finding Charlemagne a rising power, wrote a letter to him exhorting him to
imitate the liberality and revive the name of the great Constantine. He
used for that purpose a legend for which he vouched, and which was to this
effect: The first of the Christian emperors was healed of the leprosy, and
purified in the waters of baptism by St. Sylvester, the Roman bishop, and
the physician was gloriously recompensed, for that emperor withdrew from
the seat and patrimony of St. Peter, declared his resolution of founding a
new capital in the East, and resigned to the Popes the free and perpetual
sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the West. By this
plausible story it was made to appear that the Popes were made by the best
of titles supreme; and such were the ignorance and credulity of the
times, that this absurd fable was received with equal reverence in Greece
and France. It turned out that the story was a forgery concocted near the
end of the eighth century by one Isidore, a scribe. It was, nevertheless,
accepted and handed down as a _magna charta_ of papal rights, until some
opposition to its authenticity proceeded from a Sabine monastery about
1100. In the revival of letters, an eloquent critic and Roman patriot,
named Laurentius Valla, who died 1457, completed the exposure of the
forgery, to the amazement of his contemporaries, and before the end of the
next age the imposture was rejected with the contempt of all the
historians. But it served its purpose. As Gibbon observes, "The Popes
themselves have indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar, but a
false obsolete title still sanctifies their reign; and by the same fortune
which has attended these forged decretals, and the Sibylline oracles, the
edifice has subsisted after the foundations have been undermined."
POPE NICOLAS AND THE FALSE DECRETALS (867).
One of the clever stratagems by which Pope Nicolas I., who died in 867,
tried to establish his supremacy over the whole world in all things
spiritual was the promulgation of the false decretals. This Pope was said
to have tamed kings and tyrants, and to have ruled the world like a
sovereign. A rebel Transalpine prelate, Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, had
disputed the jurisdiction of the Pope, but was compelled to submit. On a
sudden, at the nick of time, there was promulgated a new code, including
thirty-nine (false) decrees of Popes and councils. These not only asserted
the supremacy of the Pope, his dignity and privileges, but included a
whole system of Church discipline on Church property, sacraments,
festivals, rites, and ceremonies. The whole is composed with an air of
profound piety and reverence, and a specious purity of tone. But for the
too manifest design, the aggrandisement of the whole clergy in
subordination to the See of Rome; but for the monstrous ignorance of
history, which betrayed itself in glaring anachronisms, and in the utter
confusion of the order of events and the lives of distinguished men--the
former awakening keen and jealous suspicion, the latter making the
detection of the spuriousness of the whole easy, clear, irrefragable--the
false decretals might still have maintained their place in ecclesiastical
history. They are now given up by all; not a voice is raised in their
favour. The utmost done is to palliate the guilt of the forger, who
fortunately is unknown.
SEPARATION OF THE GREEK AND LATIN CHURCHES (1054).
The restoration of the Western Empire by Charlemagne was speedily followed
by the permanent separation of the Greek and Latin Churches. About 850
Photius, an ambitious layman and captain of the guards, was promoted to
the office of Patriarch of Constantinople, thereby superseding Ignatius,
who had a large following. Both appealed to Pope Nicolas I., a proud and
aspiring pontiff, who embraced the welcome opportunity of judging and
condemning his rival of the East. The patriarch had the aid of his own
court, and deposed the Pope; but in turn he and his patrons lost ground,
and the original patriarch, Ignatius, was restored. Thereafter the feud
continued more or less fiercely, till at last, in 1054, the then patriarch
was excommunicated in Constantinople by the Pope's legates. Shaking the
dust from their feet, they deposited on the altar of St. Sophia a direful
anathema, which enumerated seven mortal heresies of the Greeks, and
consigned the Eastern Church, its teachers and sectaries, to everlasting
damnation. Though the forms of civility thereafter were sometimes
maintained, the Greeks never recanted the errors and the Popes never
repealed their sentence. This aversion of the Greeks and Latins was
nourished and manifested in the three first expeditions to the Holy Land.
The Eastern Christians never gave a cordial welcome to the Crusaders, and
rather treated them as schismatics, and sometimes took part in thwarting
them. In 1183 the Greeks carried out a massacre, in which the Latins were
slaughtered in houses and streets, their clergy burnt in the churches, and
the sick in their hospitals. The Greek monks and priests actually chanted
a thanksgiving to the Lord when the head of a Roman cardinal, the Pope's
legate, was severed from his body, fastened to the tail of a dog, and
dragged in savage mockery through the city.
EARLY CONTENTIONS OF JEW AND CHRISTIAN.
In the fourth century, after miraculous powers ceased to attend the
progress of Christianity, and a system of wonder-working was established,
the Jews, who had long watched with jealousy the advance of their rivals,
began to think that they could also become adepts in pious frauds. Next
one party took to magical arts as weapons of superiority. A conference is
said to have taken place in the presence of Constantine and the devout
empress-mother Helena between the Jews and the Christians. Pope Sylvester
had already triumphed in argument over his infatuated opponents, when the
Jews had recourse to magic. A noted enchanter commanded an ox to be
brought forward; he whispered into the ear of the animal, which instantly
fell dead at the feet of Constantine. The Jews shouted in triumph, for it
was the word _Ham-semphorash_, the ineffable name of God, at the sound of
which the awestruck beast had expired. Sylvester, with some shrewdness,
observed, "As he who whispered the name must be well acquainted with it,
why does not he fall dead in like manner?" The Jews answered
contemptuously, "Let us have no more verbal disputations; let us come to
actions." "So be it," said Sylvester; "and if this comes to life again at
the name of Christ, will ye believe?" They all assented. Sylvester then
raised his eyes to heaven, and said with a loud voice, "If _He_ be the
true God whom I preach, in the name of Christ arise, you ox, and stand on
your feet." The ox sprang up and began to move and feed. The legend then
adds that the whole assembly was baptised.
JULIAN INCITING THE JEWS TO REBUILD THE TEMPLE.
