rons of Rome; that the Lateran palace was turned into a school for
prostitution, and that his rapes of virgins and widows had deterred the
female pilgrims from visiting the tomb of St. Peter, lest, in the devout
act, they should be violated by his successor. The Protestants have
dwelt with malicious 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
reformed and exalted by the austerity and zeal of Gregory VII. 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 forever to abolish the right or usurpation of the emperors
and the Roman people. II. To bestow and resume the Western empire as a
fief or benefice 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 empire of Rome, neither the bishop nor
the people could bestow on Charlemagne or Otho the provinces 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 Caesar 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 prosperity, their ambition was diverted by
more alluring objects; and in the decay and division of the empire, they
were oppressed by the defence of their hereditary provinces. Amidst the
ruins of Italy, the famous Marozia invited one of the usurpers to assume
the chara