Earle Cairnes, Ph.D.: Christianity through the Centuries: Ch. 21--Zenith...

21. The Zenith of Papal Power, 227-237. Papal supremacy was at a zenith, 1054-1305. Hildebrand (Gregory VII), Innocent III, Crusades, universities and scholastic reforms, and clerical subjects (without families) strengthened the monarchialist, imperialistic, and idolatrous urges of the lil’ fellas of Rome. ISSUE: the Pope was the Sun and the kings of nation-states/nations were the Moon, basking in the Sunlight and effulgent powers of Papal prestige, glory and reflecting Papal autocracy, dominion and imperialism. Can anyone spell IDOLATRY? Hildebrand (G7), elected 1073, had Dictatus Papae in his papers. The Pontiff “alone could be called universal and that his feet should be kissed “by all princes.” He could “depose Emperors.” The 22^nd article of his Dictator-document blasphemed by saying the Pope and Romish Church could never err. (BTW, they had already deposed and tossed the Greeks in 1054). England, Hungary, Spain, Russia, Germany and elsewhere—their Kings, as tiny moons, derived their authority and glory from the Sun-Pope. Henry IV got a brutal lesson in 1077 at Canossa after a few national interdicts—churches closed, no extreme unction for the sick and dying, and no funerals in consecrated ground. Gratian’s Decretum in 1148 laid Roman civil law as the predicate for Roman canon law that centralized government, a point not lost on the Roman Imperialist. Innocent III (1161-1261) followed similarly.