sion as the supreme judge of men. The Popes, faithless to Hun who gave them their commission, could no longer claim to be His representatives on earth.
In the soul of Dante there rose instinctively the desire to take the place of these faithless vicars, and to judge them as God Himself would have judged them. He desired to exercise to the full extent of his power that judicial authority which the Popes had forgotten. But he was none the less resolved to remain within the Church, since for all its decadence it still represented the unbroken Christian tradition. He had no wish to become the leader of a revolt, or to overthrow the existing hierarchy. He chose the instrument which was most familiar to him—art—and composed a poem which is not, as certain critics maintain, an anticlerical pamphlet, but rather a true actus pontificalis.
But if we are thoroughly to understand the significance of this act of his we must realize that his idea of divine vicarage was very different from that represented by the Roman tradition. The Catholic church was primarily a continuation of the apostolic service of Christ, and the Pope, as vicar of Christ, devoted himself especially to the spiritual education of men. The institution of the Mass as a daily symbol of man's redemption from sin, the confessional,
