Dark Freedom: The Rise of Western Lawlessness - Chapter Six

Dark Freedom: The Rise of Western Lawlessness - Chapter Six

by C.W. Steinle

Copyright 2015 by C.W. Steinle

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Part II - The Legacy of the Manmade Church
The Kingdoms of the World and Their Glory

"The devil took Jesus up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.  And he said to Him, ‘All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.’" – Matt. 4:8-9

By the early fifteenth century the claim of unlimited power over the whole earth by the Bishop of Rome compelled Laurentius Valla to conclude that Peter (referring to the Papacy) had taken the devil up on his offer.  The city of Rome's place as the ruler of the world had been lost when Constantine moved the capital to New Rome, but the Church provided Old Rome with a vehicle by which she might regain her title.  Her ultimate control over Europe was accomplished through methodical spiritual and temporal encroachments.

Christianity had spread as far as England by the end of the second century.  Constantine's Christian mother, Helena, and Constantine himself, were from England.  Furthermore, the Gaelic and Irish isles were not only converted to the faith in the early centuries, they had sent missionaries deep into Europe and established churches and monasteries long before Rome's bid for the primacy.  Rome refused to acknowledge that any Christian community outside of its own authority was part of the true Church.  Thus these long-established churches were destroyed or confiscated as Rome's territory enlarged, and their ministers were treated as heretics.

As the Northern Tribes invaded the Western Empire, many of these nations and their leaders converted to Christianity.  Soon the Bishops of Rome gained control of these national leaders by threatening them, and their nations, with spiritual retributions.  The struggle for power between the Church and the State continued into the seventeenth century.  The most important development of the nation-states during this period was the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire.

During the eighth century an Anglo-Saxon missionary who came to be known as Saint Boniface was stirred by the Lord to evangelize the Franco-Germanic area of Europe.  Boniface understood the necessity of coming under the auspices of Rome.  After spending some time at Rome, and having been accepted as an approved ambassador of the faith, Boniface journeyed to Northern Europe and experienced great success.  The Frankish prince Charles Martel had just defeated a formidable army of Muslims.  The massive Muslim cavalry was defeated at the Battle of Tours in 732.  His remarkable victory gained him the recognition as the power behind the Frankish kingdom.  Charles was an admirer of Saint Boniface and desired to promote the cause of Christianity.  Charles' son, Pepin the Short, was acknowledged by Rome as the king of the Franks.

Because Rome had already been conquered once by the Lombards, she sought an alliance with a militia of sufficient strength to act as her protectorate.  The Franks became that covering, and by way of the successful expansion of Pepin's son, Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire was formed.  After the death of Charlemagne, the cohesiveness of the Empire was lost.  Soon the Frankish kingdom was fighting against the Germans and other tribal nation-states.  The Roman Church insisted on approving, or even appointing, the kings of the various nations, and often openly favored the Franks over the other members of the Holy Roman Empire.

In the meantime, the claims of authority by the papacy as God’s uniquely appointed agent for the government of mankind were pushed to the limit.  Beginning with Innocent III., it became customary for the pope to speak of himself as the vicar of Christ and the vicar of God.  He was henceforth exclusively addressed as "holiness" or "most holy."  A papal bull by Pope Boniface VIII stated that there was no salvation outside the Roman Catholic Church: "Furthermore, that every human creature is subject to the Roman pontiff, - this we declare, say, define, and pronounce to be altogether necessary to salvation."⁶³

Aegidius Colonna was a tract writer contending for the authority of the papacy in opposition to the laity, who were beginning to vocalize their objections to the overreaching powers claimed by the papacy.  Aegidius made the bold assertion that the pope may himself be called "the Church."

The pope judges all things and is judged by no man, 1 Cor. 2:15.  To him belongs all plenary power, plenitudo potestatis.  This power is without measure, without number, and without weight.  It extends over all Christians.  The pope is above all laws and in matters of faith infallible.  He is like the sea which fills all vessels, like the sun which, as the universally active principle, sends his rays into all things.  The priesthood existed before royalty.  Abel and Noah, priests, preceded Nimrod, who was the first king.  As the government of the world is one and centres in one ruler, God, so in the affairs of the militant Church there can be only one source of power, one supreme government, one head to whom belongs the plenitude of power.  This is the supreme pontiff. The priesthood and the papacy are of immediate divine appointment.  Earthly kingdoms, except as they have been established by the priesthood, owe their origin to usurpation, robbery, and other forms of violence.