Sozomen says that, though Julian the Apostate hated and oppressed the
Christians, he was benevolent to the Jews merely in order to spite the
Christians. He commanded the Jews to rebuild their Temple at Jerusalem,
and gave them money to do so. They entered on the undertaking without
reflecting that according to their holy prophets it could not be
accomplished. They sought the most skilful artisans, collected materials,
cleared the ground, and entered so earnestly on the task that even the
women carried heaps of earth and sold their ornaments towards defraying
the expense. Yet when they cleared the ground an earthquake occurred, and
stones were thrown up from the earth, wounding those near, and houses were
thrown down. After the earthquake the workmen returned to the task; and
instead of regarding the unexpected wonder as a manifest indication that
God was opposed to the re-creation of the Temple, they were consumed by a
fire which burst from the foundations. This fact is related by all the
contemporaries, who agree that the fire burst out either from the
foundations or from the bowels of the earth. A still more extraordinary
prodigy occurred, for the sign of the cross appeared on the garments of
the workmen. These crosses were disposed like stars, and appeared the work
of art. Many were hence led to confess that Christ was God, and repented
and were baptised.
CHRISTIANS HATING THE JEWS.
Southey says, "That the primitive Christians should have regarded the Jews
with hostile feelings as their first persecutors was but natural, and that
that feeling should have been aggravated by a just and religious horror
for the crime which has drawn upon this unhappy nation its abiding
punishment. But it is indeed strange that during so many centuries this
enmity should have continued to exist, and that no sense of compassion
should have mitigated it. For the Jews to have inherited the curse of
their fathers was in the apprehension of ordinary minds to inherit their
guilt; and the cruelties which man inflicted upon them were interpreted as
proofs of the continued wrath of Heaven, so that the very injuries and
sufferings which in any other case would have excited commiseration served
in this to close the heart against it. Being looked on as God's outlaws,
they were everywhere placed, as it were, under the ban of humanity. And
while these heart-hardening prepossessions subsisted against them in full
force, the very advantages of which they were in possession rendered them
more especial objects of envy, suspicion, and popular hatred."
THE GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM (A.D. 800).
The Jews seemed never to be so prosperous as in the age of Pepin and
Charlemagne (about 768-800). The laws were not enforced against them, and
they were practically free from restrictions, except as to keeping
Christian slaves and following the law of dower. Bishops, abbots, and
abbesses were only prevented by heavy penalties from pledging or selling
to the circumcised the costly vestments, rich furniture, and precious
vessels of the churches. Jews became physicians, ministers of finance to
nobles and monarchs; and when Charlemagne sent an embassy to Caliph Haroun
al Raschid, a Jew was sent with two Christian counts as ambassadors, and
as they died on the road he conducted the business and brought back costly
presents, including an enormous elephant, which the monks of the period
described as a wonder of the world. The monks also described the
accomplishments of a Jew physician named Zedekiah, who was a confidential
adviser of Louis the Débonnaire or the Pious. They relate that he could
swallow a whole cart of hay and fly in the air. The toleration and equal
treatment of Jews and Christians greatly shocked Agobard, Bishop of Lyons,
who issued edicts to his people prohibiting their intercourse. But on
appeal the king ordered an inquiry, and the edicts were withdrawn. About
the same time in Spain, from the conquest by the Moors till the end of the
tenth century, the Jews enjoyed nearly equal laws; and one Moses, their
rabbi, became wealthy and influential; and when his grandson Nathan
enjoyed a drive in the groves near Cordova, seven hundred chariots joined
in the procession that followed him.
THE POPE AND THE JEWS (1140).
Various Christian countries for centuries maintained laws making it
necessary that Jews should wear a particular dress or badge to distinguish
them. They were always viewed by Christian communities with suspicion. One
of the common accusations against them was that of crucifying children,
after scourging them and crowning them with thorns; and this they were
suspected of doing annually. This was said to be done out of hatred to the
Christian religion, and it was even alleged that the Jews received the
heart of the sacrificed child at their own Communion. The Jews were also
accused of scourging crucifixes and profaning images and crosses. These
and other imputations were adroitly used as pretexts for confiscating the
wealth of the Jews. One remarkable badge of subjection and suspicion took
its rise in the twelfth century--namely, the conduct of the Jews at the
installation of a new Pope. They are obliged to wait for the Pontiff on
the road to St. John de Lateran, and there on their knees they present him
with a copy of their Law. On receiving this, the Pope thus addresses them:
"I revere the law which God gave to Moses, but condemn the false sense you
give it by vainly expecting the Messiah who has been long come, and whom
the Church believes to be Jesus Christ our Lord." This custom took its
rise when Pope Innocent II., on his retreat to France, made his entry into
Paris, on which occasion the Jews went to meet him with great solemnity,
and in a very respectful manner presented him with the holy books of their
Law.
THE JEWS OF YORK DEFENDING THEMSELVES (1189).
A time of monstrous persecution and cruelty towards the Jews was the
coronation of Richard I. in 1189. One Benedict, a York Jew, to save his
life had submitted to baptism in London, but died of injuries received
during a riot there. The people of York, equally excited, attacked
Benedict's house there, and his wife and children took refuge in the
Castle with their valuable effects. Other Jews being with them, all at
last suspected that the governor was in treaty with their enemies to
surrender them, and while the governor was temporarily absent they shut
the gates against him. This made the populace frantic, and eager to enter
and despatch them. A canon urged the mob on; and at last a rabbi, seeing
the hopelessness of their situation, addressed his fellow Jews as follows:
"Men of Israel, the God of our fathers calls upon us to die for our Law.
Death is inevitable, but we may yet choose whether we will die speedily
and nobly, or ignominiously, after horrible torments. My advice is that we
shall voluntarily render up our souls to our Creator, and fall by our own
hands. The deed is both reasonable and according to the Law, and is
sanctioned by the example of our most illustrious ancestors." The old man
sat down in tears. The assembly was divided, but debated; and finally,
while a few left the place, the great majority made up their minds to die.
They collected their precious effects into a pile and burnt them. They
then cut the throats of their wives and children. The rabbi and Joachim
were the last to suffer; but one slew the other and then himself. Next
morning the mob broke in, only to find the fire burning in all quarters,
and they took care to have all the bonds and obligations and money
securities of the dead men burned in an enormous bonfire. No proper
punishment was ever inflicted on the ringleaders who thus caused the death
of seven or eight hundred persons, though some of the ringleaders were
arrested.
JEWS ATTEMPTING TO CRUCIFY AN ENGLISH BOY.
