of their royal power, to oppress or overawe it.-Now then, in looking at the list given in my fourth Chapter, we may mark three of the ten kings as thus characterized.1 First the Vandals, as rulers, within the Roman Bishop's own diocese, of Corsica and Sardinia; secondly the Ostrogoths, the successors of Odoacer in the kingdom of Italy: and thirdly, the Lombards: which last although in the year A.D. 533 referred to far distant in Pannonia, were some 30 or 40 years after destined to conquer Lombardy, and afterwards to extend their conquests to the very neighbourhood of Rome. The manner in which these several powers overawed the Roman Bishops is matter of history. It was such as to make it evident that their removal from before it was essential to the full glory and expansion of the Papal spiritual power. And accordingly their removal constitutes one of the most prominent topics in the next pages of the history of Western Christendom. First, in 533, just after Justinian's decretal Epistle before quoted, the horn of the Vandals in Africa, Corsica, and Sardinia, and presently after, that of the Ostrogoths in Italy, was rooted up by Justinian's forces under Belisarius. After which, and

3

I might cite three that were eradicated from before the Pope out of the list first given; viz. the Heruli under Odoacer, the l'andals, and the Ostrogoths. But it is needless; the second list being, as I believe, the true one. Moreover, though the neighbourhood of Odoacer could not but be unpleasant to the Pope, he does not appear to have overawed him, like Theodoric or the Lombards. A Letter from Pope Gelasius, of the date 494, speaks of having successfully resisted Odoacer's wishes on certain ecclesiastical matters: "Odoacro barbaro hæretico, cùm aliqua non facienda præciperet, Deo præstante, nulla tenus permississe manifestum est." Hard. ii. 914.-Other expositors (as Peyrani, the Vaudois minister, in his Work on the Vaudois, p. 54) have supposed the Herulian, Ostrogothic, and Lombard horns to be the three meant. But they were not cotemporarily existent as horns of the Beast. The Herulian had been destroyed, ere the Lombard had risen within the limits of the Roman Empire. 2 See p. 121, Note7 suprà.

3 Theodoric made his own approbation essential to the election of the Pope; summoned Councils (as that of Rome to examine the charges against Symmachus) by his own authority; and, on one occasion at least, personally oppressed the Pope. See Gibbon vii. 42.—The landal kings were not only Arians, but persecutors of the Catholics in Sardinia and Corsica under the Roman episcopate, we may presume, as well as in Africa. (See the Treatise of Victor Vitensis on the subject; which is further illustrated by the exile of the African Bishops, noted by me Vol. ii. p. 213, and in Hard. ii. 1055.) Their coast attacks too on Italy, and taking and sacking of Rome, are events notorious.-Of the let and hindrance of the Lombards, Pope Stephen's Letter to Pepin, referred to Note 5, in the next page, sufficiently tells the tale.

the establishment of the Greek Exarchate at Ravenna, (a power that can never properly, I conceive, be reckoned among the ten horns of the prophetic Beast, emerging as the latter are said to have done, one and all, out of the Barbarian invading flood,)' the Lombards came in ; just as if to neutralize the Greek Emperor's power in that country, and prevent its domineering over the Pope at Rome, so as over the Patriarch at Constantinople: and for some years so divided the empire of Italy with them, as to allow of Gregory the Great and others acting independently the part of King, as well as of Pope, at Rome.3 At length in the course of the 8th century, the Lombard power altogether preponderating, and after the conquest of the Exarchate A.D. 752, acting like its predecessors in Italy to overawe the Roman See, the assistance of the Franks was called in by Popes Stephen II and Adrian I, from their devoted Gaulic province. And then the Lombard Horn was eradicated through the instrumentality of Pepin and Charlemagne, just like those of the Vandals and the Ostrogoths previously, never again to

1 The Reader will doubtless be aware that the three horns plucked up, are by Sir I. Newton, Bishop Newton, and many others, interpreted as the Lombard power, the Greek Exarchate, and the Dukedom of Rome under the Exarchate. Indeed Mr. Brooks (p. 431) says; "The three horns plucked up are with tolerable unanimity declared to be Rome, Lombardy," (i. e. districts of) " and Ravenna ; which have now formed the Papal territories for more than 1000 years." But besides that the Exarchate and the Dukedom of Rome, instead of being two of the original ten horns of the Beast that rose out of the Gothic inundation, had their origin from quite a different source, and, in respect of time, were not even in existence at the rise of the Beast,-besides this, the Dukedom of Rome, being the dependency of a dependency, could never, I conceive, be properly considered a horn.

