290 FOURTH PEEIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
dishonesty and trickery, were always in danger of fever and poison, and lost armies and millions of treasure without any re turn of profit or even military glory.1 The two nations were always jealous of each other, and have only recently become friends, on the basis of mutual independence and non-inter ference.
PROTEST AGAINST PAPAL CORRUPTION.
The shocking immoralities of the popes called forth strong protests, though they did not shake the faith in the institution itself. A Gallican Synod deposed archbishop Arnulf of Rheims as a traitor to king Hugo Capet, without waiting for an answer from the pope, and without caring for the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals (991). The leading spirit of the Synod, Arnulf, bishop of Orleans, made the following bold declaration against the prostitution of the papal office : " Looking at the actual state of the papacy, what do we behold ? John [XII.] called Octavian, wallowing in the sty of filthy concupiscence, conspiring against the sovereign whom' he had himself recently crowned ; then Leo [VIII.] the neophyte, chased from the city by this Octavian ; and that monster himself, after the commission of many murders and cruelties, dying by the hand of an assassin. Next we see the deacon Benedict, though freely elected by the Romans, carried away captive into the wilds of Germany by the new Caesar [Otho I.] and his pope Leo. Then a second Caesar [Otho II.], greater in arts and arms than the first [?], succeeds ; and in his absence Boniface, a very monster of iniquity, reeking with the blood of his predecessor, mounts the throne of Peter. True, he is expelled and condemned ; but only to return again,
the Austrians from Lombardy and Venice, and the formation of a united king dom of Italy.
1 Ditmar of Merseburg, the historian of Henry II., expresses the sentiment of that time when he says (Chron. IV. 22) : "Neither the climate nor the people suit our countrymen. Both in Rome and Lombardy treason is always at work. Strangers who visit Italy expect no hospitality : everything they require must be instantly paid for ; and even then they must submit to be over-reached and cheated, and not unfrequently to be poisoned after all."
2 64. THE INTERFERENCE OF OTIIO THE GREAT. 291
and redden his hands with the blood of the holy bishop John [XIV.]. Are there, indeed, any bold enough to maintain that the priests of the Lord over all the world are to take their law from monsters of guilt like these — men branded with ignominy, illiterate men, and ignorant alike of things human and divine? If, holy fathers, we be bound to weigh in the balance the lives, the morals, and the attainments of the meanest candidate for the sacerdotal office, how much more ought we to look to the fitness of him who aspires to be the lord and master of all priests! Yet how would it fare with us, if it should happen that the man the most deficient in all these virtues, one so abject as not to be
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worthy of the lowest place among the priesthood, should be chosen to fill the highest place of all ? What would you say of such a one, when you behold him sitting upon the throne glit tering in purple and gold? Must lie not be the 'Antichrist, sit ting in the temple of God, and showing himself as God' ? Verily such a one lacketh both wisdom and charity; he standeth in the temple as an image, as an idol, from which as from dead marble you would seek counsel.1
" But the Church of God is not subject to a wicked pope ; nor even absolutely, and on all occasions, to a good one. Let us rather in our difficulties resort to our brethren of Belgium and Germany than to that city, where all things are venal, where judgment and justice are bartered for gold. Let us imitate the great church of Africa, which, in reply to the pretensions of the Roman pontiff, deemed it inconceivable that the Lord should have invested any one person with his own plenary prerogative of judicature, and yet have denied it to the great congregations of his priests assembled in council in different parts of the world. If it be true, as we are informed by common report, that there is
1 tl Quid hnmc, rev. Fatrcs, in subthni solin residcntem vcstc purpurea rf auren rodiantcm, quid hunc, inqitam, esse cejisetlx? Nimirum si caritatc dt'stituitur, solaqne scicntia itiflatur d cjctollitur, Antichristus est, in templo Dei scdens, et se ostsnslens tamquam sit Dcus. Si autcm nee caritate fundatur, nee scientia eriyitur, in templo Dei tamquam statua, tanquam idolurn est, a quo rcsponsa pctcrc, marmora consulere est."