Matthew Paris says: "About 1240 the Jews circumcised a Christian boy at
Norwich, and after he was circumcised they called him Jurnim; they then
kept him to crucify him, in contempt of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The father of the boy, however, from whom the Jews had stolen him, after a
diligent search at length discovered him confined in custody of the Jews,
and with a loud cry he pointed out his son, whom he believed lost, shut up
in a room of one of the Jews' houses. When this extraordinary crime came
to the knowledge of William de Kele, the bishop, a wise and circumspect
prelate, and of some other nobles, in order that such an insult to Christ
should not be passed over unpunished through the neglect of the
Christians, all the Jews of that city were made prisoners; and when they
wished to place themselves under the protection of the royal authority,
the bishop said, 'These matters belong to the Church; and when the
question raised is concerning circumcision and insult to religion, it is
not to be decided by the King's Court.' Four of the Jews therefore, having
been found guilty of the aforesaid crime, were first dragged at the tails
of horses, and afterwards hung on a gibbet, where they breathed forth the
wretched remains of life."
JEWS CRUCIFYING AN ENGLISH BOY (1255).
Matthew Paris also says that in 1255 some Jews of Lincoln stole a boy of
eight years, shut him up in a room, fed him on milk, and then sent to all
the cities in England where Jews lived to come and be present at a
sacrifice to take place at Lincoln, when a boy was to be crucified. A
great many Jews attended, and one was appointed to take the place of
Pilate, who subjected the boy to divers tortures. They beat him till blood
flowed and he was quite livid; they crowned him with thorns, derided him,
and spat upon him. Then he was pierced by each of them with a wood knife,
was made to drink gall, was overwhelmed with reproaches and blasphemies,
and was repeatedly called "Jesus, the false prophet," by his tormentors,
who surrounded him, grinding and gnashing their teeth. At last they
crucified him, and pierced him to the heart with a lance, took down his
body from the cross, disembowelled him, and used his body to practise
magical operations, and then threw it into a well. The boy's mother began
tracing the boy to a Jew's house, and excited the compassion of the
citizens by her suspicions. A wise man, John of Lexington, encouraged the
hue and cry with his eloquence, and one or two Jews were arrested, and a
pardon offered if confession were made. One Jew professed then to confess
that the Jews crucified a boy every year as an insult to the name of
Jesus. The boy's body was afterwards found in the well, and exposed to the
gaze of the citizens. The canons of the cathedral inquired into it, and
the king was informed. The Jew who confessed was tied to a horse's tail
and dragged to the gallows; and at a later day eighteen wealthy Jews were
also hanged, and others imprisoned to await a like fate, though it was
said that some indiscreet minor brethren interceded for them.
JEWS BLAMED FOR THE BLACK DEATH IN 1347.
The disease known as the Black Death first appeared at Constantinople in
1347, and soon spread along the north of the Black Sea, then to Sicily,
Marseilles, France, Italy, and Spain. The black patches on the skin and
the pestilential breath of the sick, who spat blood, carried contagion far
and near. There were also atmospheric disturbances, deluges of rain, and
earthquakes. In England in 1349 the Parliament was prorogued on account
of this plague. The Princess Joan, daughter of Edward III., then on her
way to marry the eldest son of the King of Castile, caught the disease at
Bordeaux and died. Wicliff, then a student at Oxford, wrote a book on "The
Last Age of the Church," in which it was predicted that the end of the
world would be in 1400 at latest. The effect on people was twofold. Some
lived more temperately, while others gave themselves up to revelling and
drinking. The Flagellants, as a new religious order, went about scourging
and being scourged, as a means of propitiating Heaven, and singing psalms
and ringing bells. Some started the theory that the Jews were the cause of
this disease, and many were put to death (as was mentioned _ante_, p. 90).
Labourers, from the scarcity, demanded higher wages, and under Wat Tyler
many joined in a local rebellion.
JEWS STEALING THE HOST TO INSULT IT (1350).
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the German Jews were subject to
frequent spoliations and massacres. The sect of Flagellants, who, with mad
enthusiasm, passed through the cities of Germany, preceded by a crucifix
and scourging their naked and bleeding backs, used, as they said, to atone
for their own transgressions by plundering and murdering as many Jews as
they could in Frankfort and other places. The Jews were thus hunted
through all Germany, Silesia, Brandenburg, Bohemia, Lithuania, and Poland.
As a justification for this systematic cruelty, the following legend was
circulated and believed in most countries: A certain Jew, named Jonathan
of Enghien, desired to possess himself of the consecrated Host in order to
treat it with sacrilegious insult. He bribed a desperado, named John of
Louvain, to procure the sacred symbol. John mounted by night into the
chapel of St. Catherine, stole the pyx, with the sacred contents, and
conveyed it to Jonathan. The latter assembled his friends, who most
impiously met and blasphemed and pierced it with knives. At that time
Jonathan was advised for safety to migrate to Brussels; and there, in the
synagogue, the Jews treated the Host with every insult, piercing it with
knives, and though blood flowed forth the obdurate unbelievers, unmoved,
continued their insults. They next sent the treasure to Cologne for
similar treatment; but having entrusted it to a woman whose conscience
smote her, she betrayed them to the clergy. The consequence was that the
Jews were arrested, put to the torture, convicted, and sentenced to be
torn with red-hot pincers and then burnt alive. This memorable act of
vengeance was said to be justified by many miracles that were worked in
Brussels, the place of punishment.
BANQUETING WITH THE JEWS (1478).
Though the Jews were often treated with gross cruelty and injustice in the
Middle Ages, they sometimes had it in their power to retaliate. The Jews,
often acquiring great wealth, defied the clergy and refused to pay tithe.
It was often a question whether the clergy should admit servants of the
Jews to baptism. Once large numbers of bishops forbade Christians, under
pain of excommunication, to frequent the banquets of the Jews. In 1478 one
Francis de Pizicardis, a great and cruel usurer, was buried in the Church
of St. Francis in Placentia. It happened to rain torrents during many
days, till a report spread through the city that it would never cease as
long as the said body was in holy ground. The young men of the city in a
body, as if convoked by the bishop, went to the church, burst open the
gates, dug up the body, and dragged it by a cord through all the streets
of the city. And as they passed the house of one old woman, she ran out
and insulted it, saying, "Give me back my eggs!" for she had given him two
fresh eggs every day as interest for a ducat which she owed him. At length
the body was dragged out of the city, suspended from a willow tree, and
finally thrown into the Po. And, strange to say, according to the
annalist, the rain then ceased. Some Polish rulers were so indebted to the
Jews that, in order to keep their creditors quiet, they favoured the
Jewish merchants more than the Christian.
TORQUEMADA'S ZEAL AGAINST SPANISH JEWS (1492).
