be--Not a penny. He could not rob the poor
of Christ. And when he fell, beaten to death with the bones and horns of
the slaughtered oxen, he died in faith; a martyr to the great idea of
that day, that the gold of the Church did not belong to the conquerors of
this world.

But St. Alphege was an Englishman, and not a Roman. True in the letter:
but not in the spirit. The priest or monk, by becoming such, more or
less renounced his nationality. It was the object of the Church to make
him renounce it utterly; to make him regard himself no longer as
Englishman, Frank, Lombard, or Goth: but as the representatives by an
hereditary descent, considered all the more real because it was spiritual
and not carnal, of the Roman Church; to prevent his being entangled,
whether by marriage or otherwise, in the business of this life; out of
which would flow nepotism, Simony, and Erastian submission to those
sovereigns who ought to be the servants, not the lords of the Church. For
this end no means were too costly. St. Dunstan, in order to expel the
married secular priests, and replace them by Benedictine monks of the
Italian order of Monte Casino, convulsed England, drove her into civil
war, paralysed her monarchs one after the other, and finally left her
exhausted and imbecile, a prey to the invading Northmen: but he had at
least done his best to make the royal House of Cerdic, and the nations
which obeyed that House, understand that the Church derived its rights
not from them, but from Rome.

This hereditary sense of superiority on the part of the clergy may
explain and excuse much of their seeming flattery. The most vicious
kings are lauded, if only they have been 'erga servos Dei benevoli;' if
they have founded monasteries; if they have respected the rights of the
Church. The clergy too often looked on the secular princes as more or
less wild beasts, of whom neither common decency, justice, or mercy was
to be expected; and they had too often reason enough to do so. All that
could be expected of the kings was, that if they would not regard man,
they should at least fear God; which if they did, the proof of 'divine
grace' on their part was so unexpected, as well as important, that the
monk chroniclers praised them heartily and honestly, judging them by what
they had, not by what they had not.

Thus alone can one explain such a case as that of the monastic opinion of
Dagobert the Second, king of the Franks. We are told in