2 That the inclination thus to domineer was not wanting to the Greeks, and would have exerted itself had there been sufficient power to support it, appears from the indignities heaped on the Pope by Belisarius in the year A.D. 537. See Gibbon vii. 238. Similar indignities were offered in 544 and 653 to the Popes Vigilius and Martin by the Greek Emperors, through their Exarchs. Wadd. 162. 3 Gibbon, viii. 171, speaks of Gregory's temporal reign as well described by Sigonius.

In this the weakness of the Exarchate the Greek Emperors courted, rather than attempted to oppress, the Popes. Thus A.D. 684 they formally abandoned the Imperial privilege of confirming the Papal election, exercised since Theodoric; (Encycl. Metrop. Hist. C. 53;) and 30 years after offered them homage; as will be seen under the next Section. Mosheim, viii. 2. 2. 2, a little modifies the statement.

5 The Pope's Letter of application to Pepin was written in the name of St. Peter saying that Peter and all the martyrs were interested in the deliverance of Rome from the Lombards.

1

be heard of in Christendom: and the Exarchate of Ravenna, together with other of the Lombard conquests, attached for ever to the Roman See, under the very singular appellation of the Patrimony of Peter.2

It was, perhaps, to be inferred from the circumstance of the ten-horned Beast constituting the characteristic symbol of the Popedom for the fated 1260 years, that (except in what is elsewhere said of the tenth of the great city falling) the number of Western kingdoms subject to the Papal Head would, notwithstanding this triple eradication, be yet by additions or changes made up from time to time to its original complement: only so as that none should, like the eradicated three, oppress by immediate neighbourhood and superior force the Papal power.

1 The Exarchate included the territories of Ravenna, Bologna, and Ferrara. Dependent on it was the Pentapolis; which extended along the coast from Rimini to Ancona, and into the interior as far as the ridges of the Apennines. Gib. ch. 49.

2 The donation by Pepin was made A.D. 755; its confirmation and enlargement by Charlemagne, A. D. 774. In 816 Louis I confirmed the gift of "the Dukedom of Rome."

On Pepin's and Charlemagne's donations the account in Sir I. Newton, ch. viii, is full and interesting. He notices (p. 91) a piece of mosaic still existing, he says, at Rome, as late as the sixteenth century, which Pope Leo III caused to be made in his palace near the Church of St. John Lateran, in memory of his sending the banner of Rome to Charlemagne : in which mosaic Peter appeared with three keys in his lap, reaching the pallium to the Pope with his right hand, and with his left the banner of Rome to Charlemagne. And he interprets the three keys, as the keys of the three parts of his patrimony; viz. Rome with its Duchy, Ravenna with the Exarchate, and the territories taken from the Lombards. He also adds, "These were the three dominions whose crowns are now worn by the Pope."

But there seems to be no certainty in what he says either about the crowns or the keys. Muratori's account of the mosaic (Annali d'Ital. ad ann. 798) speaks of it as representing St. Peter giving the pallium to a Pope kneeling, viz. Leo; and a banner to a king kneeling, viz. Charlemagne : but he says not a word of the three keys in Peter's lap; nor, in the absence of any parallel and corroborating representation, (for where else is Peter seen with three, not two keys?) does it seem safe to trust the impression of certain antiquaries as to an obscure, perhaps half-effaced, part of an old mosaic. Such is Muratori's judgment. "Non si puo con sicurezza trovare la luce vera in mezzo a siffatte tenebre."-As to the three crowns of the Papal tiara, though said by some with Sir I. N. to represent the three States of the Church, yet the circumstance of the first being not assumed on the Episcopal mitre till about 1160 by Alexander III, the second by Boniface VIII as late as the year 1300, (in token, it is said, of temporal as well as spiritual dominion,) and the third soon after by Benedict XII, as Gibbon represents it, or, as Ducange (Supplement on Regnum) and Ferrario (ii. 428,) by Urban V,-it seems to me very questionable whether this third might not have been added, as other writers have said, in token of the Papal prophetic character, as well as that of Priest and King.

4

Apoc. xi. 13. See my Vol. ii. p. 420, &c.

And this was very much the case. For first the Kingdom of Naples, which grew up in the middle age under Norman rule, and included both Southern Italy and Sicily,' -the representative in a manner, on that part of their territory, of the earlier Ostrogoths, was held as a direct fief from the Pope. Next Sardinia, recovered from Saracen rule by the Pisans, fell at length, but also as a Papal Fief, to the devoted Princes of Savoy.3 Again, in North Italy Lombardy came under the government of a friendly Frank or German Emperor, residing far away beyond the Alps; at least one friendly till the Popes were strong enough to brave his hostility. Meanwhile Central Italy, from sea to sea, continued still immediately under Papal rule. Moreover, with regard to the extent of the Papal subject kingdoms, the diminution through Saracen invasion was very much made up by the conquests of Charlemagne, Otho, and other sons of the Church, in northern and central Germany. For all these conquests became spiritually subject to the Roman See.