In the second part of his tract, Aegidius proves that, in spite of Numb. 18:20, 21, and Luke 10:4, the Church has the right to possess worldly goods.  The Levites received cities.  In fact, all temporal goods are under the control of the Church.  As the soul rules the body, so the pope rules over all temporal matters.  The tithe is a perpetual obligation.  No one has a right to the possession of a single acre of ground or a vineyard without the Church's permission and unless he be baptized.

The fullness of power, residing in the pope, gives him the right to appoint to all benefices in Christendom, but, as God chooses to rule through the laws of nature, so the pope rules through the laws of the Church, but he is not bound by them.  He may himself be called the Church.  For the pope's power is spiritual, heavenly and divine. [Summarization of tract called Power of the Supreme Pontiff by Aegidius.]⁶⁴

By the thirteenth century, with most of Europe under submission, the Papacy broadened its aspirations and began to boast that Peter was the ruler of the world.  As such, Rome was entitled to manipulate kingdoms and to override the laws of every nation.  All the lands of the earth belonged to the pope.

England, Poland, Norway, and Sweden, Portugal, Aragon, Naples, Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, not to speak of portions of Central Italy, were in this period, for a longer or shorter time, fiefs of the apostolic see.  In 1299, the same claim was made over Scotland.  The nations from Edessa to Scotland and from Castile to Riga were reminded that Rome was the throbbing centre of divinely bequeathed authority.  The islands of the West were its to bestow.  To Peter was given, so Innocent wrote, not only the universal Church, but the whole earth that he might rule it.  His practice, as we have seen, followed his pen.  There was a time when the pope recognized the superior authority of the emperor, as did Gregory the Great in 593.  Peter Damiani, writing in the age of Gregory VII., recognized the distinction and coordination of the two swords and the two realms.  But another conception took its place, the subordination of all civil authority under the pope.  To depose princes, to absolve subjects from allegiance, to actively foment rebellion as against Frederick II., to divert lands as in Southern France, to give away crowns, to extort by threat of the severest ecclesiastical penalties the payment of tribute, to punish religious dissenters with perpetual imprisonment or turn them over to the secular authorities, knowing death would be the punishment, to send and consecrate crusading armies, and to invade the realm of the civil court, usurp its authority, and annul a nation's code, as in the case of Magna Charta, - these were the high prerogatives actually exercised by the papacy.  .  .  Now and then the wearers of the tiara were defeated, but they never ceased to insist upon the divine claims of their office.  In vain did emperors, like Frederick II., appeal to the Scriptures as giving no countenance to the principle that popes have the right to punish kings and deprive them of their kingdoms.⁶⁵

Tithes were prescribed by the laws of Moses to support the priests and to fund the religious services.  But the prophet Samuel warned the Children of Israel when they asked for a king that a king would place additional demands on the people.  What Samuel had not mentioned was that, among mortals, there lies the potential for either good or bad character.  King Saul was immediate proof that even a mortal under God's anointing is not exempt from the corruption of man's fallen nature.  This mortal malfunction was further magnified in the kings of Israel and Judah who followed King David.  Far more of these kings did evil in the sight of the Lord than did right by following after their father David.

Likewise, those men who presumptuously seated themselves on the throne of Christ's Church became especially vulnerable to the failings of the flesh.  The debaucheries of the Bishops of Rome plumbed the depths of human depravity.  Their detestable behavior, their ignorance of God's Word, and the lowliness of their character was freely acknowledged, even among the clergy of the Roman Church; and even to the point that some popes were accused of being antichrist.  Hundreds of years of these dysfunctional popes might be presented; but the examples below will suffice to justify the cries for religious and civil reform - the discussion of our next chapter.

The political disorder of Europe affected the church and paralyzed its efforts for good.  The papacy itself lost all independence and dignity, and became the prey of avarice, violence, and intrigue, a veritable synagogue of Satan.  It was dragged through the quagmire of the darkest crimes, and would have perished in utter disgrace had not Providence saved it for better times.  Pope followed pope in rapid succession, and most of them ended their career in deposition, prison, and murder.  The rich and powerful marquises of Tuscany and the Counts of Tusculum acquired control over the city of Rome and the papacy for more than half a century.  And what is worse (incredibile, attamen verum), three bold and energetic women of the highest rank and lowest character, Theodora the elder (the wife or widow of a Roman senator), and her two daughters, Marozia and Theodora filled the chair of St. Peter with their paramours and bastards.  These Roman Amazons combined with the fatal charms of personal beauty and wealth, a rare capacity for intrigue, and a burning lust for power and pleasure.  They had the diabolical ambition to surpass their sex as much in boldness and badness as St. Paula and St. Eustachium in the days of Jerome had excelled in virtue and saintliness.  They turned the church of St. Peter into a den of robbers, and the residence of his successors into a harem.  And they gloried in their shame.  Hence this infamous period is called the papal Pornocracy or Hetaerocracy. 

