[14] Tafel, /Documents concerning the Life and Character of E. Swedenborg/, 1875-77. Gorres, /Emanuel Swedenborg, seine visionen und sein verhaltniss zur Kirche/, 1827. CHAPTER IX THE PAPACY See bibliography, chap. iv. (b). Ciacconius, /Vitae et res gestae Romanorum Pontificum/, 1677. Sandini, /Vitae Rom. Pontif./, etc., 1753. Guarnacci, /Vitae et res gestae Rom. Pontif./, etc., 1751. Ranke, op. cit., Reumont, op. cit. Della Gattina, /Histoire diplomatique des conclaves/, 1865. /Bullarium Romanum/. Difficult as had been the situation with which the Popes were confronted during the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century, when heresy was rampant throughout Europe, and when Catholic nations were obliged to fight for their very existence, it was not a whit more difficult or more critical than that created by the increasing and selfish demands of Catholic rulers, which confronted their successors during the age of absolute government. The Peace of Westphalia (1648), by giving official sanction to the principle of state neutrality, meant nothing less than a complete revolution in the relations that had existed hitherto between Church and State. So long as the Christian world was united in one great religious family, acknowledging the Pope as the common Father of Christendom, it was not strange that in disputes between princes and subjects or between the rulers of independent states the authority of the Pope as supreme arbitrator should have been recognised, or that his interference even in temporal matters should not have been regarded as unwarrantable.