When your altar of Victory had been destroyed, the barbarians came
and finished the work of the priests. Rome became the prey and the
sport of nations that it had so long ruled, if not repressed.
It is true that you still had consuls, a senate, municipal laws; but
the popes have robbed you of what the Huns and Goths had left you.
It was in earlier times unheard of that a priest should set up royal
rights in any city of the Empire. It is well known all over Europe,
except in your chancellery, that, until the time of Gregory VII.,
your pope was but a metropolitan bishop, subject to the Greek, then
the Frankish, emperors, and then to the house of Saxony; receiving
investiture from them, compelled to send a profession of faith to
the bishops of Ravenna and Milan, as we read expressly in your
_Diarium Romanum_. His title of “patriarch of the west” gave him much
prestige, but no sovereign rights. A priest-king was a blasphemy
in a religion of which the founder expressly says in the gospels:
“There shall be no first and last among you.” Weigh well, Romans,
these other words that are put in the mouth of Jesus: “To sit on my
right hand and on my left it is not mine to give, but for whom it is
prepared of my father.”[49] Know, moreover, that the Jews meant, and
still mean, by “son of God” a just man. Inquire of the eight thousand
Jews who sell old clothes, as they ever have done, in your city, and
pay close attention to the following words: “Whosoever will be great
among you, let him be your minister. The Son of Man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister.”[50]
Do these clear and precise words mean that Boniface VIII. was bound
to crush the Colonna family; that Alexander VI. was bound to poison
so many Roman barons; or that the bishop of Rome received from God,
in a time of anarchy, the duchy of Rome, Ferrara, Bologna, the March
of Ancona, Castro, and Ronciglione, and all the country from Viterbo
to Terracina, which have been wrested from their lawful owners? Think
you, Romans, that Jesus was sent on earth by God solely for the
Rezzonico?