The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part A.: From the Britons of Early Times to King John — David Hume — John Shaqi
The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part A.: From the Britons of Early Times to King John
David Hume · en
The few offices, either civil or military, which the feudal institutions
left the sovereign the power of bestowing, made the prerogative of
conferring the pastoral ring and staff the most valuable jewel of the
royal diadem: especially as the general ignorance of the age bestowed a
consequence on the ecclesiastical offices, even beyond the great extent
of power and property which belonged to them. Superstition, the child of
ignorance, invested the clergy with an authority almost sacred; and
as they engrossed the little learning of the age, their interposition
became requisite in all civil business, and a real usefulness in common
life was thus superadded to the spiritual sanctity of their character.
When the usurpations, therefore, of the church had come to such maturity
as to embolden her to attempt extorting the right of investitures from
the temporal power, Europe, especially Italy and Germany, was thrown
into the most violent convulsions, and the pope and the emperor waged
implacable war on each other. Gregory dared to fulminate the sentence
of excommunication against Henry and his adherents, to pronounce him
rightfully deposed, to free his subjects from their oath of allegiance;
and, instead of shocking mankind by this gross encroachment on the
civil authority, he found the stupid people ready to second his most
exorbitant pretensions. Every minister, servant, or vassal of the
emperor, who received any disgust, covered his rebellion under the
pretence of principle; and even the mother of this monarch, forgetting
all the ties of nature, was seduced to countenance the insolence of
his enemies. Princes themselves, not attentive to the pernicious
consequences of those papal claims, employed them for their present
purposes; and the controversy, spreading into every city of Italy,
engendered the parties of Guelf and Ghibbelin; the most durable and most
inveterate factions that ever arose from the mixture of ambition
and religious zeal. Besides numberless assassinations, tumults, and
convulsions, to which they gave rise, it is computed that the quarrel
occasioned no less then sixty battles in the reign of Henry IV., and
eighteen in that of his successor, Henry V., when the claims of the
sovereign pontiff finally prevailed.[*]
[* Padre Paolo sopra Eccles. Benef. p. 113.]