CHARLES KINGSLEY ON TEMPORAL POWER

A1 united Italy suited the views of the popes then no more than it does now. Not only did they conceive of Rome as still the centre of the western world, but more, their stock in trade was at Rome. The chains of St. Peter, the sepulchres of St. Peter and St. Paul, the catacombs filled with the bones of innumerable martyrs--these were their stock in trade. By giving these, selling these, working miracles with these, calling pilgrims from all parts of Christendom to visit these _in situ_, they kept up their power and their wealth.

2Having obtained what they wanted from Pepin and Charlemagne, it was still their interest to pursue the same policy; to compound for their own independence, as they did with Charlemagne and his successors, by defending the pretences of foreign kings to the sovereignty of the rest of Italy. This has been their policy for centuries. It is their policy still; and that policy has been the curse of Italy. This fatal gift of the patrimony of St. Peter--as Dante saw, as Machiavelli saw, as all clear-sighted Italians have seen--has kept her divided, torn by civil wars, conquered and reconquered by foreign invaders.

3Unable, as a celibate ecclesiastic, to form his dominions into a strong hereditary kingdom; unable as the hierophant of a priestly caste to unite his people in the bonds of national life; unable, as Borgia tried to do, to conquer the rest of Italy for himself, and form it into a kingdom large enough to have weight in the balance of power, the pope was forced, again and again, to keep himself on his throne by intriguing with foreign princes, and calling in foreign arms; and the bane of Italy, from the time of Stephen III to that of Pius IX, was the temporal power of the pope. But on the popes, also, the Nemesis came. In building their power on the Roman relics, on the fable that Rome was the patrimony of Peter, they had built on a lie; and that lie avenged itself.

4Having committed themselves to the false position of being petty kings of a petty kingdom, they had to endure continual treachery and tyranny from their foreign allies--to see not merely Italy, but Rome itself, insulted and even sacked by faithful Catholics, and to become more and more, as the centuries rolled on, the tools of those very kings whom they had wished to make their tools.

5True, they defended themselves long, and with astonishing skill and courage. Their sources of power were two, the moral and the thaumaturgic, and they used them both; but when the former failed, the latter became useless. As long as their moral power was real; as long as they and their clergy were on the whole, in spite of enormous faults, the best men in Europe, so long the people believed in them, and in their thaumaturgic relics likewise. But they became by no means the best men in Europe. Then they began to think that after all it was more easy to work the material than the moral power--easier to work the bones than to work righteousness. They were deceived. Behold! when the righteousness was gone, the bones refused to work.

6People began to question the virtue of the bones, and to ask, “We can believe that the bones may have worked miracles for good men, but for bad men? We will examine whether they work any miracles at all.” And then, behold, it came out that the bones did not work miracles, and that possibly they were not saints’ bones at all; and then the storm came; and the lie, as all lies do, punished itself. That salt had lost its savour. They who had been the light of Europe, became its darkness; they who had been first, became last; a warning to mankind until the end of time, that on truth and virtue depends the only abiding strength.[h]