cised a virtual, though undefined sovereignty over Rome and its environs; and 130 years before the provinces since known as the Patrimony of St. Peter, had been voluntarily subjected by the Roman people to Gregory II, was a species of supreme magistracy exercised by his saintly predecessor, Gregory the Great, who found - to use the words of Gibbon « in the attachment of a grateful people the purest reward of a citizen and the best right of a sovereign. That description of paternal sway wielded by the Popes prior to the VIII century, was indeed necessitated by the exigencies of the times, for protecting citizens whose interests were habitually disregarded by unworthy Emperors, whose lives and property were constantly exposed to dangers by barbarian invasion. Nor was the Papal authority in those early ages without substantial basis, or means for self-support. Under Gregory the Great (590-604) the Holy Sec possessed estates, called patrimonies, amounting to twenty-three, in different parts of Italy, the Mediterranean Isles, Illyria, Gaul, Germany, and Dalmatia, besides rights of jurisdiction in criminal causes, exercised by its ministers, in Sicily, Calabria, Apulia, Campania, Sardinia, Corsica, Liguria, and the district of the Cottian Alps. To the second Gregory may be ascribed the positive historic origin of the temporal power recognised in subsequent ages, though a distinction has been drawn, followed by the writers of the Art de vérifier les dates, who observe that when, in 726, the last Duke of. Rome, Basil, was chased away by the people, indignant against the cruelty of the Iconoclast Emperor Leo, it was an administrative superintendence, not to be confounded with absolute monarchy, that was ceded to the Pontiff. His successor Gregory III, in 731, still observed the formality of writing to the Exarch to obtain the ratifying of his election; but never, after this last occasion, was such deference paid to the Greck Emperor's representative. Coins of Popes, as temporal Princes, were struck

in the VIII century, and are still preserved in the numismatic collection at the Vatican; but it was even earlier that the use of dating briefs by the year of the Pontificate was introduced, by Deodatus, created Pope in 672. Momentous consequences resulted from the struggle originating in the iconoclast movement at Constantinople, and the dauntless opposition of Gregory II to the persecuting Emperor Leo, for it was after his condemnation in a council held by that Pope, A. D. 730, that the Roman people voluntarily submitted, are said by some writers to have bound themselves by oath, to become subjects of the Holy See. The territory over which was thus acquired administrative, if not absolute dominion, in the VIII century, comprised, besides the Roman Campagna, 17 cities in other parts of Italy, among which were several still of provincial importance in these States-Perugia, Civitavecchia, Narni, Anagni, Alatri, Ferentino, and Tivoli. We read that, before this submission, Gregory II recovered, by the assistance of the Duke of Naples, the city of Cuma, which had becn previously held as a patrimony of the Holy Sec. His predecessor, Sisinnius, in 708, was preparing to restore the fortifications and churches of Rome certainly an act which seems to imply the authority and means proper to a Sovereign but was cut off by death, so that the restoration which placed the city in a state of defensibility, remained to be numbered among the public works of Gregory II. After the alienation of the Roman Duchy from the Greek Empire, the Pontiff never forbid the payment of the customary tribute to Leo III (then reigning Emperor); but the people themselves, after electing other magistrates in place of the imperial, whom they had driven from Rome, agreed to withhold for the future all such tokens of subjection. In 753 Stephen III crossed the Alps the first Pope to perform such journey in order to demand succour from Pepin against the incursions of the Lombards, who had frequently invaded his territory and

