It was at the annual council of Rome, A.D. 1076, that Pope Gregory VII. recited and proclaimed "all the ancient maxims, all the doubtful traditions, all the excessive pretensions, by which he could support his supremacy. It was, in a manner, the abridged code of his domination--the laws of servitude that he proposed to the world at large. Here are the terms of this charter of theocracy: 'The Roman Church is founded by God alone. The Roman pontiff alone can legitimately take the title of universal ... There shall be no intercourse whatever held with persons excommunicated by the Pope, and none may dwell in the same house with them.... He alone may wear the imperial insignia. All the princes of the earth shall kiss the feet of the Pope, but of none other.... He has the right of deposing emperors.... The sentence of the Pope can be revoked by none, and he alone can revoke the sentences passed by others. He can be judged by none. None may dare to pronounce sentence on one who appeals to the See Apostolic. To it shall be referred all major causes by the whole Church. The Church of Rome never has erred, and never can err, as Scripture warrants. A Roman pontiff, canonically ordained, at once becomes, by the merit of Saint Peter, indubitably holy. By his order and with his permission it is lawful for subjects to accuse princes.... The Pope can loose subjects from the oath of fealty.' Such are the fundamental articles promulgated by Gregory VII. in the Council of Rome, which the official historian of the Church reproduced in the commencement of the seventeenth century as being authentic and legitimate, and Rome has never disavowed it. Borrowed in part from the false Decretals, resting, most of them, on the fabulous donation of Constantine, and on the successive impostures and usurpations of the first barbarous ages, they received from the hand of Gregory VII. a new character of force and unity. That pontiff stamped them with the sanction of his own genius. Such authority had never before been created: it made every other power useless and subaltern" ("Life of Gregory VII.," by Villemain, trans. by Brockley, vol. ii., pp. 53-55). Thus the struggle became inevitable between the temporal and the spiritual powers. "In every country there was a dual government:--1. That of a local kind, represented by a temporal sovereign. 2. That of a foreign kind, acknowledging the authority of the Pope. This Roman influence was, in the nature of things, superior to the local; it expressed the sovereign will of one man over all the nations of the continent conjointly, and gathered overwhelming power from its compactness and unity. The local influence was necessarily of a feeble nature, since it was commonly weakened by the rivalries of conterminous states and the dissensions dexterously provoked by its competitor. On not a single occasion could the various European states form a coalition against their common antagonist. Whenever a question arose, they were