After the Spanish sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella had succeeded in
driving the Moors from Spain, and when at last they had agreed to send
Columbus on his expedition to the New World, the clergy inflamed the minds
of the sovereigns and the Inquisition against the Jews, who obstinately
resisted all efforts to convert them. While the Jews were negotiating with
the sovereign to avert this odium, Torquemada, the Inquisitor-General,
burst into the apartment of the palace, and, drawing a crucifix from under
his mantle, held it up, and exclaimed, "Judas Iscariot sold his Master for
thirty pieces of silver. Your Highnesses would sell Him anew for thirty
thousand. Here He is; take Him and barter Him away." So saying, this demon
priest threw the crucifix on the table, and left the apartment. The royal
pair were overawed, and their superstitious forebodings were so
effectually worked upon that they signed, in 1492, the edict for the
expulsion of the Jews which caused so much misery. The Jews, who were then
estimated to be about six hundred and fifty thousand, resolved to abandon
the country and sacrifice all rather than their religion. They had to sell
their property for a trifle, owing to the market being glutted. A house
would be sold for an ass and a vineyard for a piece of cloth. Some Jews
swallowed their jewels; others tried to conceal them in clothes and
saddles. Some ships carrying the fugitives were visited by the plague.
Those suffered all the miseries of hunger who travelled by land, and many
sold their children for bread. Some were cast naked and desolate on the
African coast. Some tried to escape into Portugal; and King Joan II. drove
a hard bargain, fixing a high capitation tax, which his tax-gatherers
lined the frontiers in order to collect. This was only for permission to
pass through the country and embark for Africa. The new king, Emanuel,
acted still more brutally, and ordered all Jewish children to be kidnapped
and torn from their parents' arms, in order to be brought up in the
Catholic faith. The Dominicans watched, during these years of massacre and
pillage, the moment when a Jewish person was visible, rushed forth with
crucifix in their hands to hunt and roast the offender, and for this
brutal work of merit the reward was said to be that the sufferings in
purgatory should be confined to a hundred days. This expulsion of Jews
seriously marred the national prosperity.
THE PREJUDICE AGAINST JEWISH PHYSICIANS.
Southey says that nothing exposed the Jews to more odium, in ages when
they were held most odious, than the reputation which they possessed as
physicians. So late as the middle of the sixteenth century, Francis I.,
after a long illness, finding no benefit from his own physicians,
despatched a courier to Spain, requesting Charles V. to send him the most
skilful Jewish practitioner in his dominions. This afforded matter for
merriment to the Spaniards. No Jewish physician being heard of, a
Christian one was sent, but was dismissed without a trial; and at last a
Jew came from Constantinople, who, however, prescribed nothing more for
the royal patient than asses' milk. This reputation of the Jewish
physicians was said to be founded on the notion that they had stores of
knowledge not accessible to other people, especially as to all the drugs
known in the East. Yet at the same time there were tales as to the
disreputable knowledge they had, such as killing Christian children to use
their fat as cosmetics. The conduct of the Romish Church tended to
strengthen this obloquy. Several councils of the Church denounced
excommunication against any persons who should place themselves under the
care of a Jewish physician; for it was said to be pernicious and
scandalous that Christians, who ought to despise and hold in horror the
enemies of their holy religion, should have recourse to them for remedies
in sickness. The decree of the Lateran Council, by which physicians were
enjoined under heavy penalties to require that their patients should
confess and communicate before they administered any medicines to them,
seems to have been designed as much against Jewish practitioners as
heretical patients. The Jews on their part were not more charitable, and
used to forbid rabbis to attend upon either a Christian or Gentile unless
he dared not refuse, and above all never to attend such patients
gratuitously.
A HOLY FATHER CONVERTING A JEW (1600).
In the seventeenth century one Engelberger, a Bohemian Jew, was sentenced
to imprisonment for stealing the plate from a synagogue at Prague. In
prison he became a great reader; and a holy Father, who visited him and
took an interest in him, promised him not only absolution but a
considerable reward if he would renounce his faith. He did so, and was
received into the Church, thereby drawing on him the contempt and
vengeance of the other Jews, and the praise and congratulation of the
Christians. He published a book vindicating his conversion, became a
favourite of high society, and was invited to Vienna, where he was well
received by the Emperor Ferdinand III. But the convert by degrees was
suspected of hypocrisy; and on the first opportunity he robbed the royal
treasury, and after trial was condemned to death. He again affected
sincere piety and contrition, expecting that his sentence would be
remitted. But at the last moment, being told the contrary, and while
receiving the last Sacrament on the scaffold, he spat the sacred wafer
from his mouth; he shouted to the mob that he deserved his fate for
abjuring the faith of Moses, and he called on them to bear witness that he
died in the faith of the patriarchs. The mob, who had formerly almost
deified the renegade, were now enraged at this insult to the Catholic
faith, and wanted to tear him to pieces; but he was withdrawn for a few
days. He was then again exposed, and drawn on a hurdle through the streets
of Vienna. And a more diabolical sentence had meanwhile been passed. His
right hand was first cut off; his tongue torn from his mouth; he was
suspended from the gallows with his head downward, and dogs were allowed
to tear him to pieces; and then his dead body was thrown into the Danube.
An inscription in the Guildhall at Vienna records the date of this
appalling example of religious fanaticism.
THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT IMAGE WORSHIP (A.D. 726).
The mode in which the great controversy about worship of images in
churches arose was said to be as follows: A hermit had sent to Gregory the
Great, who was appointed Pope in 589, for an image of Christ and other
religious symbols. The latter sent him a picture of Christ and the Virgin
Mary, also of St. Peter and St. Paul, and added some observations as to
the right use of images. The Pope observed that, though it was grounded in
man's nature that he should seek to represent things invisible by means of
the visible, yet the representations were not to be worshipped as God, but
only used to enkindle the love of Him whose image was present to the eye.
About that time country bishops reported that the worship of images was
spreading, and that those opposed to that tendency demolished them and
cast them out of churches. Parties began to be formed on both sides. In
the Greek Church the church books had long been ornamented with pictures
of Christ, of the Virgin, and the Saints; and private houses and household
furniture also had like embellishments. There were legends connected with
each. Some prostrated themselves whenever they approached within sight of
these symbols. The most noted and determined enemy of images was the
Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, who was full of zeal, and paid small respect to
what he thought to be wrong. He was very arbitrary. He forced the Jews to
receive baptism, which only made them more and more tenacious of their
antipathy. He also forced the Montanists to join the dominant Church, and
this so enraged them that they burned themselves in their own churches.
