lonies through these vast lands as
so many fortresses, first of culture and afterwards of faith, was now
reduced to a mere _municipium_ herself. The very senate, with whose name
empire had been connected for five hundred years, at the bidding of a
barbarous leader of mercenaries serving for plunder, sent back the symbols
of sovereignty to the adventurer, whoever he might be, who sat by
corruption or intrigue on the seat of Constantine in Nova Roma.

This thought leads me to endeavour more accurately to point out the light
thrown upon the Papal power by the various relations in which it stood at
different times to the temporal governments with which it had to deal.

The practical division of the Roman empire in the fourth century, ensuing
upon the act of Constantine in forming a new capital of that empire in the
East, made the Church no longer subject to one temporal government. The
same act tested the spiritual Primacy of the Church. It called it forth to
a larger and more complicated action. I have in a former volume followed at
considerable length the series of events the issue of which was, after
Arian heretics had played upon eastern jealousy and tyrannical emperors
during fifty years, to strengthen the action of the Primacy. But assuredly
had that Primacy been artificial, or made by man, the division of interests
ensuing upon the political disjunction of the East and West would have
destroyed it. Julius and Liberius and Damasus would not have stood against
Constantius and Valens if the heart of the Church had not throbbed in the
Roman Primacy. Still more apparent does this become in the next fifty
years, wherein the overthrow of the western empire begins. Then the sons of
Theodosius, instead of joining hand with hand and heart with heart against
the forces of barbarism, which their father had controlled and wielded,
were seduced by their ministers into antagonism with each other. Byzantium
worked woe to the elder sister of whom she was jealous. Under the infamous
treasons of Rufinus and Eutropius, the words might have been uttered with
even fuller truth than in their original application--

"Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit".

Thus Alaric first took Rome. But he did not take the Primacy. Pope Innocent
lost no particle of his dignity or influence by the violation of Rome's
secular dignity. It was only seven years after that event when St.
Augustine and the two great African Councils acknowledged his Principate i