struggle for the temporal power. The most religious and most eminent of
the Popes, such as Gregory VII and Innocent III, were the most prompt to
set in motion the machinery of war in defence of their territories or in
punishment of rebels against their authority. Not one of them was in a
position to bid kings disband their armies, or ever dreamed of enjoining
them to do more than observe a few days' truce or keep their swords from
each other in order to save them for the common enemy of Christendom.

It would be useless to speculate about the date when the new nations of
Europe had become sufficiently civilised to hear a gospel of peace. The
idea of superseding the military system of Europe by a juridical system
occurred to no Christian leader, and therefore we need not consider what
prospect it might have had of realisation. The Christian gospel of
meekness had become a mockery: even the great abbeys, in which the
gentler and more religious were supposed to be immured, had their
troops, and abbots and bishops, and very often Papal Legates, appeared
at the head of armies. Two Popes, John X and Julius II, marched
themselves at the head of their troops. Cardinals had their suites of
swordsmen, and the castles of the Roman aristocracy were at times strong
fortifications from which war of the most ferocious and unscrupulous
character was waged. Christendom was steeped in violence; only a gentle
saint or bishop here and there caught a futile vision of a world of
peace. Every man was armed against possible trouble with his neighbour;
every noble had his retainers and kept them well exercised; every prince
was free, as far as the spiritual authorities were concerned, to covet
and bloodily exact the lands of his neighbour. The noble, of either sex,
found supreme delight in jousts which the modern sentiment finds as
inhuman as a sordid quarrel of _Apaches_ over a mistress; the peasants
found a corresponding pleasure in the play of quarter-staves or the
combats of dogs and cocks.

It is, as I said, little use to speculate about the chances of a gospel
of humanity in such a world. The overwhelming majority of priests and
prelates made no effort whatever to restrain the prevailing violence.
The elementary duty of any profound moral agency was to protest without
ceasing, even if the protest was unavailing. It is not at all clear that
it would have been unavailing. The power of the Popes was beyond that
of any other hierarchy known