28 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1073-1085.
Republic of Venice. Besides this Church 110 other is recog nized, not even the Greek, except as a schismatic branch of the Roman.
This ideal is the growth of ages. It was prepared for by pseudo-Isidor in the ninth, and by St. Augustine in the fifth century.
St. Augustine, the greatest theological authority of the Middle Ages, first identified the visible Catholic Church with the City or Kingdom of God. In his great apologetic work, De Civitate Dei, he traced the relation of this Kingdom to the changing and passing kingdoms of this world, and furnished, we may say, the programme of the mediaeval theocracy which, in theory, is adhered to by the Roman Church to this day.1 But Augustine was not an ecclesiastic like Cyprian and the popes. He was more interested in theology than Church policy; he had little to say about the papacy, and made a suggestive distinction between " the true body of Christ " and " the mixed body of Christ," which led the way "to the Protes tant distinction (first made by Zwingli) between the visible and invisible Church.2 In the Hildebrandian controversy he is quoted by both parties, and more frequently than any other father; but neither Gregory nor his most zealous adherents could quote Augustine in favor of their hierocratic theory of the apostolic right to depose temporal sovereigns.
The pseudo-Isidorian Decretals went further: they iden tified the Catholic Church with the dominion of the papal hierarchy, and by a series of literary fictions carried this
iPope Leo XIII., in his encyclical concerning the Christian constitution of States (Immortale Dei, Nov. 1, 1885), defends the medieval theory of Church and State, and refers to the authority of St. Augustine, as having in his De Civitate Dei clearly set forth the true principles on this subject for all time to come. See Schaffs edition of St. Augustine's Works, pref. to vol. II. (New York, 1887). Comp. also Reuter, Augustinische Studies (Gotha, 1887), pp. 100-152, and Mirbt., I. c., who has industriously collected the quotations from Augustine by the friends and opponents of Gregory VII.
2 The influence of Augustine's theory upon Wyclif , Has, and the Reform ers is shown in this Church History, vol. VI. 522 sqq.
§ 11. THE GREGORIAN THEOCRACY. 29
system back to the second century; notwithstanding the fact that the Oriental Church never recognized the claims of the bishops of Rome beyond that of a mere primacy of honor among equal patriarchs.
Gregory VII. actualized this politico-ecclesiastical system more fully than any previous pope, and as far as humm energy and prudence would admit. The glory of the Church was the all-controlling passion of his life. He held fast to it in the darkest hours, and he was greatest in adversity. Of earlier popes, Nicolas I. and Leo I. came nearest to him in lofty pretensions. But in him papal absolutism assumed flesh and blood. He was every inch a pope. He anticipated the Vatican system of 1870; in one point he fell short of it, in another point he went beyond it. He did not claim infallibility in theory, though he assumed it in fact; but he did claim and exercise, as far as he could, an absolute au thority over the temporal powers of Christendom, which the popes have long since lost, and can never regain.
Hildebrand was convinced that, however unworthy person ally, he was, in his official character, the successor of Peter, and as such the vicar of Christ in the militant Church.1 He entirely identified himself with Peter as the head of the apostolic college, and the keeper of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven ; but he forgot that in temporal affairs Peter was an humble subject under a hostile government, and exhorted the Christians to honor the king (1 Pet. 2 : 17) at a time when a Nero sat on the throne. He constantly appealed to the famous words of Christ, Matt. 16 : 18, 19, as if they were said to himself. The pope inherits the lofty position of Peter. He is the Rock of the Church. He is the uni versal bishop, a title against which the first Gregory pro tested as an anti-Christian presumption. He is intrusted
1 Gregory again and again expressed his feeling of personal unworthiness in such expressions as cui licet indigni et nolentes prcesidemus, Reg., I. 18, 70, etc, ; Migne, 300, 344, etp,