The Popes aspired--as Gregory VII and Innocent III repeatedly state--to
control the temporal as well as the spiritual affairs of Europe, to
transfer crowns when they thought fit, to direct invasions and military
expeditions against any who questioned their authority. Hildebrand
boasts (_Ep._ vii, 23) that, when William of Normandy sent envoys to ask
Pope Alexander to sanction his unscrupulous invasion of England, and the
Papal Court was itself too sensible of the enormity to give its
sanction, he (Hildebrand) overbore the wavering Pope and forced him to
bless the enterprise; and, when he had in his turn mounted the Papal
throne, he vehemently claimed that his action had made England a fief
for ever of the Holy See! Gregory VII and Innocent III are the two
greatest and most sincerely religions of the medieval Popes, and they
carried the power of the Papacy to a height which excites the amazement
of the modern historian. But they were at the same time the most
militant of the Popes, and on the least provocation they set
armies--even the most barbaric and ferocious troops in Europe--in motion
to carry out their imperial commands. They arrogated the power of
deposing monarchs, and thus encouraged civil war and the ambitions of
neighbouring kings.
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