Some popes of this period were almost as bad as the worst emperors of heathen Rome, and far less excusable.

Sergius III., the lover of Marozia (904-911), opened the shameful succession.  Under the protection of a force of Tuscan soldiers he appeared in Rome, deposed Christopher who had just deposed Leo V., took possession of the papal throne, and soiled it with every vice; but he deserves credit for restoring the venerable church of the Lateran, which had been destroyed by an earthquake in 896 and robbed of invaluable treasures.

After the short reign of two other popes, John X., archbishop of Ravenna, was elected, contrary to all canons, in obedience to the will of Theodora, for the more convenient gratification of her passion (914-928).  He was a man of military ability and daring, placed himself at the head of an army - the first warrior among the popes - and defeated the Saracens.  He announced the victory in the tone of a general.  He then engaged in a fierce contest for power with Marozia and her lover or husband, the Marquis Alberic I.  Unwilling to yield any of her secular power over Rome, Marozia seized the Castle of St. Angelo, had John cast into prison and smothered to death, and raised three of her creatures, Leo VI., Stephen VII. (VIII.), and at last John XI., her own (bastard) son of only twenty-one years, successively to the papal chair (928-936).

After the murder of Alberic I. (about 926), Marozia, who called herself Senatrix and Patricia, offered her hand and as much of her love as she could spare from her numerous paramours, to Guido, Markgrave of Tuscany, who eagerly accepted the prize; and after his death she married king Hugo of Italy, the step-brother of her late husband (932); he hoped to gain the imperial crown, but he was soon expelled from Rome by a rebellion excited by her own son Alberic II., who took offence at his overbearing conduct for slapping him in the face.  She now disappears from the stage, and probably died in a convent.  Her son, the second Alberic, was raised by the Romans to the dignity of Consul, and ruled Rome and the papacy from the Castle of St. Angelo for twenty-two years with great ability as a despot under the forms of a republic (932-954).  After the death of his brother, John XI. (936) he appointed four insignificant pontiffs, and restricted them to the performance of their religious duties.

On the death of Alberic in 954, his son Octavian, the grandson of Marozia, inherited the secular government of Rome, and was elected pope when only eighteen years of age.  He thus united a double supremacy.  He retained his name Octavian as civil ruler, but assumed, as pope, the name John XII., either by compulsion of the clergy and people, or because he wished to secure more license by keeping the two dignities distinct.  This is the first example of such a change of name, and it was followed by his successors.  He completely sunk his spiritual in his secular character, appeared in military dress, and neglected the duties of the papal office, though he surrendered none of its claims.

John XII. disgraced the tiara for eight years (955-963).  He was one of the most immoral and wicked popes, ranking with Benedict IX., John XXIII., and Alexander VI.  He was charged by a Roman Synod, no one contradicting, with almost every crime of which depraved human nature is capable, and deposed as a monster of iniquity. 

Among the charges of the Synod against him were. . . . that he had mutilated a priest, that he had set houses on fire, like Nero, that he had committed homicide and adultery, had violated virgins and widows high and low, lived with his father's mistress, converted the pontifical palace into a brothel, drank to the health of the devil, and invoked at the gambling-table the help of Jupiter and Venus and other heathen demons! . . . .  Before the Synod convened John XII. had made his escape from Rome, carrying with him the portable part of the treasury of St. Peter.  But after the departure of the emperor he was readmitted to the city, restored for a short time, and killed in an act of adultery.⁶⁶

Bishop Arnulf of Orleans gave the following oration during this Synod.  "Looking at the actual state of the papacy, what do we behold?  John [XII.] called Octavian, wallowing in the sty of filthy concupiscence, conspiring against the sovereign whom he had himself recently crowned; then Leo [VIII.] the neophyte, chased from the city by this Octavian; and that monster himself, after the commission of many murders and cruelties, dying by the hand of an assassin.  Next we see the deacon Benedict, though freely elected by the Romans, carried away captive into the wilds of Germany by the new Caesar [Otho I.] and his pope Leo.  Then a second Caesar [Otho II.], greater in arts and arms than the first, succeeds; and in his absence Boniface [VIII], a very monster of iniquity, reeking with the blood of his predecessor, mounts the throne of Peter.  True, he is expelled and condemned; but only to return again, and redden his hands with the blood of the holy bishop John [XIV.].  Are there, indeed, any bold enough to maintain the priests of the Lord over all the world are to take their law from monsters of guilt like these - men branded with ignominy, illiterate men, and ignorant alike of things human and divine?