Leo's first ordinance of 726 forbade any kind of reverence to be paid to
images or pictures, and any prostration or kneeling. One bishop in defence
attributed miracles which were wrought to these images, and said he knew
from his personal experience this was not a delusion; moreover, an image
of Mary at Sozopolis, in Posidia, distilled balsam, as was well attested.
In short, party spirit ran high, and at last a great champion of images
arose, named John of Damascus. Leo waged war against images for twelve
years, until his death. His son Constantine was as zealous an iconoclast
as his father; but great disturbances were caused by his proceedings. In
754 he convoked a council of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops, who
agreed with the Emperor. They denounced the wretched painters who with
profane hands attempted to depict the sacred feelings of the heart, and
laid down the rule of faith to be, that there was only one true image or
symbol, which was the bread and wine used in the Sacrament of the Lord's
Supper. Painting was described as a Pagan, godless art, which degraded the
Divine Majesty; and whoever in future should manufacture an image to
worship it either in church or dwelling-house should, if an ecclesiastic,
be deposed; if a monk or a layman, he should be expelled from the
communion of the Church. An anathema was pronounced accordingly against
all images. Though the council by a majority so decided, yet the monks as
a body were equally zealous and determined to resist all attempts to do
away with images. It was said the monk Stephen was thrown into prison for
his zeal in favour of images; he refused to touch the food which the
gaoler's wife secretly brought to him, until she secretly assured him that
she kept a casket in her own chamber containing several images of Divine
persons, and which she showed to the monk to reassure him of her genuine
devotion. Constantine, during the thirty years of his reign, flattered
himself that he had struck a final blow at image worship; but after his
death the next emperor married Irene, an Athenian lady, who was an
unscrupulous supporter of images, and she cunningly brought about a
reaction and restored things to their former footing.
THE ICONOCLASTS AND THEIR FIRST REVOLT.
Thus a strong feeling grew up, maintained by the Emperor Leo, the
Isaurian, that the Christians were going to an excess in their worship of
images, and the contest raged for a hundred and twenty-five years, and led
to bloodshed and civil war. The precise occasion of this revolt is not
known with certainty; and it was thought afterwards to be unfortunate, for
Christians at that time were called upon rather to combine against
Mohammedanism than think of dividing their forces. When Leo had reigned
ten years, he issued in 726 a prohibition against the worship of all
statues and pictures of the Saviour, the Virgin, and the Saints; and all
statues and pictures were to be raised sufficiently high that they could
not receive pious kisses. Soon after a second edict was issued, commanding
the total destruction of all images and the whitewashing of the walls of
churches. The clergy and monks were driven to absolute fury by this
tyrannical measure. An imperial officer had orders to destroy a statue of
our Saviour in a church in Constantinople, an image renowned for its
miracles. The crowd (as stated _ante_, p. 112), consisting chiefly of
women, saw with horror the officer mount the ladder. Thrice he struck with
his impious axe the holy countenance which had so benignly looked down
upon them. Heaven interfered not; but the women seized the ladder, threw
down the officer, and beat him to death with clubs. The Emperor sent his
troops to put down the riot, and a frightful massacre ensued; but the
image worshippers were viewed as martyrs, and cheerfully encountered
mutilation and banishment, while the Emperor was denounced as worse than a
Saracen. The Pope prohibited the Italians from paying tribute to the
Emperor, and wrote letters defending the practice of the Church. He
alludes to that practice as including pictures of the miracles, of the
Virgin with choirs of angels, of the Last Supper, the Transfiguration,
Crucifixion, Resurrection, and other like subjects. The Pope's letter,
however, had no effect.
JOHN OF DAMASCUS, CHAMPION OF IMAGES (A.D. 756).
The great champion who rose to defend image worship against Leo, the
iconoclast, was John of Damascus, the most learned man in the East, and a
subject of the Sultan. The ancestors of John, when that city was taken by
the Mohammedans, had remained faithful Christians; but, being wealthy and
respectable, were employed by the Sultan in high judicial posts. One day,
when John's father was a judge, a Christian monk, named Cosmas, was about
to be executed, and was weeping and bewailing so much that he was asked
why he, a monk, should so earnestly plead for his life. The monk answered
that he did not weep so much for losing life as for the treasures of
knowledge that would be buried with him, for he knew nearly everything
under the sun--rhetoric, logic, philosophy, geometry, music, astronomy,
theology. All he wanted was some heir who could inherit this vast
patrimony of knowledge, so that he might not go down to the tomb an
unprofitable servant. John's father saw at once that this was a remarkable
monk, begged his life, and made him tutor to his son; and in due course
the son John became, under such tuition, the greatest master of knowledge
extant, as the monk took care to assure the grateful father. With these
accomplishments John of Damascus entered the lists in due course, and
composed three immortal orations in favour of image worship, in which all
the learning of the world was brought to bear upon that delicate subject.
The Emperor being indignant at John's oration, procured a letter to be
forged in a similar handwriting, containing a proposal to betray his
native city of Damascus to the Christians, and purporting to be signed by
John. This letter was sent by the Emperor to the Sultan with specious
friendly comments. The result was that John's right hand was cut off for
his wicked treason. John, however, entreated the Virgin to restore his
hand; and after kneeling before her image and praying fervently, he fell
asleep, and when he woke his hand was restored and was as well as ever.
This astonished and convinced the Sultan, who reinstated John at once in
all his honours. These orations, while containing some puerile matter, are
distinguished for zeal and ingenuity. John of Damascus maintained that
pictures were great standing memorials of triumph over the devil; that
whoever destroys these memorials is a friend of the devil; that to reprove
material images is Manicheism, as betraying the hatred of matter, which is
the first tenet of that odious heresy; and that it was a kind of Docetism
too, asserting the unreality of the body of the Saviour. In support of his
doctrine John concluded by citing a copious list of miracles wrought by
certain images. This question of images was so serious a disturbance that
a council met, called the Third Council of Constantinople, in 746; and
three hundred and forty-eight bishops attended, and all these united in
condemning images and excommunicating those who set them up. The Empress
Irene, however, afterwards favoured the image worshippers; and in 787
another council, called the Second Council of Nicæa, again considered the
subject; and three hundred and eighty-seven bishops and monks came to a
decision the reverse of the decision of the former council. Succeeding
emperors, however, again favoured the iconoclasts, till the Empress
Theodora, in 842, at last restored the images and made the clergy happy.
They all then met and held a solemn festival, marching with processions of
crosses, torches, and incense to the church of St. Sophia, in
Constantinople. They made the circuit of the church, and bowed to every
statue and picture; and the heresy of the iconoclasts was extinguished for
ever from that time.
