aint.

[67] See Part I., chap. XVI.

(7.) From Norway the Gospel made its way to the Norwegian settlements in
Iceland, and even in Greenland, where it long flourished, until, in the
middle of the fifteenth century, ice gathered on the shores so as to
make it impossible to land on them. About the same time a great plague,
which was called the Black Death, carried off a large part of the
settlers, and the rest were so few and so weak that they were easily
killed by the natives.

It seems to be certain that some of the Norwegians from Greenland
discovered a part of the American continent, although no traces of them
remained there when the country was again discovered by Europeans,
hundreds of years later.

CHAPTER VIII.

POPE GREGORY THE SEVENTH.

PART I.

In the times of which I have been lately speaking, the power of the
popes had grown far beyond what it was in the days of Gregory the Great.

I have told you Gregory was very much displeased because a patriarch of
Constantinople had styled himself _Universal Bishop_.[68] But since that
time the popes had taken to calling themselves by this very title, and
they meant a great deal more by it than the patriarchs of Constantinople
had meant; for people in the East are fond of big words, so that, when a
patriarch called himself _Universal Bishop_, he did not mean anything in
particular, but merely to give himself a title which would sound
grandly. And thus, although he claimed to be universal, he would have
allowed the bishops of Rome to be universal too. But when the popes
called themselves _Universal Bishops_, they meant that they were bishops
of the whole church, and that all other bishops were under them.

[68] Part I., p. 159.

They had friends, too, who were ready to say anything to raise their
power and greatness. Thus, about the year 800, when the popes had begun
to get some land of their own, through the gifts of Pipin and
Charlemagne,[69] a story was got up that the first Christian emperor,
Constantine, when he built his city of Constantinople, and went to live
in the East, made over Rome to the pope, and gave him also all Italy,
with other countries of the West, and the right of wearing a golden
crown. And this story of Constantine's gift (or _donation_, as it was
called), although it was quite false, was commonly believed in those
days of ignorance.

[69] See p. 178.

About fifty years later another monstrous falsehood was put forth, which