RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Poor Relief Pope
domos, closely allied as they were with Boniface, endeavored to cooperate in his project of reorganizing and effectually reforming the secularized Frankish church. The same situation persisted under Charlemagne. In the universal Christian commonwealth, such as his empire came to be regarded, he exercised not only the chief temporal sovereignty but also the control of ecclesiastical affairs, though he evinced even greater zeal than his predecessors in assimilating the order of the Frankish church to the Roman canons and praxis. For Charlemagne, the pope ranks merely as the first bishop of Christendom and of the emperor's dominion, who possesses certain prerogatives above the other bishops, and is especially called, in view of his station, to watch over the spiritual side of the Church and over the proper maintenance of its canons and doctrine; yet who may not assume, independently of the emperor, any right of control over the church of the Frankish realm. Several things conspired to bring about a transformation of the earlier situation. These were the weakness of Charlemagne's successors; the political complications provoked through the struggles in the family of Louis the Frank; and the strifes among the Frankish bishops. The imperial and royal power was no longer in a position to preserve intact its ecclesiastical leadership, while the essentially moral influence exercised hitherto by the pope, merged into an encroachment upon ecclesiastical and political ground in proportion as he became repeatedly invoked by the wrangling parties themselves to decide the issue, while they sought to strengthen themselves through his authority. Above all, it was Nicholas I. (858-867) who contrived to employ all these conditions to the furtherance of his policy of subordinating princely and temporal power to the Church, of quashing autonomy of the ecclesiastical primary courts in the various countries, and of vesting deciding control in the bishop of Rome. Pope Nicholas I. found material support for his efforts in the opportunely originated Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals (q.v.) just then coming to the front.
But the dissolution of the Carolingian empire and the resulting confusion which involved even Italy, together with the comparative decline of the papacy, soon hindered the prosecution of that policy. To raise the papacy out of its degra-
4. Tend- dation, there needed nothing less than
ency to the renovation of the German empire Absolutism under Otto I. Indeed, the empire,
Checked, even as late as the eleventh century, did wield its own sovereignty over the pope and the Church, and at the same time endeavored to reform the Church internally, being supported in this by the bishops whom it had independently invested, who were therefore subservient to the imperial will. The dynasty of Otto did not, indeed, reassert the maxim of the Carolingian civil code, that the supreme authority or power in ecclesiastical matters, especially in legislation, belonged exclusively to the emperor. On the contrary, the house of Otto took practical cognizance of the theory then already established, that just as the universal State had its apex in the German em-
peror, so the universal Church had its center in the pope. In fine, the emperors disposed of momentous measures in Church administration, such as the creation of new bishoprics, the revival of earlier canon laws, and the execution of reforms in accord with the pope, largely through synods that were held with the pope conjointly. By this policy the emperors cooperated in speeding the way to the general recognition of the pope's primacy in the Church, and to that course of events which began to prevail shortly after the middle of the eleventh century.
About that time there loomed up in Rome the
domination of a party in the Church which sought
to free it from the influence hitherto exercised by
the temporal power; not only to place
5. Spiritual the guidance of the Church in the
and hands of the pope, but also to subject
Temporal the temporal rulers, above all, the Ger- Supremacy man emperor, to the papacy as being
Claimed, the directive secular force, the definitive world power. This party's principal exponent, Hildebrand (see Gregory VIL), assumed as a privilege of the pope to be subject to no judge, and even claimed the right to depose emperors, to bear the imperial insignia, to decree new laws, to hold general councils, to erect new bishoprics, to divide and combine the same, to depose bishops, translate them, consecrate clerics of all churches, receive appeals in all cases, and to have sole decision in all weighty matters of every Church. Under Gregory's leadership of the Curia, and his subsequent pontificate, the influence of the Roman nobility and people upon the papal election became debarred; the imperial right of nomination, with attendant right of confirmation, was abolished; while ecclesiastical reform was accomplished through successive synods convened by the pope alone, and composed of his own loyal supporters. These synods acted as a papal senate, and did away with the imperial synods. Gregory also repeatedly decreed the deposition of bishops, and ultimately annulled the emperor's antecedent right of appointment or investiture to the episcopal sees, over which the conflict issued between the German empire and the papacy (see Investiture), and this terminated in the emancipation of the papacy from the imperial overlordship. So the papacy became the court of last resort in the concerns of the Church, and also strove to win authoritative and leading power in the contemporary civil fabric of Europe. This was achieved under Innocent III.; though at the same time and by the same process the independence or autonomy of the local church tribunals, in particular the episcopal, was broken. Yet the bishops themselves had, for the most part, promoted the policy inaugurated by the Curia in the middle of the eleventh century, although with the undermining of the imperial and princely power they forfeited the essential support of their own freedom in relation to the papacy. The pope, who thereafter was regarded as the vicar of God, or of Christ, and from the time of Innocent III. designates himself as such, laid claim to the supreme sovereignty over the Church and the world alike, though the temporal rule is committed for practical execti-
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