capable of culture. Moreover, Mohammedanism did directly sanction polygamy and slavery (evils which Mohammed found existing about him, and which he accepted); it left no room for the rise of woman; and, worst of all, since the Prophet's teachings were final, it crystallized into a changeless system, opposed to all improvement and doomed therefore to decay. Thus, even at its best, Mohammedan civilization was marked by an Oriental character: it was despotic, uniform, stagnant, sure to be outrun finally by the western European world, ruder at first, but more progressive.

FOR FURTHER READING. - Curteis' Roman Empire, 210-227; Stillé, 98-126; Freeman's Saracens; Bury, II. bk. v. ch. vi.; Oman's Byzantine Empire; Carlyle's essay on Mohammed (Heroes and Hero-worship). Advanced students may consult Draper's Intellectual Development of Europe, and Bury's Gibbon, ch. 1.

Muir's The Coran gives translations of important passages; some translations are given in Guernsey Jones' Source Extracts.

III. THE PAPACY.

A. RISE TO ECCLESIASTICAL HEADSHIP.

627. Claim: Doctrine of the "Petrine Supremacy.” — In the fourth and fifth centuries the Christian Church had divided its allegiance between the great patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Rome (§ 533). In spite of the growing tendency to monarchic organization, no one of these bishops had been able to establish authority over all Christendom; but claim to such supremacy had been put forward by one of them.

The claim took this form: Christ had especially intrusted the government of his Church to Peter; Peter (according to tradition) had founded the first church at Rome; hence the bishops of Rome, as the successors of Peter, held spiritual sway over Christendom.

1 See a good argument in Ramsey's Church in the Empire.

628. Advantages and Events that helped to make this Claim Good. To support her claim over all the West against her eastern rivals, Rome possessed many advantages in past history, and in the events of the first Christian centuries.

a. From early times the bishops of Rome were readily allowed a certain precedence in dignity, even by the other patriarchs, because men so inevitably thought of Rome as the world-capital.1

b. The Latin half of the empire, which would most naturally turn to Rome for leadership, contained no other apostolic church, nor even any other great city, to become a possible rival. The other patriarchs were all in the Greek half of the empire east of the Adriatic (§§ 391, 533).

c. The absence of doctrinal disputes in the West, as compared with the incessant hair-splitting controversies in the more speculative East (§ 534), made it easier for spiritual leadership to maintain itself.

d. A long line of able popes, by their moderation and statesmanship, helped to confirm the place of Rome as the representative of all the West. Not unfrequently, indeed, they were accepted as arbitrators in the disputes between eastern patriarchs.

e. The barbarian invasions strengthened the position of the pope in at least two ways: the decline of the imperial power in the West diminished the danger of interference from Constantinople; and the churches in Spain and Gaul, in their dread of the Arian conquerors, turned to Rome for closer guidance, abandoning any tendency to national independence in ecclesiastical matters.

f. Rome's own missionary labors did much to extend her power; in particular, it was through her that the Arian conquerors in the West were finally brought to the orthodox

1 The philosopher Hobbes called the Papacy only "the ghost of the Roman Empire, crowned and seated on the grave thereof."

2 The name Pope (papa) was originally only a term of affectionate respect, applied to any bishop. Special reports: Leo and Gregory the Great.

doctrine, and that the pagans in Teutonic England and in Germany were converted to Christianity. To these last, in particular, Rome was a mother church, to be obeyed implicitly in matters of faith.1

629. Rome freed from Eastern Rivals; the "Great Schism.". The peculiar claims of Rome, however, carried no weight in the East; and until 650 A.D., even to men of the West, her bishop appeared only one (though the most loved and respected one) among five great patriarchs. But the next century eliminated the other four, so far as western Christendom was concerned. Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch fell to the Saracens in quick succession; and soon afterward remaining Christendom split into rival Latin and Greek churches, grouped respectively around Rome and Constantinople.

2

The schism, like the political division of the old Roman Empire into East and West, seems to have been based upon fundamental differences in character; certainly it followed the same persistent lines of partition between the Latin and Greek cultures (§ 391). The split had begun to show very early; it was assisted by the political differences of East and West, and by the Teutonic jealousy of the Greek emperor; but the final occasion for actual separation was a religious dispute over the use of images in worship.

