o become absolute, found that the synods of particular national
churches must be put an end to, and those only under the immediate
control of the pontiff permitted. This, in itself, constituted a great
revolution.

Another fiction concocted in Rome in the eighth century led to important
consequences. It feigned that the Emperor Constantine, in gratitude for
his cure from leprosy, and baptism by Pope Sylvester, had bestowed
Italy and the Western provinces on the pope, and that, in token of his
subordination, he had served the pope as his groom, and led his horse
some distance. This forgery was intended to work on the Frankish kings,
to impress them with a correct idea of their inferiority, and to show
that, in the territorial concessions they made to the Church, they were
not giving but only restoring what rightfully belonged to it.

The most potent instrument of the new papal system was Gratian's
Decretum, which was issued about the middle of the twelfth century. It
was a mass of fabrications. It made the whole Christian world, through
the papacy, the domain of the Italian clergy. It inculcated that it is
lawful to constrain men to goodness, to torture and execute heretics,
and to confiscate their property; that to kill an excommunicated person
is not murder; that the pope, in his unlimited superiority to all law,
stands on an equality with the Son of God!

As the new system of centralization developed, maxims, that in the olden
times would have been held to be shocking, were boldly avowed--the whole
Church is the property of the pope to do with as he will; what is simony
in others is not simony in him; he is above all law, and can be called
to account by none; whoever disobeys him must be put to death; every
baptized man is his subject, and must for life remain so, whether he
will or not. Up to the end of the twelfth century, the popes were the
vicars of Peter; after Innocent III. they were the vicars of Christ.

But an absolute sovereign has need of revenues, and to this the popes
were no exception. The institution of legates was brought in from
Hildebrand's time. Sometimes their duty was to visit churches, sometimes
they were sent on special business, but always invested with unlimited
powers to bring back money over the Alps. And since the pope could not
only make laws, but could suspend their operation, a legislation was
introduced in view to the purchase of dispensations. Monasteries were
exempted from episcopa