lesser light to rule the night, so for the firmament of the universal Church, which is called by the name of heaven, He has set up two great dignities, the greater to rule souls, as it were days, and the lesser to rule bodies, as it were nights; and these are priestly authority and royal power. Further, as the moon obtains its light from the sun, seeing that it is really the lesser both in quantity and quality, and also in position and influence, so royal power obtains the splendour of its dignity from priestly authority." He points out on another occasion that "individual kings have individual kingdoms, but Peter is over all, as in fulness so also in breadth, because he is the Vicar of Him whose is the earth and the fulness thereof, the round world and they that dwell therein. Further, as the priesthood excels in dignity, so it precedes in antiquity. Both kingdom and priesthood," he allows, "were instituted among the people of God; but," he adds, "while the priesthood was instituted by divine ordinance, the kingdom came into existence through the importunity of man." Hence it is not strange that "not only in the Patrimony of the Church, but also in other spheres, we occasionally exercise temporal jurisdiction," for "he to whom God says in Peter, 'Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, etc.', is His Vicar, who is priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek, ordained by God to be judge of the quick and the dead." [Sidenote: He secures power in Rome.] But while the Pope assumed this all-embracing position, a considerable share of his energies was absorbed in a very small and purely selfish matter--the extension of the temporal dominion of the Papacy; and the use for this personal object of the great powers which men willingly acknowledged in the Pope as the upholder of the standard of morality greatly prejudiced the success of Innocent's policy elsewhere. In its origin this was a policy of self-preservation. The civil government of Rome was in the hands of a prefect representing the Emperor and a senator who was the spokesman of the Commune. The Pope was either a prisoner or a nonentity in his own capital. The Empire being in abeyance, it was not difficult to transform the prefect into a papal officer, but a greater triumph was the nomination of the senator, for it carried the ultimate control over the municipality, and thus undermined the power of the Commune, which had paralysed the papal influence in Rome for nearly sixty years. This signal victory was not gained without a struggle. The democratic party even drove the Pope from the city for a time; but by 1205, Innocent, by apparent concessions and the use of bribery, had won his end. [Sidenote: Central Italy.]