PAPACY
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PAPACY
em criticism. The conversion and baptism of Constan- tine b}' S_ylvester; the inviolability of the pope in the pretended acts of a Synod of Sinuena, with the fabulous historj" of pope Marcellinus; the Cmisti/ii/iim Si/lvesfri, the Gesta Liberii, the Gesta Xysti III, and towards tlie close of the Gth century the forged additions to Cypri- an's De unitate ecclesiw, to the Liher pontijieulk, etc., all have the same tendency.
II. The Papaci/ of the Middle Ages. — In the 7th and 8th centuries a series of important events added to the ecclesiastical ascendency of the popes a high and in- fluential position among the secular governments of the world. In proportion as the Byzantine emperors lost their hold of Italy, and especially the city of Kome, the actual power in the latter passed over into the hands of the pope as the head of an aristocratic municipal govern- ment. Pope Zacharias I (741-752) sanctioned the de- thronement of the weak IVIerovingian dynasty by the revolutionary declaration " that whoever possessed the power should have also the name of the king," and his successor, Stephen III (752-757), anointed the usurper Pepin as king of the Franks. In return for these ser- vices, Pepin readily complied with the invitation of the pope to come to the aid of Rome against the Longo- bards, and, after obtaining a decisive victory, commit- ted, as Roman Patricius, to the pope the provinces which the exarch had governed, alleging that the Franks had shed their blood not for the Greeks, but for St. Peter, and for the good of their own souls. Charle- magne confirmed and enlarged the donation which his father had made, and on Dec. 25, 800, laid the deed of the enlarged donation on the tomb of St. Peter. See Temporal Power. Thus the popes became sec- ular princes, though at first vassals of the Carlovin- gian emperors; and they were led to conceive the plan of restoring the old world-empire of the Romans by the rule of the pope over the entire world. Soon after the establishment of the temporal power the popes availed themselves of the weakness of the Carlo- vingian emperors to emancipate themselves from their authority; and, in order to efface the recollection that the secular power of the popes was the gift of the Ger- man princes, the story was started that Constantine the Great had given Rome and Italy to pope Sylvester, and that this was the reason why the imperial capital had been removed to Constantinople. The actual power of the popes was, however, for several centuries not commensurate with their claims and aspirations. When the imperial dignity passed from the weak Car- lovingians of France to the energetic rulers of Ger- many, the emperors in many cases asserted and en- forced the right to depose and appoint popes, to pre- scribe laws for the Church, and to govern it according to their own views rather than those of the popes. These imperial rights were carried out by strong em- perors in spite of the powerful support which the papal claims received theoretically from the famous collec- tion of forged documents, known under the name of the Isidorian or pseudo-Isidorian decretals. The popes, from Clement I (91) to Damasus I (384), are there rep- resented as ruling over a Church in which the clergy were disconnected with the State, and unconditionally subordinate to the pope. Episcopacy appears for the first time as an emanation from the papacy; synods are regarded as valid only when they have been called by the popes, and all their resolutions are said to need a confirmation by the popes, who appear vested witli the supreme legislative, supervisory, and judicial pow- ers. For many centuries this collection was the store- house from which popes and papal writers took the most efficient weapons in the conflicts respecting the ecclesiastical claims of the papacy ; but Protestant criticism so irrefutably established its spuriousness that the advocates of the papacy now content themselves with attempting to prove that the deception was not of a criminal character or of much consecjuence, and that its primary object was not to enlarge the papal
power, but to secure the independence of the Church against secular rulers.