,
and was enabled to maintain a general international relation. It gave
her far more power than her asserted celestial authority, and, much as
she claims to have done, she is open to condemnation that, with such a
signal advantage in her hands, never again to be enjoyed by any
successor, she did not accomplish much more. Had not the sovereign
pontiffs been so completely occupied with maintaining their emoluments
and temporalities in Italy, they might have made the whole Continent
advance like one man. Their officials could pass without difficulty into
every nation, and communicate without embarrassment with each other,
from Ireland to Bohemia, from Italy to Scotland. The possession of a
common tongue gave them the administration of international affairs with
intelligent allies everywhere speaking the same language.

[Sidenote: Causes of the dislike of Rome to the Greek,] Not, therefore,
without cause was the hatred manifested by Rome to the restoration of
Greek and introduction of Hebrew, and the alarm with which she perceived
the modern languages forming out of the vulgar dialects. The prevalence
of Latin was the condition of her power, its deterioration the measure
of her decay, its disuse the signal of her limitation to a little
principality in Italy. In fact, the development of European languages
was the instrument of her overthrow. They formed an effectual
communication between the mendicant friars and the illiterate populace,
and there was not one of them that did not display in its earliest
productions a sovereign contempt for her. We have seen how it was with
the poetry of Languedoc.

[Sidenote: and danger from modern languages.] The rise of the
many-tongued European literature was therefore coincident with the
decline of papal Christianity. European literature was impossible under
the Catholic rule. A grand, and solemn, and imposing religious unity
enforced the literary unity which is implied in the use of a single
language. No more can a living thought be embodied in a dead language
than activity be imparted to a corpse.

[Sidenote: Public disadvantages of a sacred tongue.] That principle
of stability which Italy hoped to give to Europe essentially rested on
the compulsory use of a dead tongue. The first token of intellectual
emancipation was the movement of the great Italian poets, led by Dante,
who often, not without irreverence, broke the spell. Unity in religion
implies unity through a sacred language,