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y soon made known the course which he should pursue. He issued a prohibition against the marriage of the clergy, and in a council at Rome abolished the right of investiture.[27] He was determined to redress the wrongs of society. He had seen oppression laying waste the fairest provinces of Europe, he had seen many princes, goaded on by the revengeful passions of their nature, flinging wide their standard to the winds, and dipping their hands in the blood of those who, if Christianity be not a fable, were their very brothers. A magnificent vision rose up before him. He would rule the world by religion; he would be the caesar of the spiritual monarchy. He and a council of prelates, annually assembled at Rome, would constitute a tribunal from whose judgment there should be no appeal, empowered to hold the supreme mediation in matters relating to the interests of the body politic, to settle contested successions to kingdoms; and to compel men to cease from their dissensions. [Footnote 27: That is, the right of the civil power to grant church offices at will, and to invest ecclesiastics with symbols of their offices and receive their oaths of fealty.] The civil power was to pledge itself to be prompt in the execution of their decrees against those who despised their authority. But if the decisions of those judges were to carry weight, they must be men of unblemished integrity. The purity of their ermine must be altogether unsullied. The sale of the highest spiritual offices by the prince, who had deprived the clergy and people of their right to elect them, which had stained the hands of the Church and undermined its power, must be altogether forbidden. Elections must be free. The custom of investiture by sovereigns with the ring and crozier, which had rendered the hierarchy and clergy the creatures of their will, must be forbidden. The clergy must possess an absolute exemption from the criminal justice of the state. They must recognize but one ruler, the pope, who disposed of them indirectly through the bishops or directly in cases of exemption, and used them as tools for the execution of his behests. In fact, they were to constitute a vast army, exclusively devoted to the service of an ecclesiastical monarch. They must be unconnected by marriage with the world around them, that they might be bound more closely to one another and to their head; that they might be saved from the temptation of restless projects for the
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