THE evils which for so many years afflicted Christendom cannot but raise the question in every dispassionate mind how far the popes have fulfilled the office assigned them as the "Fathers of Christendom" and the peace-makers of the world. Leaving out of view their adulators on the one side, and their incriminators on the other, let us put to history the question, How many are the years of peace, and how many are the years of war, which have come out of the papal chair, and what proportion does the one bear to the other?
To put, then, a few plain questions touching matters of fact, let us ask, From whom came the crusades which for two centuries continued to waste the treasure and the blood of both Europe and Asia? History answers, From the popes. Monks preached the crusades, monks enlisted soldiers to fight them, and when the host was marshaled and all was ready, monks placed themselves at their head, and led them onward, their track marked by devastation, to the shores of Syria, where their furious fanaticism exploded in scenes of yet greater devastation and horror. In these expeditions, the popes were always the chiefs; the crossed emperors and kings were enlisted under their banner, and put under the command of their legates; at the popes' mandate it was that they went forth to slay and to be slain. In the absence of these princes, the popes took into their hands the government of their kingdoms; the persons and goods of all the crusaders were declared under their protection; in their behalf they caused every process, civil and criminal, to be suspended; they made a lavish distribution of indulgences and dispensations, to keep alive fanatical fervor and sanguinary zeal; they sometimes enjoined as a command, and sometimes as a penance, service in the crusades; their nuncios and legates received the alms and legacies bequeathed for maintaining these wars; and when, after two dismal centuries, they came to an end, it was found that none save the popes were the gainers thereby. While the authority of the Papal See was vastly strengthened, the secular princes were in the same proportion weakened and impoverished; the sway of Rome was confirmed; for the nations, broken and bowed down, suffered a yoke to be riveted upon their necks that could not be broken for ages.
We ask further, From whom came the contest between the miter and the empire—the war of investitures which divided and ravaged Christendom for a full century and a half? History answers, From the pope, Gregory VII. From whom came the Albigensian crusades, which swept in successive tempests of fire and blood across the south of France? History answers, From the pope, Innocent III. Whence came those armies of assassins, which times without number penetrated into the Waldensian Valleys, carrying the torch into dwelling and sanctuary, and inflicting on the unoffending inhabitants barbarties and cruelties of so horrible a nature that they never can be known, because they never dare be told? History answers, From the pope. Who made donations of kingdoms—Naples, Sicily, Aragon, Poland, and others—knowing that those to whom they had gifted them could possess them only by fighting for them? History answers, The popes. Who deposed sovereigns, and sanctioned insurrection and war between them and their subjects? The popes. Who so often tempted the Swiss from their mountains to shed their blood on the plains of Italy? The Bishop of Sion, acting as the legate of the pope. Who was it that, the better to maintain the predominance of their own sway, kept Italy divided, at the cost of almost ceaseless intestine feuds and wars, and the leaving the gates of the country unguarded, or purposely open, for the entrance of foreign hordes? History answers, The popes. Who was it that, having entered into war with France, threw aside the miter for the helmet, and, passing over a bridge on the Tiber, is said to have thrown the keys of St. Peter into the river, seeing they had served him so ill, and called for the sword of St. Paul? Pope Julius II. Who organized the successive campaigns waged against the Hussites, and on two several occasions sent his legate-a-latere to lead the crusaders? History answers, The pope.
We stop at the era of the Reformation. We put no questions to history touching the wars in Germany, the wars in France, the wars in the Low Countries, the wars in Hungary, and in other lands; in which, too, the blood of the scaffold was largely mingled with the blood of the battle field. We restrict our examples to those ages when Rome was not only a power, but the power in Christendom. Kings were then her vassals, and she had only to speak to be obeyed. Why then did she not summon them to her bar, and command them to sheathe their swords? Why did she not bind them in the chain of her excommunications, and compel them to be at peace till she had arbitrated in their quarrels, and so prevent this great effusion of human blood? Here are the pope's exploits on the field of war. Why has history forgotten to chronicle his labors and sacrifices in the blessed work of peace? True, we do find a few outstanding instances of the popes' enjoining peace among Christian princes. We find the Council of Lyons (1245) ordaining a general cessation of arms among the Western sovereigns, with power to prelates to proceed by censures against those who refused to acquiesce; but for what end? Even that the crusade which had been projected might be carried out with greater unanimity and vigor. We find Gregory X. sending his nuncio to compel observance of this decree of the Council on Philip III. of France and the King of Castile, knowing that these two sovereigns were about to decide a certain difference by arms, because he needed their swords to fight his own battles. We find, further, Boniface VIII. enjoining all sovereigns to terminate all wars and differences at home, that they might be in circumstances to prosecute more vigorously the holy wars of the church. These, and a few similar instances, are all that we have on the one side to set over against the long roll of melancholy facts on the other. History's verdict is, that with the ascent of the popes to supremacy, came not peace, but war to the nations of Christendom. The noon of the papal power was illustrated, not by its calm splendors and its tranquil joys, but by tempest, and battle, and destruction.—History of Protestantism.