The Power of the Pope During the Middle Ages

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: councils had been so long invested.i The development of these four propositions will place in a new light Fenelon's opinion, which we have already explained, and which we believe to he preferable to any other opinion on this matter. CHAPTER I. SOME OP THE PRINCIPAL CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH CONTRIBUTED TO...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: councils had been so long invested.i The development of these four propositions will place in a new light Fenelon's opinion, which we have already explained, and which we believe to he preferable to any other opinion on this matter. CHAPTER I. SOME OP THE PRINCIPAL CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH CONTRIBUTED TO ESTABLISH OR FAVOUR THE EXTRAORDINARY POWER OP POPES AND COUNCILS OVER SOVEREIGNS DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 21. How to form an impartial Judgment of our Ancestors and of their Intentiont. To judge of our ancestors impartially, as a judicious historian observes, we must not measure their acts by our present manners and ideas; we must transport ourselves to the times in whichthey lived, and reflect on their political institutions, their principles of legislation, and their government.i It may be confidently asserted, that forgetfulness of this principle is one of the most ordinary causes of the false estimates formed by so many modern authors, of the principal events, and of the most celebrated characters in history, both ancient and modern. Hence arise, especially, the different judgments pronounced in those latter times on the conduct of popes and councils to sovereigns in the middle ages. On this, as on so many other points, they could have avoided a mass of errors and of hateful declamations, had they been better acquainted with the political institutions of the middle ages, and with the state of society during that period. i Some readers may perhaps, at first sight, be surprised at the order adopted in this second part, aud they may regret not having the facts connected with it stated, as in the first part, in chronological order. This observation having been made to us by some persons to whom we had submitted our work, we made several attempts to modify our plan accord...