to detect imposture, and to refer to the acts of ancient
Councils, that singular counterfeit of the false decretals made its
appearance, which so wonderfully helped the Roman Patriarchs in
consolidating the manifold structure of their authority. This, indeed,
assailed the Bishops of the West by their most reverential feelings, and
added to the force of a great present authority, almost always beneficially
exercised, the weight of what seemed an Apostolical tradition. Besides
these causes, the Popes found in the several monastic orders throughout
Europe the most unceasing and energetic pioneers of their power. From the
very first there appears to have existed a desire to exchange the present
superintendence of the local Bishop for the distant authority of the Pope.
The great orders, indeed, were themselves so many suspensions of the
Episcopal system. With reason do the statues of their founders adorn the
nave of St. Peter's, not only as witnesses of the Church's exuberant life,
but as those whose hands, more than any others, have helped to rear that
colossal central power, of which that fane is the visible symbol. Thus the
Papal structure was so gradually built upon the Patriarchal, that no one
age could accurately mark where the one ended and the other began, but all
may see the finished work. It requires no microscopic eye to distinguish
the authority of St. Leo or St. Gregory from that of St. Innocent the
Third. The poet spake of a phantom what is true of a great reality:--

"Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo,
Ingrediturque solo, et caput inter nubila condit."

That power, for which the heroic and saintly Hildebrand died in exile,[166]
if exile there could be to him who received the heathen for his
inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for his possession; for
which our own St. Anselm, forced against his will to the Primacy, stood
unquailing in the path of the Red King, most furious, if not the worst, of
that savage race, whose demon wrath seemed to justify the fable of their
origin; for which St. Bernard, the last of the Fathers in age, but equal to
the first in glory, wrote and laboured, and wore himself out with vigils,
and wrought miracles; for which our own St. Thomas shed that noble blood,
which sanctifies yet our primatial Church, an earnest of restoration and
freedom to come; that power, for which St. Francis, the spouse of holy
poverty, so long neglected since her First Husband asce