JOHN OF DAMASCUS AND HIS TAUNTS.
John of Damascus, the champion of image worship, in his many eloquent
discourses in support of it, sneered at Leo's arbitrary decrees against
what was noticed to be a rising influence among the nations of the West.
"You have only to go," said John, "into the schools where the children are
learning to read and write, and tell them you are the persecutor of
images, and they would instantly throw their tablets at your head. Even
the ignorant would teach you what you would not learn from the wise."
"Men," he further said, "spent their estates to have these sacred stories
represented in paintings. Husbands and wives took their children by the
hand, others led youths and strangers from Pagan lands, to these
paintings, where they could point out to them the sacred stories with the
finger, and so edify them as to lift their hearts and minds to God; but
you hinder poor people from doing all this, and teach them to find their
amusements in harp-playing and flute-playing, in carousals and
buffoonery."
CLAUDIUS OF TURIN AGAINST IMAGES AND PILGRIMAGES.
Claudius of Turin, a bishop who flourished about 795-839, was great in
censuring the gross superstition attaching to the use of the cross and
pilgrimages. Though a chaplain of King Louis I. of France, who became
emperor, he devoted himself to purifying the ritual of the Church by
writing commentaries on the Scriptures and exposing the abuses of image
worship. He said those who worship the images of the saints have not
forsaken idols, but changed their names. Whether the walls of churches are
painted with figures of St. Peter and St. Paul or of Jupiter and Saturn,
the latter are not gods, and the former are not apostles. Better worship
the living than the dead. If the works of God's hands, the stars of
heaven, are not to be worshipped, much less ought the works of human hands
to be worshipped. Whoever seeks from any creature in heaven or on earth
the salvation which he should seek from God alone is an idolater. Those
who pretend to honour the memory of Christ's passion forget His
resurrection. If one must worship every piece of wood bearing the image of
the cross because Christ hung on the cross, for the same reason one should
worship many other things with which Christ came in contact while living
in the flesh. God has commanded us to bear the cross, not to adore it.
Those are not adoring it who are unwilling to bear it either spiritually
or bodily. In like manner it is foolish in people, and an undervaluing of
spiritual instruction, to be always striving to go to Rome in order to
obtain everlasting life. It is vain to ascribe so much merit to
pilgrimages, and forget the seal of true penitence in the soul. One gets
no nearer to St. Peter by finding himself on the spot where his body was
buried, for the soul is the real man. In this manner Claudius displayed
his aversion to the monastic life as misleading. It was thought that he
must soon be proceeded against as a heretic; but after publishing works
which made a great impression on his age, the bishop died.
TRYING TO CONVERT THE IMAGE WORSHIPPERS.
When Leo the Isaurian had secured his empire against foreign enemies, he
set himself resolutely to convert heretics. He issued a decree that Jews
and Montanists should be forcibly baptised. In 724 he issued his first
decree against the superstitious use of images, which made the monks and
John of Damascus so furious. When Leo died in 741, his son, Constantine
Copronymus, so called from his having polluted the baptismal font,
succeeded him, and reigned thirty-four years. He was also a resolute enemy
of image worship. He procured a council of three hundred and thirty-eight
bishops to sit in 754, and resolve unanimously that all pictures and
sculptures of sacred subjects were Pagan and idolatrous, and that all
images must be removed out of churches. They pronounced anathemas against
John of Damascus and other champions of images. Constantine, on the
strength of this council, ordered paintings on church walls to be effaced,
and paintings of birds and fruits to be substituted. The monks were
furious; and he ordered, in retaliation, monasteries to be destroyed and
turned into barracks. One of his governors, named Lachanadraco, put many
rebellious monks to death. He anointed the beards of some of these with
oil and wax, and set them on fire; he burnt the monasteries, the books,
and the relics. The relics of St. Euphemia at Chalcedon, which used to
exude a fragrant balsam, were thrown into the sea, though the monks
afterwards narrated that these were miraculously preserved. One monk,
named Stephen, exasperated by these brutalities, boldly defied the
Emperor, and to show his contempt produced a coin stamped with the
Emperor's head, threw it on the ground, and trod on it. The Emperor
ordered him to prison; but noticing that some sympathy seemed to be shown
by his attendants, exclaimed, "Am I or is this monk emperor of the world?"
The courtiers in turn, in their zeal to defend the Emperor, rushed to the
prison where Stephen was kept, brought him out, and, tying a rope round
his neck, dragged the body through the streets, and then tore it to
pieces. The patriarch being also charged with abetting the monks, was
stripped of his robes, set upon an ass with his face towards the tail, led
through the streets, jeered by the mob, and then beheaded. Constantine
died in 775, a resolute enemy of images to the last.
THE EMPRESS IRENE RESTORING IMAGES (A.D. 780).
Though Leo the Isaurian and his son Constantine had for thirty years
worked so energetically in stamping out image worship, yet at the death of
the latter a reaction was brought about. The Emperor Leo, grandson of the
Isaurian, married an Athenian wife, Irene, who was constitutionally
devoted to image worship and sensuous art, and her devotion to these so
worked on her irresolute husband as to baffle the labour of years. She
took care to procure all the important vacancies in the Church to be
filled by monks. Her household officers were encouraged to practise in
secret the adoration of images, and there were concealed some figures
under her pillow; and though the Emperor, on discovering this petty
treason, ordered the chief actors to be scourged, yet on his death in 780
Irene assumed the government and changed everything. She took care to get
a patriarch appointed who was of her way of thinking, and for that purpose
first induced the then holder of the office to resign and retire into a
monastery. She then spread the report that this change was due to remorse
of conscience; and the new patriarch, acting in concert with her,
professed his inability to assume the high office unless she would convoke
a council to review the late heresy of the iconoclasts. After great
manoeuvring on the part of the monks, and secret meetings to canvas the
chief men of the assembly, and by the Empress deciding to attend in person
and with great state, she so managed affairs that a council of three
hundred and fifty bishops met, and they all in her presence returned to
the old traditions, declaring the worship of images agreeable to Scripture
and reason, and shouted their approval and ended with the enthusiastic
exclamation, "Long live the orthodox Queen Regent!"
EMPRESS THEODORA CONQUERING FOR THE IMAGES (A.D. 842).
