y soon made known the course which he should pursue. He
issued a prohibition against the marriage of the clergy, and in a
council at Rome abolished the right of investiture.[27] He was
determined to redress the wrongs of society. He had seen oppression
laying waste the fairest provinces of Europe, he had seen many princes,
goaded on by the revengeful passions of their nature, flinging wide
their standard to the winds, and dipping their hands in the blood of
those who, if Christianity be not a fable, were their very brothers. A
magnificent vision rose up before him. He would rule the world by
religion; he would be the caesar of the spiritual monarchy. He and a
council of prelates, annually assembled at Rome, would constitute a
tribunal from whose judgment there should be no appeal, empowered to
hold the supreme mediation in matters relating to the interests of the
body politic, to settle contested successions to kingdoms; and to compel
men to cease from their dissensions.

[Footnote 27: That is, the right of the civil power to grant church
offices at will, and to invest ecclesiastics with symbols of their
offices and receive their oaths of fealty.]

The civil power was to pledge itself to be prompt in the execution of
their decrees against those who despised their authority. But if the
decisions of those judges were to carry weight, they must be men of
unblemished integrity. The purity of their ermine must be altogether
unsullied. The sale of the highest spiritual offices by the prince, who
had deprived the clergy and people of their right to elect them, which
had stained the hands of the Church and undermined its power, must be
altogether forbidden. Elections must be free. The custom of investiture
by sovereigns with the ring and crozier, which had rendered the
hierarchy and clergy the creatures of their will, must be forbidden.

The clergy must possess an absolute exemption from the criminal justice
of the state. They must recognize but one ruler, the pope, who disposed
of them indirectly through the bishops or directly in cases of
exemption, and used them as tools for the execution of his behests. In
fact, they were to constitute a vast army, exclusively devoted to the
service of an ecclesiastical monarch.

They must be unconnected by marriage with the world around them, that
they might be bound more closely to one another and to their head; that
they might be saved from the temptation of restless projects for the