The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

RISE OF THE GERMAN POWER. 67and averted its otherwise inevitable fate. It did not suitthe designs of the German emperors that the Papacy shouklsuffer a premature extinction. It might be turned, theywere not slow to perceive, to great account in the way ofconsolidating and extending their own imperial dignity, andtherefore they strove to reform, not destroy, Rome. Theyrescued the chair of Peter from its worst foes, its occupants.They deposed several popes notorious for their vices, andexalted others of purer morals to the pontifical dignity.*Thus the Papacy had found a new master; for Otho and hisdescendants were as much the liege lords of the popedom asthe monarchs of the Carlovingian line had been.-f- Thepopes were now obliged to surrender the powers they hadusurped during the time that the imperial sceptre was inthe feeble hands of the last of the posterity of Charlemagne.In particular, the rights of which Charles the Bald had beenstripped were now given back.j The emperors again nominatedthe pope.§ When a vacancy occurred in the chairof St Peter,envoys from Rome announced the fact at thecourt of the emperor, and waited the signification of his willrespecting a successor. This substantial right of interferingwhen a new pope was to be elected, which the emperorspossessed, was very inadequately balanced by the empty andnominal power enjoyed by the popes, of placing the imperialcrown on the emperor's head. " The prince elected inthe German Diet," says Gibbon, " acquired from that instantthe subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome ; but hemight not legally assume the titles of Emperor and Augustus,till he had received the crown from the hands of theRoman pontiff,"II—a sanction that could be withheld withdifficulty so long as the emperor was master of Rome andher popes. But the intimate union now existing between* Sismondi's Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. ii. p. 244. ; Lond. 1834.+ Ranke, vol. i. p. 18. J Ilallam, vol. i. p. 538.§ Ranke, vol. i. chap. i. sec. iii.IIGibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. ix, pp. 193, 194.