brought fire and slaughter to the very gates of Rome. Pepin twice descended upon Italy as champion of the Church, and constrained Astolphus to abandon the Exarchate, which, together with the province of Emilia and 22 cities in other parts, he handed over to the absolute dominion of the Pontiff — thus effecting the so celebrated donation. It has, however, been fully proved that the Duchy of Rome was not comprised in this gift (or restitution) but held by the Roman See according to rights established long antecedently. In 781 Charlemagne for the second time crossed the Alps, when his two sons were crowned by Adrian I, as Kings of Italy and Aquitania. Then it was that this magnanimous benefactor of the Church solemnly confirmed to the Papacy all its previously acquired dominions, and augmented them by the territory of Sabina, the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia; and either on this, or his next expedition beyond the Alps, in 787, added to that donation several towns he had wrested from the Duke of Benevento; also the Duchy of Spoleto (according to some writers) and six cities, of which Viterbo was one, previously comprised in the Tuscan territory. Adrian confirmed to him, on his request, the title of Roman Patrician; and Charlemagne, on the same occasion, received from the Pope the significantly symbolic gift of a pair of golden Keys containing filings from the chains of St. Peter, with the standard of that Apostle and of Rome implying the obligation, in the recipient, to defend the Roman Church in its civil as well as ecclesiastical rights. Early in the next century, Lothaire added Sicily to the possessions of the Holy See; whilst he confirmed that of Sardinia, on his coronation at Rome by Paschal I. The greatest aggrandissement of the Papal dominions was effected in the XI century, and again by act entirely external to the Holy See itself, consistently with its peculiar nature as a sovereignty resting for support on a moral principle, owing its rights to conviction, attachment, and devotion. Seeond only in generosity to Char

lemagne was its great benefactress, the Countess Matilda, a woman of masculine intellect and abilities, whose devotedness to the Holy See had the character of a sentiment elevated into a principle, and embraced with the ardour of an indomitable will. This extraordinary heroine, the daughter of Boniface III, Marquis of Tuscany, after the deaths of her father and stepfather, succeeded to absolute sway over the most important states in Italy, comprising Tuscany, Lucca, Modena, Reggio, Mantua, Ferrara, Parma, and Piacenza; over all which, in the year 1076, Matilda, at the age of thirty, found herself independent mistress. After the death of her first husband, son of the Duke of Lorraine, who was assassinated at Antwerp by the Count of Flanders, she dedicated herself with all the energies of her nature to the cause of the Holy See, under five successive Popes, opposing the Emperors Henry IV and Henry V, whilst the long warfare, originating in the question of investitures, was raging in Germany and Italy. Gregory VII was especially the object of her reverential attachment, directed to him as to a being of superior order, the personification of a principle and a tradition. After that Pontiff had advanced to meet the Emperor as far as Vercelli, but retired on the report of his approach with a hostile army, she received him with enthusiastic homage at her impregnable fortress of Canossa, in the province of Reggio. Thither followod the penitent Emperor, and there that extraordinary scene took place of the humiliation and absolution of Henry IV, so celebrated and variously commented upon by historic writers. Only fifteen days afterwards, Henry broke all his solemn engagements, sworn upon the Holy Sacrament, to Gregory, and leagued against him with the Lombards. The Princes of Germany, renouncing allegiance, declared him deposed, after which, to avenge himself on the crowned Priest he considered responsible for all his misfortunes, he endeavoured to sieze the person of the Pope, with that of Matilda also. For three months

Gregory only found safety in one of the mountain castles belonging to her; and then it was that Matilda made the memorable act of donation to the Holy See of all her estates, reserving for herself only the usufruct during life. The Countess now collected a large army to oppose the Emperor, and the Antipope he had raised up. Great reverses were suffered on her side; her forces were defeated at Ravenna, in 1080; bat, four years later, their arms vere completely victorious. Matilda's marriage with Guclph II, Duke of Bavaria, related to the Este house, led to a league against the Emperor of the most powerful families in Italy, to dissolve which he waged war in Bavaria, and simultaneonsly in all the states of Matilda. But this intrepid woman, though greatly a sufferer, and now deprived of all her fortresses north of the Po, persisted, against the advice of her barons and many theologians, in carrying on war, till finally restored to possession of all she had lost. In 1012 she renewed, at Canossa, the formal act of donation, addressed to Pope Paschal II, hut the original document of which is unfortunately lost. Matilda died at Mantua in 1115, and in that city her remains reposed till transferred, in 1635, to a magnificent Mausoleum at St. Peter's, by order of Urban VIII.

There have been instances of worldly ambition, unprincipled intrigue, and even darker crimes, that have discredited the Tiara; the X century witnessed the dishonor of abject and profligate, the XV and XVI centuries were seandalised by the mundane spirit or grasping avarice of scarcely less unworthy Pontiffs; but, at a general view, one is impressed by justice and morality of aims in the Papal policy, and led to acknowledge one striking and admirable feature in the absence of all determined purpose and operation directed to the overthrow of other authorities for its own aggrandisement. The early pontiffs waited passively, till the force of circumstances and opinion arrived at such a point as ultimately to sweep away