With the confirmation and consolidation of these estates into a kingdom
under Charlemagne in the ninth century the Papacy completed its moral
aberration. Most of the Popes were still men of good character, and they
no doubt persuaded themselves that, since the income of these estates
was needed for the fulfilment of their spiritual task, it was proper to
defend them by the sword. But casuistry of this kind has never prospered
indefinitely, and few historians will doubt that this temporal
development led directly to that degradation of the Papacy which
rendered it unfit to exercise moral influence on Europe. The Papacy
became a princedom to attract the covetous and the ambitious, and the
line of Popes sank so low by the tenth century that the grossest
characters were able to occupy the chair of Peter at a time when the
nations of Europe were sufficiently advanced to be susceptible of a
sincere moral influence. The record of the Papacy, from the ninth
century to the nineteenth, contains on almost every page a bloody
struggle for the temporal power. The most religious and most eminent of
the Popes, such as Gregory VII and Innocent III, were the most prompt to
set in motion the machinery of war in defence of their territories or in
punishment of rebels against their authority.
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