The Reformation was in fact a casting off of an unjustifiable usurpation in temporal as well as in spiritual things, and a violent reaction against that course of events which, from the eighth century downwards, had been tending to reduce the different sovereigns of Western Christendom to the rank of vassals of the Roman See. Section 2. _Some account of the Popes of the Middle Ages._ A clearer view of the rise and results of papal supremacy may perhaps be gained by entering into a somewhat more detailed account of such Popes as from various causes occupy conspicuous places in the history of the Roman Church. [Sidenote: St. Leo the Great, and the first "papal aggression."] In order to do this effectually, it will be necessary to go back a little farther than the date at the head of the chapter, to the time of St. Leo the Great (A.D. 440-A.D. 461), whose claim to interfere between St. Hilary, Bishop of Arles, and Chelidonius, Bishop of Besancon, may be looked upon as the first "papal aggression" of which history gives us an example. Chelidonius had been deposed by a General Council of the Church of France under the presidency of Hilary, and so deeply did the French Bishops resent the unjust attempts of Leo to set aside their decision, that the Bishop of Rome found an appeal to the secular power necessary for the purpose of enforcing his claim to exercise jurisdiction over a foreign Church. But even the authority of Valentinian III., Emperor of the West, did not succeed in obliging Hilary to cede the liberties of the Church of France, and it is a significant fact that the Bishop of {103} Arles is reverenced as a saint by the whole Western Church, although his sense of what was due to his position as a member of the French episcopate would not suffer him to yield his just rights, in order to obtain a reconciliation with one so personally worthy of esteem and honour as St. Leo. [Sidenote: Papal claims strengthened and extended by St. Gregory]