combine the efforts of men of science, artists, and chiefs of great establishments of industry, with the interests of the clergy and those of the poor, against the hereditary pretensions of the temporal power, whose origin is impious, as I have said above, since its pristine rights were founded upon the right of conquest, that is to say, the law of the strongest.
The first indulgences had been granted as rewards of labours useful to society, such as the construction of bridges, highways, &c. The indulgences which were afterwards accorded, were granted to the faithful at an epoch when the papal power, having acquired great riches and temporal authority, was already becoming demoralized. The popes had diverted from their original destination the sums proceeding from the sale of indulgences, and had employed them to gratify their own fancies, and to favour sacerdotal ambition; but they had always taken care to give to their actions the appearance of public welfare. Leo X. changed this conduct entirely; he threw off the mask, and declared publicly that the produce of plenary indulgences, which he charged the Dominicans to sell for the behoof of the holy see, should be employed to defray the expense of his sister's toilet.
Leo X. attempted to turn the papacy to account, as if it had been a power essentially temporal; he sought to tax the faithful, as he would have done had he exercised in respect to them the rights of a temporal prince.
In his diplomatic transactions with Charles V., Leo X. dealt more like a prince of the house of Medici, than like a pope. Hence it followed that the papacy alarmed the emperor no longer; and Charles, perceiving himself no more restrained by the ecclesiastical power, which alone could oppose a barrier to the ambition of lay princes, conceived the project of establishing for himself a universal monarchy,—a project which was revived by Louis XIV. and by Bonaparte. Whereas none of the European lay princes, from the time of Charlemagne to the 16th century, had dared to attempt it.
