¹⁶⁸ Velly’s Hist, of France, v. 2, p. 493.
The age which we have passed over, ought to remain for ever famous in the history of the popes. If they are not yet recognized as sovereigns, if their temporal power has not yet been declared independent, it in effect rivals and threatens the throne which ought to govern it. Already the Two Sicilies had become fiefs of the Holy See; the donations of Matilda have extended, over almost all Middle Italy, the rights or pretensions of the court of Rome. But what signify the limits and the nature of these temporal possessions, when the spiritual authority no longer recognizes restriction, when the gospel ministry transforms itself into a universal theocracy, which brands, curses, deposes kings, and disposes of their crowns. One man alone, it is true, had fully conceived this tremendous system; but the opinions, of which the ignorance of this man, as well as his contemporaries, was composed, encouraged his undertakings, however monstrous, and political circumstances promised him success from them. New dynasties had arisen in France, England, and other countries: the French emperors, threatened in their own palaces, had lost every remnant of authority in Italy: it was sufficient to humble the Emperor of the West; he alone counterbalanced in Europe the weight of the Holy See. In attacking him one might reckon on the support or neutrality of other monarchs; they were jealous of his preponderance: Rome in humiliating them, disposed them to reconcile themselves to it by the spectacle of more serious outrages reserved for their head; they childishly rejoiced in the great share he should have in the common humiliation. They turn, in the mean time, against him, the old or new factions which troubled Germany; they redouble their insolence and their power by the thunder of the anathemas with which they struck him; and if so many efforts did not overthrow him, at least, they staggered and weakened him. Such was the war waged by Hildebrand, against Heniy IV. the first at the period, or as we may term him, the only representative of the civil power in the West. In bequeathing this war to his successors, Hildebrand vanquished as he was, had pointed out the object, traced the plan, and tempered the arms.¹⁷⁰ There had needed to complete his work, perhaps, in the course of the following century, but two or three successors of his inflexible enthusiasm. Giannone accuses him of having forged the Donations of Constantine, Pepin, Charlemagne, and Louis-le-Debonnaire. We have seen the first of these donations adduced in the eighth century;¹⁷¹ the rest are mentioned by writers anterior to the eleventh: all these acts were spoken of before Gregory’s time: at the most he could only have arranged the texts more categorically, and more favourable to his pretensions. It is certain, that no means adopted for the establishment of pontifical tyranny would have alarmed his conscience: the most efficacious, therefore, appeared to him the most laudable; and, if some of his proceedings, judged of after the events, seem to us equally imprudent and violent, we should reflect that so enormous an enterprise could only be accomplished by audacity in the extreme.