en nationality yearn that these happy days may once more
return! Taken mostly from the middle classes, sometimes even from the
most humble ranks of society, the Popes ascended the Chair of Peter; and
these men, who had been the sons of artisans and mechanics, but who had,
by their virtue and talent, gained a merit which neither wealth nor a
noble pedigree could bestow, became the arbiters between nation and
nation, between prince and people, always prepared to weld together the
chain of broken friendship, and to protect, by their power and
authority, the rights of subjects oppressed by tyrannical rulers. It was
indeed a blessing for Europe that Nicholas I. could curb, with an iron
hand, the tyranny of kings and nobles. It was indeed a blessing, not for
Europe alone, but for the world, that there lived a genius on earth in
the person of Gregory VII., who knew how to protect the Saxons against
the wanton lawlessness of Henry, King of Germany, a monster who ground
his subjects remorselessly in the dust, and respected neither the
sanctity of virginity nor the sacredness of marriage; neither the rights
of the Church, nor those of the State; whose very existence seemed to
have no other aim but that of the leech, to draw out the blood from the
hearts of his unhappy subjects. What would have become of Germany had
there not been a power superior to that of this godless prince? It was
Gregory VII. who hurled him from his throne, and restored to the noble
Saxons and Thuringians their independence, not by the power of the
sword, but by the scathing power of his anathema. The same I may say of
Boniface VIII., and of Innocent III. There was, happily for Europe, a
Court of Appeal, to which even monarchs were forced to bow; and that
court was Rome. It was to Rome that the nations appealed, when their
independence was at stake or their rights were trampled upon. And Rome
was never deaf to the cry of distress, whether it came from Germany or
from France, from England or from Poland, from Spain or from the shores
of the Bosphorus.

And when the liberty of a nation was on the verge of destruction, and
when emperors, and kings, and barons rode rough-shod over the rights,
natural and vested, of their subjects, forgetting the sacred trust
confided to them, became tyrants, when neither prosperity nor undivided
liberty were secure from that rapacious grasp; when even the rights of
conscience were set aside with impunity; it was the Popes of Rome