OF THE KOMAN EMPIRE 299 pleasure on these characters of antichrist ; but to a philosophic eye the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues. After a long series of scandal, the apostolic see was Reformation reformed and exalted by the austerity and zeal of Gregory VII. theciiur?h.° That ambitious monk devoted his life to the execution of two ' '^' projects. I. To fix in the college of cardinals the freedom and independence of election, and for ever to abolish the I'ight or usurpation of the emperors and the Roman people. II. To bestow and resume the Western empire as a fief or benefice i'- of the church, and to extend his temporal dominion over the kings and kingdoms of the earth. After a contest of fifty years, the first of these designs was accomplished by the firm support of the ecclesiastical order, whose liberty was connected with that of their chief. But the second attempt, though it was crowned with some partial and apparent success, has been vigorously resisted by the secular power, and finally extinguished by the improvement of human reason. In the revival of the empire of Rome, neither the bishop nor Authority of the people could bestow on Charlemagne or Otho the provinces in Rom8*'^°" which were lost, as they had been won, by the chance of arms. But the Romans were free to choose a master for themselves ; and the powers which had been delegated to the patrician were irrevocably granted to the French and Saxon emperors of the West. The broken records of the times ^^-^ preserve some remembrance of their palace, their mint, their tribunal, their edicts, and the sword of justice, which, as late as the thirteenth century, was derived from Casar to the praefect of the city.^^'* Between the arts of the popes and the violence of the people, this supremacy was crushed and annihilated. Content with the titles of emperor and Augustus, the successors of Charlemagne neglected to assert this local jurisdiction. In the hour of pros- rum apostolorum limina orandi gratia timent visere, cum nonnullas ante dies paucos hunc audierint conjugatas viduas, virgines vi oppressisse (Liutprand, Hist. 1. vi. c. 6, p. 471 [Hist. Ott. c. 4]. See the whole affair of John XII. p. 471-476). ^*'^ A new example of the mischief of equivocation is the bencficinm (Ducange, torn, i. p. 617, &c. ), which the pope conferred on the emperor Frederic I., since the T^atin vord may signify either a legal fief, or a simple favour, an obligation (we want the word bietifait). See Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, tom. iii. p. 393-.108. I'feffel, Abr6g6 Chronologique, tom. i. p. 229, 296, 317, 324, 420, 430, 500, 505, 509, &c. J-*^For the history of the emperors in Rome and Italy, see Sigonius, de Regno Italicc, Opp. tom. ii., with the Notes of Saxius, and the Annals of Muratori, who might refer more distinctly to the authors of his great collection. i'*-*See the Dissertation of Le Blanc at the end of his treatise des Monnoyes de France, in which he produces some Roman coins of the French emj^erors.
