Paschal was made a prisoner; but on the approach of the imperial army a second time he fled from Rome. Yet amid the disputes of the Germanic succession, and during the minority of Frederic II., the arms and intrigues of the pope won the concession of Europe to his claim of Matilda's estates. The spurious character of the pope's title to temporal power has been exposed by the ablest Catholic authors, and rejected with impatient contempt by history. But the arguments which have converted a world, have never been able to convert the popes. They still maintain that the reputed donations of Constantine, of Pepin, of Charlemagne and of Matilda, are real and valid. This assertion may appear incredible, but in 1822 Marino Malini, the pope's chamberlain, endeavored to establish the genuineness of the fictitious charters of Louis-de-Debonnaire, of Otho I., and of Henry II., in vindication of the pope's titles of the alleged grants to the See of Rome. If the apostolic chair of St. Peter is endowed with a divine title to universal temporal sovereignty, a human title is superfluous. The indefatigable exertions of the popes to establish a human title to their temporal possessions, is a concession that they have no divine title to them, and that a human title is necessary to the validity of their claim. But as they have based their title on the authority of forged documents, and endeavored to fortify and maintain it by successive fabrications of the same nature, it is evident that they are fully and alarmingly conscious that they have no title, either by virtue of their office, or by that of any donation whatever, to temporal possession or Authority. Not only is the holy fathers temporal power a usurpation, but so is also his exclusive claim to the use of the title of pope. Every bishop, and even some laymen, in the first centuries of Christianity, bore this title. In the ancient Greek church it was bestowed upon every clergyman. At the General Council of Constantinople, in 869, its adoption was first limited to the four patriarchs. And in the course of the usurpations of the holy fathers, pope Gregory VII., by authority of an Italian Council, finally assumed it as the exclusive title of the bishops of Rome. The popes, the monarchs of the world, in vindicating their title to the States of the Church, had to maintain a long, bloody and desperate struggle, during which their domains were abridged or enlarged, lost or wont according to the varying fortunes of their arms and intrigues. But as these warlike enterprises of the holy fathers were intimately connected with the convulsions and revolutions of Europe, it will prevent repetition by deferring further allusion to them until we arrive at the subsequent chapters, in which we shall consider the papal political intrigues in general.