n by civil wars, conquered and reconquered
by foreign invaders. Unable, as a celibate ecclesiastic, to form his
dominions into a strong hereditary kingdom; unable, as the hierophant of
a priestly caste, to unite his people in the bonds of national life;
unable, as Borgia tried to do, to conquer the rest of Italy for himself;
and form it into a kingdom large enough to have weight in the balance of
power; the Pope has been forced, again and again, to keep himself on his
throne by intriguing with foreign princes, and calling in foreign arms;
and the bane of Italy, from the time of Stephen III. to that of Pius IX.,
has been the temporal power of the Pope.

But on the popes, also, the Nemesis came. In building their power on the
Roman relics, on the fable that Rome was the patrimony of Peter, they had
built on a lie; and that lie avenged itself.

Had they been independent of the locality of Rome; had they been really
spiritual emperors, by becoming cosmopolitan, journeying, it may be, from
nation to nation in regular progresses, then their power might have been
as boundless as they ever desired it should be. Having committed
themselves to the false position of being petty kings of a petty kingdom,
they had to endure continual treachery and tyranny from their foreign
allies; to see not merely Italy, but Rome itself insulted, and even
sacked, by faithful Catholics; and to become more and more, as the
centuries rolled on, the tools of those very kings whom they had wished
to make their tools.

True, they defended themselves long, and with astonishing skill and
courage. Their sources of power were two, the moral, and the
thaumaturgic; and they used them both: but when the former failed, the
latter became useless. As long as their moral power was real; as long as
they and their clergy were on the whole, in spite of enormous faults, the
best men in Europe; so long the people believed in them, and in their
thaumaturgic relics likewise. But they became by no means the best men
in Europe. Then they began to think that after all it was more easy to
work the material than the moral power--easier to work the bones than to
work righteousness. They were deceived. Behold! when the righteousness
was gone, the bones refused to work. People began to question the
virtues of the bones, and to ask, We can believe that the bones may have
worked miracles for good men, but for bad men? We will examine whether
they work any miracles at