This is known as the "iconoclast" (image-breaking) question. A small but influential minority in the Greek Empire had desired to restrict or abolish the use of images, which, they felt, the more ignorant were apt to degrade from symbols into idols. The great reforming emperor, Leo the Isaurian (717-741 A.D.), put himself at the head of the movement, with all his despotic authority, and finally ordered all images removed from the churches.3 The West in general

1 Special report: the life and labors of Boniface, "Apostle to the Germans." 2 Was the division of the Arabian power into rival caliphates (§ 625) affected perhaps by the like differences in civilization?

3 In the East, Leo and his successors were temporarily successful. The monks and populace resisted them, however, and before the year 800 A.D. the

believed in their use, and in Italy the Pope forbade obedience to the imperial decree. The result was the separation of Christendom into two halves, never since united.

The Great Schism left the supremacy of Rome unquestioned in the Latin Church, while other conditions, to be noted in the next section, erected its leadership into a real monarchy, spiritual and temporal, such as was never attained in the Greek Church, where the patriarchs of Constantinople were overshadowed by the imperial will.

B. THE POPE BECOMES A TEMPORAL SOVEREIGN.

630. The Pope as a Civil Officer of the Greek Emperor. While the Roman bishops were winning this spiritual rule over all the West, they were also becoming temporal princes (or kings) over a small state in Italy. This process begins with the Lombard invasion. In the break-up of Italy (§ 585), the imperial governor (exarch) at Ravenna was cut off from Rome and the strip of territory about it still belonging to the Empire. Now, from the time of Constantine, all bishops had held considerable civil authority; and this new condition left the bishop of Rome the chief imperial lieutenant in his isolated district. At the same time, in the position that he claimed as spiritual head of Christendom, in some matters he called for submission from the emperor himself. Thus his double character of the emperor's servant and the emperor's superior could be easily confused; while the difficulty of effective communication left him in any case very nearly an independent sovereign.

631. This Virtual Independence avowed by Open Rebellion. But the emperor did not permit this growing independence without a struggle: one pope was dragged from the altar to a dungeon; another died a lonely exile in the Crimea; and only

image-worshipers regained the throne in the person of the Empress Irene. Meantime, however, the question had divided Christendom. The churches of Greece and Russia and the other Slav states of Southeastern Europe still belong to the Greek communion.

a threatened revolt in Italy saved another from a like fate in 701 A.D. This last fact is notable. More and more the Roman population of Italy rallied round the great bishop as champion against the disliked Greek Power. When the Emperor Leo III. (§ 624) tried to reform and extend imperial taxation in Italy, Pope Gregory sanctioned resistance. The imperial decree regarding images, we have noted, met with like reception. Projects were discussed for setting up a new emperor in Italy, or for a confederation of all Italy under the Pope. As the image-worship dispute grew violent, church councils, summoned by Pope Gregory II. (730 A.D.) and Gregory III. (731 A.D.), excommunicated Leo. The emperor sent a fleet and army to seize Gregory and subdue Italy, but a storm wrecked the expedition and the Pope's rebellion succeeded. Subsequent Roman bishops assumed office without imperial sanction,' and fifty years later Pope Hadrian made the political separation more apparent by ceasing to date events by the reigns of the emperors."

632. Recognition and Protection of the New Sovereignty by the Franks. - The third step was to secure recognition for the new sovereignty. The Lombard kings in Italy, at war with the emperor, had seized the Exarchate of Ravenna in the north, and were bent upon seizing Rome also, on the ground that it likewise belonged to their enemy the emperor. A Lombard master close at hand would have been more dangerous to the papal claims than a distant Greek master; and the popes appealed to the Franks for aid. It happened that the great Frankish Mayors had need of papal sanction for their plans just then, and so the bargain was struck. The story demands that we return to Frankish history.

1 Until this rebellion, the popes, though elected by the clergy and people of Rome, had waited like other bishops for confirmation by the emperor before entering on their office.

2 Instead, he called a certain day "December 1, of the year 781 under the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, our God and Redeemer," and so began our method of counting time. He should have made the year 785 (§ 458).