The Empress Irene having in 780 so skilfully turned the tide in favour of
images, the contest was still maintained during the five succeeding
reigns, a period of thirty-eight years between the worshippers of images
and the iconoclasts. The final victory of the images was achieved by a
second female, the widow Theodora, after the death of the Emperor
Theophilus in 842. Her measures were bold and decisive. She sentenced the
iconoclast patriarch to a whipping of two hundred lashes instead of the
loss of his eyes. At this stroke of power the bishops trembled, the monks
shouted, and the festival of orthodoxy preserves the annual memory of the
triumph of the images. The only point left unsettled was, whether images
were endowed with any proper and inherent sanctity, and this continued to
be discussed in the eleventh century. The Churches of France, Germany,
England, and Spain had steered a middle course between the adoration and
the destruction of images, which they professed to admit into their
temples, not as objects of worship, but as lively and useful memorials of
faith and history. Charlemagne had used his authority in assembling a
synod of three hundred bishops at Frankfort in 794, who professed to blame
the superstition of the Greeks. But the worship of images advanced with
silent progress, and reached to the idolatry of the ages which preceded
the Reformation. Theodora skilfully gained over many bishops by
representing that her husband the Emperor on his deathbed repented of his
errors, and that her young son at the same time had also registered a vow
to restore images.
IMAGE WORSHIP IN SPAIN.
In Spain image worship reached a height hardly attained in any other part
of Christendom. Besides the most holy effigies heaven-descended, like the
Black Lady of the Pillar at Saragossa, and the Christ of the Vine Stock at
Valladolid, there were many sacred images, which, even before the hands
which fashioned them were cold, began to make the blind see, the lame
walk, and friars flourish and grow powerful. St. Bernard was modelled and
clothed like a brother of the order in his own white robes; St. Dominic
scourged himself in effigy till the red blood flowed from his painted
shoulders; and the Virgin, copied from the loveliest models, was presented
to her adorers gloriously apparelled in clothing of wrought gold. Many of
these figures not only presided in their chapels throughout the year, but,
decked with garlands and illuminated by tapers, were carried by
brotherhoods or guilds instituted in their honour in the religious
processions. The colouring was sometimes laid on canvas, with which the
figure was covered as with a skin. The effects and gradation of tints were
studied as carefully as in paintings on canvas. The imitation of rich
stuffs for draperies was a nice and difficult branch of the art. For
single figures real draperies were sometimes used, especially for those of
the Madonnas, which possessed large and magnificent wardrobes and caskets
of jewels worthy of the queens of the Mogul.
THE AMBITIOUS POPE HILDEBRAND (1046-1085).
During the time that Hildebrand, son of a carpenter of Soan in Tuscany,
became noted and acquired an ascendency with the Popes, he advocated
certain reforms. The first was to make the Popes independent of the
Emperor: this he achieved by procuring a decree that the Pope should be
chosen by the cardinals, bishops, and priests assembled in college. He
also put a stop to the immorality of the clergy by enforcing celibacy of
priests. He also procured more stringent laws against simony. He succeeded
to the popedom in 1073 as Gregory VII., and in carrying out his ambitious
schemes he summoned the German king, Henry IV., and ultimately
excommunicated him, in retaliation for Henry having procured a sentence of
deposition by the Synod of Worms against himself as Pope. These two
potentates exchanged some defiant and insulting letters. Henry at last was
reduced to such difficulties that he had to go in the guise of a penitent,
clad in a thin white dress, while the ground was deep in snow, and he
waited humbly at the outer gate of the Castle of Canossa three days before
he was received into the presence of his Holiness, who gave him
absolution, but under most humiliating circumstances. Gregory, however, at
last was punished in his turn in 1080, and he had to become an exile, in
which condition he died friendless and deserted in 1085, and muttering the
words: "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die an
exile."
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, THE ANGELIC DOCTOR (A.D. 1227).
St. Thomas Aquinas was born in 1227, and became the greatest theologian
and master of logic and powerful reasoner of his age. He was at first
thought dull at school, and used to be called the great dumb Sicilian ox;
but his genius soon broke forth, and he came to be called the angelical
doctor. His versatility, power of abstraction, and memory astonished
everybody. Louis IX. of France (St. Louis) made him a privy councillor,
and often consulted him. Once at dinner with the king, after a long
silence, Thomas thumped the table energetically, muttering to himself,
"That is an overwhelming argument against the Manicheans!" and the king,
curious to know what sudden thought it was, begged him to explain it,
which was done, and committed to writing by clerks. While praying one day
in the church at Naples, his friend Romanus, who had died some time
before, appeared to Thomas and spoke to him, and said that his works
pleased God, and that he (Romanus) was now in eternal bliss. Thomas then
asked whether the habits which are acquired in this life remain to us in
heaven. Romanus answered, "Brother Thomas, I see God, and do not ask for
more." He then vanished. One day Thomas was writing a treatise on the
Sacrament, and was praying, when the figure on the crucifix turned towards
him and said, "Thomas, thou hast written well of Me: what reward desirest
thou?" "Nought, save Thyself, Lord," was the saint's immediate reply.
Another time Thomas, while celebrating Mass, was seized with a sudden
rapture, owing to a vision which appeared to him, and which he said was so
glorious that all he had written appeared worthless compared with what he
had just seen. In his last illness the monks of Fossa Nuova, near Maienza,
waited on him with unceasing devotion, and begged of him to expound to
them the Canticle of Canticles, as St. Bernard did. The saint replied,
"Get me Bernard's spirit, and I will do your bidding." He yielded to their
wish. The saint, growing feebler, died; and while a corpse, a blind man
begged to approach and pay his last tribute of respect, when the man's
sight was restored that moment.
ATTITUDES OF POPES TO FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS.
Guizot thus sums up the attitude between Popes and foreign governments:
"From the tenth century and the accession of the Capetians (989) the
policy of the Holy See had been enterprising, bold, full of initiative,
often even aggressive, and more often than not successful in the
prosecution of its designs. Under Innocent III. (1198-1216) it had
attained the apogee of its strength and fortune. At that point its motion
forward and upward came to a stop. Boniface VIII. (1294-1303) had not the
wit to recognise the changes which had taken place in European
communities, and the decided progress which had been made by laic
influences and civil powers. He was a stubborn preacher of maxims he could
no longer practise. He was beaten in his enterprise; and the Papacy, even
on recovering from his defeat, found itself no longer what it had been
before him. Starting from the fourteenth century, we find no second
Gregory VII. or Innocent III. Without expressly abandoning their
principles, the policy of the Holy See became essentially defensive and
conservative, more occupied in the maintenance than the aggrandisement of
itself, and sometimes even more stationary and stagnant than was required
by necessity or recommended by foresight. The posture assumed and the
conduct adopted by the earliest successors of Boniface VIII. showed how
far the situation of the Papacy was altered, and how deep had been the
stab which, in the conflict between the two aspirants to absolute power,
Philip the Fair (1283-1314) had inflicted on his rival."
