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council to meet at Pavia, for the purpose of trying the election and deciding between the two claimants. The actual judges on this occasion, were the clergy of the empire; but a number of other persons attended, amongst whom were all the great Princes of the Germanic body, or envoys from their courts. The Kings of England and France, too, had ambas sadors present to watch the proceedings. Fifty bishops, and a number of the inferior clergy* presented themselves, and Victor attended in person, submitting entirely his claims to the assembly.

Alexander had also been summoned; but though a man of high character, devout, and respectable as well as wise, he took a step which was so far imprudent, that, as a necessary consequence, it determined the decision of the council against him, and might have also added to the party of his opponents a power which would have rendered that party overwhelming. The ambition of Victor was personal; that of Alexander clerical; Victor sought to elevate himself; Alexander to extend the power of the Church. The latter was in fact, the representative of papacy with all its grasping ambition, with all its perversion of reasoning, with all its assertion of false facts, and assumption of unreal rights; but it was only as a representative that he

* William of Newbury says, that there were none but Italian and German bishops, but with an immense multitude of the inferior orders of prelates, meaning of course abbots.-Lib. 2. Cap. 9.

was all this as the pope, not as the man, so that the evil points of his official character gained an undue lustre from the brightness of his personal virtues. In his character of Pope, then, he refused to be present at the council of Pavia, or to submit to its decrees; and, besides assuming that he was Bishop of Rome, which was the very point in question, he put forth an assertion perfectly false and groundless, as his reason for not yielding obedience to the summons. That assertion, however, comprised a principle which, though never perhaps so distinctly announced before, had been laboriously and studiously inculcated and assumed in every indirect manner by many other pontiffs his predecessors. The reason he gave for not attending the council, was "that Christ had given to St. Peter and his successors the privilege of judging all cases in which the Church was concerned, which right the see of Rome had always preserved, never having submitted to any other judgment."

He must have counted very much upon the ignorance of Europe in matters of history, and he must have counted very much also on the weakness of Louis, King of France, and Henry, King of England. The feebleness of the first he might well reckon upon; but that Henry should so much forget his own policy, and the warnings which the whole reign of Stephen afforded, as to give any support whatsoever to a prelate who put forth so monstrous, so false, and so unreasonable a doctrine.

Alexander nad certainly no right to believe. The Popes by one step had put themselves above the authority of the Emperors; by another they had put themselves above the interference of the people of Rome: Alexander now aimed to put them above the authority of the councils: and certainly it was a daring and extraordinary act.

The admission of such a doctrine as that which Alexander propounded would have left no known power of deciding between any two canditates for the papal dignity, and the only appeal left would have been to the sword, which, indeed, in those days was very generally considered as affording the best means of arriving at the decision of the Almighty. The council of Pavia, however, was not inclined to admit the plea of Alexander, and pronounced him guilty of contumacy for not appearing.

Victor and his friends: or rather Frederick Barbarossa, for he undoubtedly was the soul of the opposition to Alexander: urged two strong objections against the latter Pontiff; first, that he and the Cardinals who had elected him had taken an unlawful oath, which disqualified them by the canons from electing at all; and in the next place they rested, it would seem, though not so strongly, on the fact, of the Roman people not having sanctioned the election of Alexander. The council of Pavia examined witnesses, took what information it thought necessary, and, as might well be expected, decided with very little hesitation in favour of Victor.

It is not at all necessary here to investigate who was really the duly elected Pope, to ascertain which fact would require an examination into many of those obscure parts of history, which it has been the interest and practice of the see of Rome to darken and perplex. In the first place, to arrive at any thing like a decision on that point, we ought to enquire in whom the power of election did really exist whether there was a right of confirmation in the Emperor, whether the people of Rome participated in any shape in the electoral authority; for we cannot suppose the mere bull of any Pope could take away the rights of the persons who elected him. In the next place we should have to discover what portion of truth and falsehood was to be found in the statements of Alexander and of Victor, which perhaps could never now be ascertained.

The principal question before us, and one of much importance to the sequel of this history, is the part which Henry took in the controversy, the policy by which he was guided, and the effect which that policy produced upon the authority which he transmitted to his son. We may infer from various acts of the King of England, that he had very early conceived the design of diminishing the exorbitant power which the Church had acquired in England during the troublous and unhappy reign of Stephen; and had determined not to suffer the clergy to withdraw themselves altogether from the reach of the civil law.

Taking it for granted, then, that he had conceived this design as a well considered part of his great scheme of policy, the reason assigned by Alexander for not attending the council of Pavia should have led Henry at once to oppose the elevation of a man who so distinctly claimed exemption from every authority upon earth, and who thus announced, that if he made his pretensions good, the ecclesiastical matters of the Christian world would have no other judge but himself, that neither synods, nor kings, nor emperors, no, nor councils themselves, which had always hitherto been held supreme in authority, would have any power in restraining the despotic sway of the Bishop of Rome.

In this mighty controversy, however—one of the most important in its character and its results that modern Europe has ever seen-Henry does not appear to have given the slightest consideration to the effect which its termination would have upon his great scheme of policy. The only object which he seems to have considered, was how his leaning to this or to that side would affect the objects of his ambition at the time, how he could gain advantages here or there, remove the animosity of the King of France, or retain possession of territories that were in danger. It is curious and instructive to trace how passions and weaknesses, turning us in a small degree from the course laid out before us by reason and experience, work out sooner or later the bitterest of disappointments, and in many instances,

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