Principles of western civilisation

vir THE GREAT ANTINOMY: FIRST STAGE 271

of his claims, ‘‘ unless—which God forbid ”—he adds parenthetically, “I should have strayed from the faith.” * But who was to be the ultimate authority in such a matter? In the presence of the conception common to both positions that the spiritual welfare of the world was of greater importance than its temporal interests, the Pope was able, with relentless logic, to proceed to assert the inferiority of all temporal kings and emperors—swollen with worldly glory, sprung from those who, by force, pride, plunder, and even crimes, inherited a servile and transitory kingdom.” The necks of their greatest were bowed before the knees of priests. Even the mightiest of them were not so great as many who were poor and meek and lowly, the subjects of a kingdom of liberty and eternity. How monstrous, therefore, and intolerable were these their claims on ‘the servant of the servants of God,” on the bishops and abbots of the Church, that these should be so occupied by secular cares . “that they are compelled assiduously to frequent the court and to perform military service. Which things indeed are scarcely, if at all, carried on without plunder, sacrilege, arson.” ® The spectacle of the human mind in these letters

and bulls struggling to express itself through the medium of the conceptions and the religious imagery of an epoch of development which it had already left behind; struggling, as we can see now, in the

1 Select Historical Documents of the Middle A ges, iv. il. 5.

* Letter of Gregory VII. to Bishop Hermann of Metz, 15th March 1081. Select Historical Documents, iv. ii. 14.

3 Tbid. 4 Tbid.

° Negotiations between Paschal II. and Henry V., Paschal’s Privilege of the First Convention, Feb. 12th, 1111, Select Historical Documents, iv. nH. 15.