THE POPES AS TEMPORAL PRINCES (1118-1185).
The feuds of Guelphs and Ghibellines kept up constant irritation at Rome.
In 1118, when Paschal II. was officiating at the altar on Holy Thursday,
he was interrupted by a mob, who demanded that he should confirm the
appointment of a favourite magistrate, and his silence only exasperated
them. During the festival of Easter, while the bishop and clergy barefoot
and in procession visited the tombs of the martyrs, they were twice
assaulted with volleys of stones and darts. The houses of the Pope's
friends were demolished, he escaped with difficulty, and his last days
were embittered by the strife of civil war. His successor, Gelasius II.,
in 1118 was dragged by his hair along the ground, beaten and wounded, and
bound with an iron chain in the house of a factious baron named Cencio
Frangipani, who stripped and beat and trampled on the cardinals. An
insurrection of the people delivered the Pope for a while; but a few days
later he was again assaulted at the altar, and during a bloody encounter
between the factions he escaped in his sacerdotal garments. He then shook
the dust from his feet, and withdrew from a city where, as he described
it, one emperor would be more tolerable than twenty. About a quarter of a
century later, Pope Lucius II., as he ascended in battle-array to assault
the Capitol, was struck on the temple by a stone, and expired in a few
days in 1145. Again in 1185 a body of priests were seized, and the eyes of
all put out except those of one. They were crowned with mock mitres,
mounted on asses with their faces to the tail, and paraded as a lesson to
Pope Lucius III.
RIENZI AS TRIBUNE OF ROME (1353).
The Pope having lived long away from Rome, and the government of the city
being impracticable, a youth named Rienzi, the son of a publican and a
washerwoman, who was handsome and gifted with eloquence, aspired to raise
the enthusiasm of the mob and revive the old glory of the first city of
the world. He assumed the title of tribune, began to introduce order, and
for a time he carried all before him. He was, however, soon intoxicated
with his success, claimed a Divine mission, procured himself to be crowned
as a successor of the Cæsars, imposed heavy taxes, and displayed great
extravagance in dress and in vulgar exhibitions of grandeur. At last the
Pope's legate anathematised him as a heretic, and enemies combined to
crush him. He fled in 1308 to Prague; there he entered into wild schemes,
was captured and imprisoned, but was spared from punishment as a heretic.
He reappeared, and again obtained such favour with the Pope as to be made
a senator in 1353, and encouraged to resume his influence over the mob in
Rome. He was placed in high command, but again ruined his position with
tyrannical and foolish schemes. His personal habits were gross and
sensual; he became addicted to wine, and his body became bloated with his
indulgences till he was likened to a fatted ox. In a sudden riot brought
on by his own folly he attempted to escape, but the mob captured him and
cut him to pieces.
LAST HOURS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1453).
When Mahomet II. in 1453 besieged Constantinople, the Greek Emperor
implored the assistance of earth and Heaven to check the invaders and ward
off the destruction of the Roman Empire. The celestial image of the Virgin
was exposed in solemn procession, but no succour came. At last the houses
and convents were deserted, and the inhabitants flocked together in the
streets like a herd of timid animals, and poured into the church of St.
Sophia, filling every corner. They placed no small confidence on some
prophecy that had been circulated that an angel would descend from heaven
and deliver the empire with some celestial weapon. While so wailing and
confiding, the doors were broken in with axes, and the Turks seized the
company, binding the males with cords, and the females with their veils
and girdles. All ranks were mixed in groups--senators, slaves, plebeians
and nobles, maids and children. The loudest in their wailings were the
nuns, who were torn from the altar and consigned to the usual fate of
slavery, and worse. The monasteries and churches were profaned. The dome
of St. Sophia itself, a throne of heavenly splendour, was despoiled of the
oblations of ages, and the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the
vases and sacerdotal ornaments, were most wickedly perverted to the basest
uses. After the divine images were stripped, the canvas and woodwork were
torn or burnt or trodden under foot. The libraries, with a hundred and
twenty thousand manuscripts, were sold as wastepaper. The Sultan passed in
triumph through the wreck and plunder. He ordered the church to be
converted into a mosque; the instruments of superstition to be removed;
the crosses, images, and mosaics to be dismantled and washed and
purified. The cathedral of St. Sophia was soon crowned with lofty
minarets, and surrounded with groves and fountains for the devotion and
refreshment of the Moslems. He took care, however, to leave the churches
of Constantinople to be shared between the Mussulmans and the Christians.
ELECTION TO THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
The empire which Charlemagne founded over so many kingdoms, being a
revival of the old Roman Empire and in imitation of the empire claimed by
the Bishop of Rome over all other Churches, was commonly believed till the
end of the sixteenth century to be elective, and the privilege of electing
was confined by a decree of Gregory V. about 996 to seven persons. These
were the archbishops of Mentz, Treves, and Cologne; the dukes of the
Franks, Swabians, Saxons, and Bavarians. The Franks and Swabians were
superseded respectively by the palatinate of the Rhine and the margravate
of Brandenburg. A golden bull of Charles IV. in 1356 regulated the mode of
election and fixed the place at Frankfort. A majority of votes carried the
election. An eighth and ninth elector were added afterwards, the eighth
being the elector of Brunswick, who succeeded to the English throne in
1714. An extravagant importance was attached to this titular potentate and
his electors. Though he was only elected, yet he was thought to reign by a
Divine right as a sort of Lord of the World. The sovereigns of Europe long
continued to address the Emperor as a superior and as entitled to
precedence, and it was even thought that he had the power of creating
kings, though in actual resources he stood below the kings of France and
England. The epithet "holy" was applied by Frederick I. (Barbarossa) in
1156. There was once a vague notion that the English kingdom was a vassal
of the empire, but Edward I. and Edward III. notably disclaimed any such
submissiveness. When Charles V. was elected, Francis I. of France and
Henry VIII. of England were competitors. Charles V. not succeeding in
dragooning the Protestants into conformity to the Catholic Church, the
influence of the empire declined. After long flickering, the Holy Roman
Empire came to an end by the resignation of Francis II. in 1806, about a
thousand years after the coronation of Charlemagne.