770 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
justified wars against the enemies of religion and the persecution of heretics, even as Sarah, the type of the heavenly Jerusalem, persecuted her handmaid Hagar. And it declared, with Urban II., that he who kills one who is under the sentence of excommunication is not to be dealt with as a murderer.1 These principles, set forth in clear statements, were advocated by Thomas Aquinas and the other Schoolmen and asserted by the greatest of the popes.
At last the legalistic tyranny became too heavy for the enlightened conscience of Europe to bear, as was the case with the ceremonial law in the days of the Apostles, against which Peter protested at the council of Jerusalem and Paul in his Epistles. The Reformers raised their voices in pro test against it. Into the same flames which consumed the papal bull at Wittenberg, 1520, Luther threw a copy of the canon law, the one representing the effrontery of an in fallible pope, the other the intolerable arrogance of a human lawgiver in matters of religion, and both destructive of the liberty of the individual. In his Address to the Christian Nobles, Luther declared that it did not contain two lines adapted to instruct a religious man and that it includes so many dangerous regulations that the best disposition of it is to make of it a dung heap.
Even in the Catholic world its enactments have been largely superseded by the canons of the council of Trent, the papal decretals issued since, and the concordats between Catholic princes and the papal see. By virtue of his official infallibility, the pope may at any time supersede them by decisions and dispensations of his own.
The words of Goethe may be applied to the canon law : —
Es erben sick Gesetz und Rechte
Wie eine ewige Krankheit fort Sie schleppen von Geschlecht sich zum Geschlechte
Und schleichen sich von Ort zu Ort Vernunft wird Unsinn, Wohlthat Plage.
i See Causa, XXIII. 4, 5, 6, Friedberg's ed., I. 899-960.
§ 123. PAPAL SUPREMACY IN CHURCH AND STATE. 771
§ 123. The Papal Supremacy in Church and State.
LITERATURE: See the chapp. on Gregory VII. and Innocent III., and the works there cited. — BERNARD: de consideratione, Migne, 182. 727- 808. — TH. AQUINAS: de regimine principum, and contra errores Grcecorum. The latter ed. by *F. H. REUSCH, d. 1900 : D. Falschungen in d. Tractat. d. Th. v. Aq. gegen die Griechen, Munich, 1889. — The writings of Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III., Gregory IX., etc. Corpus juris canonum, Friedberg's ed. — *MIRBT: QueUen des Papstthums. — C. Lux: Constitutionum Apostolicarum de generali beneficiorum rescrvatione, 1265-1378, . . . collectio et interpr. , Wratislav, 1904. — MAASSEN : Primal des Bisclwfs von Rom, Bonn, 1853. — SCHULTE : D. Macht des r'dm. Papstthums,1?i&g, 2ded., 1871. — * DOL- LINGER-FRIEDRICH : D. Papstthum, Munich, 1892. — * F. X. LEITNER : D. hi. Th. von Aquino uber d. unfehlbare Lehramt d. Papstes, Franf., 1872. Leitner wrote in opposition to Dollinger, and his work is of much importance. — *BRYCE: Holy Rom. Emp., VI.-XI. — G.B.ADAMS: Civilizat. during the M.A., chap. X. — W. BARRY: The Papal Monarchy, 590-1303, N.Y., 1902. — *J. HALLER: Papsttum und Kirchenreform, Berlin, 1903. — *A. HAUCK : D. Gedanke der papstl. Weltherrschaft bis aufBonifaz VIII., Leip., 1904. — RANKE: Weltgesch., vol. VI. — HARNACK : Dogmengesch., II. 392-419. The manuals on Canon Law by FRIEDBERG, HINSCHIUS, HERGENROTHER.
The papal assumptions of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. have already been presented (pp. 27 sqq., 152 sqq.). A large part of the history of this period is occupied by popes in the effort to realize the papal theocracy, from the opening struggle of Gregory VII. with Henry IV. to the death of Conradin, the Hohenstaufen. Their most vigorous utter ances, so far as they are known, were not to summon men and nations to acts of Christian charity, but to enforce the papal jurisdiction. It is not the purpose here to repeat what has already been said, but to set forth the insti tution of the papacy as a realized fact and the estimate put upon it by Schoolmen and by the popular judgment.
Among the forty-one popes who occupied the chair of St. Peter from Gregory VII. to Boniface VIII., some, as has be come evident, were men of rare ability, and occupy a place of first prominence as rulers. There were no scandals in the papal household such as there had been during the preced ing period. No emperors from the North were required to