§ II. -THE BEAST'S PRIDE, SELF-EXALTATION, BLAS

PHEMIES, AND OPPRESSION OF THE SAINTS, AS FULFILLED IN THE FULL-GROWN PAPAL ANTICHRIST.

I have in the preceding Section sketched the Popedom in its first anti-christian development and early growth; and both in the various circumstantials attending it, and its pretensions as even thus early put forth, have traced its exact correspondence with the Apocalyptic Beast, and Antichrist of other cognate prophecies:-its occasion of development then when the old Imperial Roman Go

1 This was after a century or two of disorganization; it which the state of South Italy, divided into baronies, says Müller, resembled that of the Homeric age: adding that the Pope, though too weak himself to unite it, had yet strength enough to prevent its union under another Head.

2 A.D. 1053. So Gibbon, x. 270: "A tribute or quit-rent of twelve-pence was stipulated for every plough-land: and since this memorable transaction, the kingdom of Naples has remained above 700 years a fief of the Holy See."-A white horse was also annually sent to Rome in token of homage.

3 Ranke in his History of the Popes, iii. 190, speaks of Sicily and Sardinia as still in A.D. 1700 looked on as Papal Fiefs. 4 See p. 123 suprà.

vernment had been removed out of the way; its local seat the seven hills of Rome; its constituency the ten Romano-Gothic kingdoms of the revived Western Empire; its ruling head an emσKOTOs, or Bishop, with eyes as the eyes of a man :-which Bishop, like Judas, traitor and apostate, (indeed the head as well as product of the long previously progressing apostacy,) held out, as the actual basis of his authority, the very profession of being, with unlimited and only self-cognizable authority, Christ's one appointed Vicar on earth; a translation in terms of the prophetic word ANTICHRIST.-Pursuing the subject we shall, I doubt not, find all else that was predicted of the Antichrist, as to both what he was to be, and what to do, after his manifestation, fulfilled in the later Papal history. Nor let me further delay entering on it, except to remind the reader that thus far the characteristic points noted from prophecy have been mostly admitted, indeed insisted on, as applicable to the Popedom by Papal writers themselves. I subjoin an illustration or two below.1

1 On its seven-hilled seat, or its constituency of the Western Kingdoms, it is needless to exemplify. I will therefore do so only on the two other points which most may seem to need it; viz. 1st, the fact of the removal of the old Roman Government having facilitated, and indeed been a necessary preliminary to, the establishment of the Popedom: 2nd, the fact of the Roman sacerdotal order and head answering to Daniel's symbol of the horn with eyes as the eyes of a man.

1. As to the removal of the old Roman Government, I shall cite two Romish writers; viz. Damian, a celebrated Monk of the time of Hildebrand, and the orator of the tenth Session of the 5th Lateran Council. The former puts these remarkable words into the mouth of Jesus Christ, as addressing the Pope : "Ego claves totius universalis ecclesiæ tuis manibus tradidi, et super eam te mihi Vicarium posui: et, si pauca sunt ista, etiam monarchias tradidi. Immo, sublato rege de medio, totius Romani imperii vacantis tibi jura permisi." (The passage is quoted by Hallam, Mid. A. ii. 275).—The latter (Harduin ix. 1789) thus speaks of Constantine's removal of his imperial seat to Byzantium. "Constantinus à divinâ gratiâ afflatus, sceptrum imperii orbis et urbis vero Creatori Deo, et homini in sede suâ Romanà Silvestro, Pontifici Maximo in jure primavo Christi, æterni sacerdotis, plenè cessit; aliamque sedem concessione Apostolicâ quæsivit, et sub obedientiâ sedis Apostolicæ in Byzantio erexit."*-In which statement there is a reference, I presume, to the famous forged Decretals of Constantine.

2. "With eyes as the eyes of a man."-The symbol is used generally of the * Protestant writers also note this. So e. g. Dean Waddington. In his sketch of the rise of the Papal supremacy he notices, as one of its three principal instrumental causes, the removal of the civil Government from Rome to Ravenna by the Emperor Honorius: the other two being, 1st, The Pope's dignity as Patriarch of the West; 2. the Popes grounding their primacy, not on the circumstance of Rome being the Imperial City, but on their being successors to Peter, and with the power of the keys; that same that I have at large dwelt upon under the former Section of this Chapter.-Let me add that Pareus too notes the effect of