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

TEMPORAL JURISDICTION OF BISHOPS.CUrous rich benefices ; but the rigour with which he insistedupon his riirht to nominate to the livings he had endowedbetrayed the motives that prompted this great liberality.Abbots and bishops were exalted to the rank of barons anddukes, and invested with jurisdiction over extensive territo-.ries. " The bishoprics of Germany," says Gibbon, " weremade equal in extent and privilege, superior in wealth andpopulation, to the most ample states of the military order."*" Baronial, and even ducal rights," says Ranke, " were heldin Germany by the bishops and abbots of the empire, notwithin their own possessions only, but even beyond them.Ecclesiastical estates were no longer described as situatedin certain counties, but these counties were described assituated in the bishopricks. In upper Italy, nearly all thecities were governed by the viscounts of their bishops. ""f*Military service was exacted of these ecclesiastical barons,in return for the possessions which they held ; and not unfrequentlydid bishops appear at the head of their armedvassals, with lance in hand and harness on their backs.They were, moreover, addicted to the chase, of which theGermans in all ages have been passionately fond, and forwhich their vast forests have afforded ample scope. " Rudeas the Germans of the middle ages were," observes Dunham," to see a successor of St Peter hallooing after his dogscertainly struck them as incongruous.Yet the bishops, invirtue of their fiefs, were compelled to send their vassals tothe field;and no doubt they considered as somewhat inconsistent,a system which commanded them to kill men, but notbeasts." JThe acquisition of wealthin the growth of the Papacy.formed an important elementThe Roman law did not permitlands to be held on mortmain ; nevertheless the emperorswinked at the possession by the Church of immoveablepossessions, whose revenues furnished stipends to her pas-* Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. ix. p. 212. + Ranke, vol. i. p. 17.t Dunham's Europe during the Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 100.