ART.

I. St. Francis and his Time,

871

Prof. C. K. Adams, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. II. Is there a Probation between Death and the Judgment I

400

Rev. Joseph E. Roy, Chicago, Illinois.

III. Henry Ward Beecher,

421

Prof. James M. Hoppin, Yale College.

IV. The Free Churches of England,

441

Prof. Leonard Bacon, Yale College.
V. Yale College-Some Thoughts Respecting its Future,
Prof. Timothy Dwight, Yale College.
VI. How the Rev. Dr. Stone Bettered his Situation,

VII. Address of M. de Pressensé, at Amsterdam, on the Bible and the
School,

The Word! or Universal Redemption and Salvation: "Preordained before
All Worlds." By George Marin De La Voye,
Ecclesia; Church Problems considered in a series of Essays.
Henry Robert Reynolds, D. D.,
Christianity and the Greek Philosophy; or the relation between spontane-
ous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ
and his Apostles. By B. F. Cocker, D. D.,
Studies in Church History. The Rise of the Temporal Power-Benefit of
Clergy-Excommunication. By Henry C. Lea,

A Manual of Church History. By Henry F. Guericke. Translated from the German by William G. T. Shedd,

536

587

- 537

An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. By John Henry Newman, D. D., 537
Steps of Belief; or Rational Christianity maintained against Atheism, Free
Religion, and Romanism. By James Freeman Clarke,

The Ante-Nicene Christian Library. Vols. xv. and xvi.,
American Edition of Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,
Professor Hoppin's Homiletics,

A Treatise on the Christian Doctrine of Marriage. By Hugh Davey Evans, 540
The Typology of Scripture, viewed in connection with the whole series of
the Divine Dispensations. By Patrick Fairbairn, D. D.,
Aspects of Humanity, brokenly mirrored in the over-swelling Current of
Human Speech,

Windfalls. By the author of "Aspects of Humanity,"

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.

541

The History of Rome. By Theodor Mommsen. Translated by Rev. William P. Dickson, D. D.,

The Private Life of Galileo. Compiled principally from his correspondence and that of his eldest daughter Maria Celeste,

Among my Books. By James Russell Lowell,
Antonia. A novel. By George Sand. Translated from the French by
Virginia Vaughan,

543

544

The Nation. The foundation of civil order and political life in the United
States. By E. Mulford,

The American Colleges and the American Public. By Noah Porter, D. D.,
Warp and Woof. A book of Verse. By Samuel Willoughby Duffield,
Recent Publications,

THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

No. CXII.

JULY, 187 0.

ARTICLE I.-ST. FRANCIS AND HIS TIME.

RECENT events have turned the attention of historical students, both in Europe and America, to a review of those periods in the history of the Romish Church that have been most remarkable for their danger and their triumph. Of the different attempts that have been made by the human intellect to rise up against the Roman yoke and throw it off, there are two that may be deemed peculiarly worthy of careful study. The one, that which followed close upon the revival of classical scholarship, and the inventions and discoveries of the fifteenth and six teenth centuries, is already for the most part well understood. With the other, that which occurred at the moment when Europe was emerging from the darkness of the Middle Ages, and men were showing the first symptoms of intellectual freedom, the world is far less familiar. At a time when so many possibilities are involved in the action of the Council now convened at Rome, it may not be without interest to pass in review

some of the events of that great struggle which took place in the thirteenth century.

man.

One of the most brilliant administrations in the history of the Romish Church was that of Innocent III. Gregory VII., by the boldness of his ambition, did more perhaps to raise the hierarchy to an ascendency over the secular governments; and, Sixtus V., by the skill with which he conducted his church through the most critical period of its history, earned the right perhaps to be regarded as a still greater statesBut neither of these embodied in himself so completely all those attributes which are naturally associated with the name Supreme Pontiff, as did he who wore the triple crown and gave law to Christendom at the beginning of the thirteenth century. By the prominence which he gave to the Canons of the Church, by the steadiness with which he insisted upon the binding force of the Decretals, by the unity and coherence of his policy, as well as by the judicious exercise of the enormous power already vested in the pontifical throne, Innocent brought to its culmination that policy of papal ascendency which for three hundred and fifty years had been slowly revolutionizing the constitution of the Church. That great revolution (for it can be called nothing less) which had begun about the middle of the ninth century with the fabrication of the Isidorian Decretals, and which had found its most powerful support in the forgeries of Gratian, reached its appropriate and complete fruition in the words of Innocent III., when he declared that "Christ had committed the whole world, temporal as well as spiritual, to the government of the Popes."

These extraordinary claims on the part of the pope were not without their influence on the political condition of the different European nationalities. Those who had come to look upon the Pontiff as infallible in all matters of eternal interest, advanced by an easy logic to have full faith in all his assumptions of infallibility in the minor and less difficult affairs of temporal interest. Thus the secular power of the pope came by degrees to be felt in all parts of Europe, and Innocent was able to convert into realities visions of temporal supremacy which had filled the mind of the great Hildebrand

but which even Hildebrand himself had not been strong enough to realize. He not only succeeded in wrenching an oath of fealty from the temporal officers at Rome, and in bringing under his control several of the imperial provinces of Italy; but also in making the tremendous force of his power felt in every country north of the Alps. In Germany he annulled the election of one Emperor, and raised into the vacant throne another whom he in turn also excommunicated. In France he laid Philip Augustus under an interdict which absolved all French subjects from their allegiance, and which offered the French crown to any one who would take the trouble to accept and defend it. From Baldwin, the conqueror of Constantinople, he received the virtual control of the Eastern Empire, and from the hand of John he accepted. that villanage of England which was to blacken forever the name of an English king, and secure the advantages of the Great Charter to the English people.

The boldness with which Innocent thus ventured to bestow kingdoms, and cite princes to his judgment seat, would seem to indicate either that the temporal as well as the spiritual supremacy of the Pontiffs had been established beyond question, or that, as a last desperate throw in a losing game, the pope, having abandoned all hope of convincing his opponents, was determined to stun them into submission by the very audacity of his pretensions.

But however this enormous display of temporal power is to be interpreted, it requires but a glance at the political and religious characteristics of the thirteenth century to see that there were to the church grounds for the most serious alarm. Though the material prosperity of the hierarchy was unabated, there were beginning to germinate in all parts of Christendom certain seeds of discontent. It began to be painfully apparent, not only to the clear intelligence of the pope but also to all the higher officers of the church, that there was need of the greatest wisdom in the administration of her affairs and in the direction of her councils. For it was in this very century that the darkness of the Middle Ages began to disappear. It was during this very reign of Innocent III. that the gray dawn of twilight gave the first promise of modern intelligence