The Catholic polity was only gradually established, sustained by experience and reason. And that is the reason why it has been so permanent. It was most admirably adapted to rule the ignorant in ages of cruelty and crime,—and, I am inclined to think, to rule the ignorant and superstitious everywhere. Great critics are unanimous in their praises of that wonderful mechanism which ruled the world for one thousand years.

Nor did the popes, for several centuries after Leo, grasp the temporal powers of princes. As political monarchs they were at first poor and insignificant. The Papacy was not politically a great power until the time of Hildebrand, nor a rich temporal power till nearly the era of the Reformation. It was a spiritual power chiefly, just such as it is destined to become again,—the organizer of religious forces; and, so far as these are animated by the gospel and reason, they are likely to have a perpetuated influence. Who can predict the end of a spiritual empire which shows no signs of decay? It is not half so corrupt as it was in the time of Boniface VIII., nor half so feeble as in the time of Leo X. It is more majestic and venerable than in the time of Luther. Nor are Protestants so bitter and one-sided as they were fifty years ago. They begin to judge this great power by broader principles; to view it as it really is,—not as "Antichrist" and the "scarlet mother," but as a venerable institution, with great abuses, having at heart the interests of those whom it grinds down and deceives.

But, after all, I do not in this Lecture present the Papacy of the eleventh century or the nineteenth, but the Papacy of the fifth century, as organized by Leo. True, its fundamental principles as a government are the same as then. These principles I do not admire, especially for an enlightened era. I only palliate them in reference to the wants of a dark and miserable age, and as a critic insist upon their notable success in the age that gave them birth.

With these remarks on the regimen, the polity, and the government of the Church of which Leo laid the foundation, and which he adapted to barbarous ages, when the Church was still a struggling power and Christianity itself little better than nominal,—long before it had much modified the laws or changed the morals of society; long before it had created a new civilization,—with these remarks, acceptable, it may be, neither to Catholics nor to Protestants, I turn once more to the man himself. Can you deny his title to the name of Great? Would you take him out of the galaxy of illustrious men whom we still call Fathers and Saints? Even Gibbon praises his exalted character. What would the Church of the Middle Ages have been without such aims and aspirations? Oh, what a benevolent mission the Papacy performed in its best ages, mitigating the sorrows of the poor, raising the humble from degradation, opposing slavery and war, educating the ignorant, scattering the Word of God, heading off the dreadful tyranny of feudalism, elevating the learned to offices of trust, shielding the pious from the rapacity of barons, recognizing man as man, proclaiming Christian equalities, holding out the hopes of a future life to the penitent believer, and proclaiming the sovereignty of intelligence over the reign of brute forces and the rapacity of ungodly men! All this did Leo, and his immediate successors. And when he superadded to the functions of a great religious magistrate the virtues of the humblest Christian,—parting with his magnificent patrimony to feed the poor, and proclaiming (with an eloquence unusual in his time) the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, and setting himself as an example of the virtues which he preached,—we concede his claim to be numbered among the great benefactors of mankind. How much worse Roman Catholicism would have been but for his august example and authority! How much better to educate the ignorant people, who have souls to save, by the patristic than by heathen literature, with all its poison of false philosophies and corrupting stimulants! Who, more than he and his immediate successors, taught loyalty to God as the universal Sovereign, and the virtues generated by a peaceful life,—patriotism, self-denial, and faith? He was a dictator only as Bernard was, ruling by the power of learning and sanctity. As an original administrative genius he was scarcely surpassed by Gregory VII. Above all, he sought to establish faith in the world. Reason had failed. The old civilization was a dismal mockery of the aspirations of man. The schools of Athens could make Sophists, rhetoricians, dialecticians, and sceptics. But the faith of the Fathers could bring philosophers to the foot of the Cross. What were material conquests to these conquests of the soul, to this spiritual reign of the invisible principles of the kingdom of Christ?

So, as the vicegerents of Almighty power, the popes began to reign. Ridicule not that potent domination. What lessons of human experience, what great truths of government, what principles of love and wisdom are interwoven with it! Its growth is more suggestive than the rise of any temporal empires. It has produced more illustrious men than any European monarchy. And it aimed to accomplish far grander ends,—even obedience to the eternal laws which God has decreed for the public and private lives of men. It is invested with more poetic interest. Its doctors, its dignitaries, its saints, its heroes, its missions, and its laws rise up before us in sublime grandeur when seriously contemplated. It failed at last, when no longer needed. But it was not until its encroachments and corruptions shocked the reason of the world, and showed a painful contrast to those virtues which originally sustained it, that earnest men arose in indignation, and declared that this perverted institution should no longer be supported by the contributions of more enlightened ages; that it had become a tyrannical and dangerous government, to be assailed and broken up. It has not yet passed away. It has survived the Reformation and the attacks of its countless enemies. How long this power of blended good and evil will remain we cannot predict. But one thing we do know,—that the time will come when all governments shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and Christian truth alone shall so permeate all human institutions that the forces of evil shall be driven forever into the immensity of eternal night.

With the Pontificate of Leo the Great that dark period which we call the "Middle Ages" may be said to begin. The disintegration of society then was complete, and the reign of ignorance and superstition had set in. With the collapse of the old civilization a new power had become a necessity. If anything marked the Middle Ages it was the reign of priests and nobles. This reign it will be my object to present in the Lectures which are to fill the next volume of this Work, together with subjects closely connected with papal domination and feudal life.

AUTHORITIES.

Works of Leo, edited by Quesnel; Zosimus; Socrates; Theodoret; Fleury's Ecclesiastical History; Tillemont's Histoire des Empereurs; Gibbon's Decline and Fall; Beugot's Histoire de la Destruction du Paganism; Alexander de Saint Cheron's Histoire du Pontificat de Saint Leo le Grande, et de son Siecle; Dumoulin's Vie et Religion de deux Papes Leon I. et Gregoire I.; Maimbourg's Histoire du Pontificat de Saint Leon; Arendt's Leo der Grosse und seine Zeit; Butler's Lives of the Saints; Neander; Milman's Latin Christianity; Biographie Universelle; Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Church historians universally praise this Pope.

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