the Archbishop of Ravenna, the Archbishops of Cologne and Treves, and even Hincmar, the Archbishop of Rheims, who seemed to rule despotically over the Church and kingdom of France, were forced to bow before his vigorous supremacy.

bishop of

A.D. 861.

John, Archbishop of Ravenna, is accused of immoderate ambition and avarice, of determined hostility, John, Archand a deep, deliberate design of emancipating Ravenna. his see from the domination of Rome. He had taken possession of certain estates claimed by the Roman see, deposed, excommunicated, imprisoned of his own authority all who made resistance, usurped in favour of St. Apollinaris, the tutelar saint of Ravenna, the privileges of St. Peter; treated the citations of the Pope to appear before his tribunal, or before a synod at Rome, to answer for certain heretical opinions charged against him, with the utmost contempt; though excommunicated by that synod, he persisted in the same disdainful contumacy. He aspired, no doubt, to set up the jurisdiction of Ravenna, which he extended beyond its usual limits, as independent, if not superior to Rome. Unless as having been the imperial residence, the seat of empire, it is impossible to understand on what grounds the archbishop rested his haughty pretensions. Ecclesiastical, according to his theory, must have humbly followed the civil supremacy.

But John was a man of harsh and unpopular character. At first, indeed, he was successful in his appeal to the Emperor Louis II. for his interposition. Accompanied by two imperial officers he arrived at Rome. But

d "Missos illius spernebat, et gloriam beati Petri Apostoli, quantum in se erat, evacuabat."-Anastas. Vit. Nicol. I.

e

Nicolas mildly rebuked the ambassadors of the Emperor for presuming to enter into such relations with an excommunicated person; they abandoned his defence. The archbishop, refusing to acknowledge the authority of the Pope, retired from Rome. But his own city did not espouse his cause. At the invitation of the principal inhabitants the Pope visited Ravenna; he was received with the warmest welcome by the nobles, and with the acclamations of the people. John fled to Pavia again to implore the succour of the Emperor. As he passed along the streets the doors were closed, and the citizens shrank from the followers of the excommunicated prelate as from infected persons. From the Emperor himself he received this contemptuous message,-" Let him go and humble himself before that great Pope to whom we and the whole Church submit in obedience." The proud prelate had no alternative but with tears to implore the mercy of his adversary; and Nicolas, having completed his humiliation by enforcing a public oath of allegiance, and of the most full and loyal obedience, on the most sacred reliques, on the cross and sandals of Christ, and on the four Gospels,

Nov. 1, 862.

condescended to receive him into communion. The terms of his reconciliation were such as to ensure the complete submission of the See of Ravenna. The archbishop was to present himself, unless prevented by illness or unavoidable necessity, once a year at Rome; to consecrate no bishop but after his election by the Duke, the clergy, and the people, and on the sanction, by letter, of the apostolic see; to allow all his bishops free access for appeal to Rome; to surrender all con

e Agnelli, Vit. Pontific. Ravenn. apud Muratori. John was accused of tyranny over his suffragan bishops. They were not allowed" limina Apostolorum adire."

tested property to which he could not establish his claim in the courts of law. So ended this opposition to the Papal supremacy in Italy.

If power and wealth could have secured independence, the extraordinary rise of the sacer- Transalpine dotal order throughout the Transalpine Carlo- hierarchy. vingian Empire, more especially of the great metropolitan prelates in France and on the Rhine, during the decline of that dynasty, might have been formidable to the Roman supremacy, if asserted by a timid or a feeble Pontiff. It was not the Pope alone, but all the clergy, who were a permanent undying corporation, as compared with the temporal nobility. The hierarchy had risen, and were still rising, in proportion to the decay, and partly out of the ruins, of the great temporal feudalities. That military aristocracy was exhausting itself with unexampled rapidity; it disdained to recruit itself from the lower orders; and every family which became extinct weakened the power of the temporal nobles. The civil wars, the wars

"Ut nullus amodo et deinceps Archiepiscopus Ravennæ ad vestra Episcopia sine voluntate vestrâ accedere temptet vel aliquam pecuniam a vobis exigere. . . vel res ecclesiæ vestræ, aut monasteria vestra, sive prædia, per quodvis ingenium diripere audeat." The metropolitan power of Ravenna was annulled. The estates of Ravenna in Sicily seem to have been seized and appropriated by Rome. -Agnelli, p. 103. Yet the ambition of the Archbishops of Ravenna was not extinguished by this discomfiture and spoliation. At the famous battle of Fontanet appeared George, Archbishop of Ravenna, with 300 horses

loaded with treasures taken, to the indignation of the clergy, from the churches. George had been consecrated at Rome, but aspired to assert the independence of Ravenna. This wealth was to purchase the Emperor Louis' favour at this critical juncture. But he chose the wrong side. He was taken, robbed of his treasures, stripped of all to a sorry nag, on which he was led before the conqueror, Charles the Bald. By Charles he was bitterly reproached for deserting his flock and appearing in the front of the battle. He was pardoned on the merciful intervention of the Empress Judith, and resumed his see.- -Agnelli, p. 185.

against the Normans, not now confined to the coasts, but ravaging the inland provinces (they had sacked Paris, Ghent, Hamburg, Cologne); the libertinism of manners, which crowded the halls of the nobles with spurious descendants, often without perpetuating the legitimate descent; devotion, which threw many who might have kept up the noblest families into the Church or the cloister; the alienation of their estates, through piety or superstition, to sacred uses;-all these causes conspired to drain away the riches and the power of the nobility.

Its perpetuity.

But the perpetual Church was always ready to acquire, and forbidden to alienate, and was protected, even in these wild times, at least in comparative security, by awful maledictions against believers, by miracles which seemed constantly at their command, against heathens as well as Christians. Its immortal order rested on no precarious or hereditary descent. The cathedral or the monastery might be burned, as was sometimes the case in the Norman inroads, the clergy and the monks massacred. A new generation arose immediately among the ruins, resumed their wasted estates, and repaired their shattered buildings. The metropolitan or the bishop had always an heir at hand: the transmission of his sacred property, though sometimes diverted from its proper use by hierarchical prodigality or by episcopal nepotism, descended on the whole in the right line. All these losses were more than recompensed by unchecked and unscrupulous acquisitions. The Church at times was plundered: all possessions were precarious during the long anarchy which followed the death of Louis the Pious; the persons of the priesthood were not secure. But still it renewed its strength, recovered its dilapi