If, holy fathers, we be bound to weigh in the balance the lives, the morals, and the attainments of the meanest candidate for the sacerdotal office, how much more ought we to look to the fitness of him who aspires to be the lord and master of all priests!  Yet how would it fare with us, if it should happen that the man the most deficient in all these virtues, one so abject as not to be worthy of the lowest place among the priesthood, should be chosen to fill the highest place of all?  What would you say of such a one, when you behold him sitting upon the throne glittering in purple and gold?  Must he not be the 'Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God, and showing himself as God'?  Verily such a one lacketh both wisdom and charity; he standeth in the temple as an image, as an idol, from which as from dead marble you would seek counsel.

But the Church of God is not subject to a wicked pope; nor even absolutely, and on all occasions, to a good one.  Let us rather in our difficulties resort to our brethren of Belgium and Germany than to that city, where all things are venal, where judgment and justice are bartered for gold.  Let us imitate the great church of Africa, which, in reply to the pretensions of the Roman pontiff, deemed it inconceivable that the Lord should have invested any one person with his own plenary prerogative of judicature, and yet have denied it to the great congregations of his priests assembled in council in different parts of the world.  If it be true, as we are informed by common report, that there is in Rome scarcely a man acquainted with letters, - without which, as it is written, one may scarcely be a doorkeeper in the house of God, - with what face may he who hath himself learnt nothing set himself up for a teacher of others?  In the simple priest ignorance is bad enough; but in the high priest of Rome, - in him to whom it is given to pass in review the faith, the lives, the morals, the discipline, of the whole body of the priesthood, yea, of the universal church, ignorance is in nowise to be tolerated. . . . Why should he not be subject in judgment to those who, though lowest in place, are his superiors in virtue and in wisdom?  Yea, not even he, the prince of the apostles, declined the rebuke of Paul, though his inferior in place, and, saith the great pope Gregory [I.], 'if a bishop be in fault, I know not any one such who is not subject to the holy see; but if faultless, let every one understand that he is the equal of the Roman pontiff himself, and as well qualified as he to give judgment in any matter.'"⁶⁷

Machiavelli gave this condemnation of the Roman Church.  "We Italians are of all most irreligious and corrupt."   "We are so because the representatives of the Church have shown us the worst example."⁶⁸ The papacy's greed was perhaps at its peak during the 60 year period in which the papal residence was relocated from Rome to Avignon, France.  By the reign of Boniface VIII, the pope, his curia, and the bishops had created several means of increasing their personal wealth.  Two of the most notorious sources of additional income were the Crusades (briefly discussed near the end of the book) and the sale of indulgences.  Bribes for appointments to state and church offices, and even fees for reassigning the clergy to new jurisdictions, required the payment of 'processing' fees.  Sometimes the bishops were relocated for no other reason than to gather more money.  Portions of all of these cash-flows were divided between the Church and the individual ministers involved in each transaction.  The pope and his curia received their own cut from all of these collections.

According to German Church Historian Ferdinand Gregorovius, "Boniface [VIII] was devoid of every apostolical virtue, a man of passionate temper, violent, faithless, unscrupulous, unforgiving, filled with ambitions and lust of worldly power."⁶⁹ Alvarus Pelagius, in his Lament over the Church, wrote:  "No poor man can approach the pope.  He will call and no one will answer, because he has no money in his purse to pay.  Scarcely is a single petition heeded by the pope until it has passed through the hands of middlemen, a corrupt set, bought with bribes, and the officials conspire together to extort more than the rule calls for."⁷⁰ According to Schaff, Pope John XXII, and the Avignon popes who followed him were some of the wealthiest men in Europe.

Gregorovius calls him [John XXII.] the Midas of Avignon.  According to Villani, he left behind him 18,000,000 gold florins and 7,000,000 florins' worth of jewels and ornaments, in all 25,000,000 florins, or $60,000,000 of our present coinage.  Recent investigations seem to cast suspicion upon this long-held view as an exaggeration.  John's hoard may have amounted to not more than 750,000 florins, or $2,000,000 of our money.  If this be a safe estimate, it is still true that John was a shrewd financier and perhaps the richest man in Europe.⁷¹ 

The Roman church would have avoided the guilt of innocent blood if it had heeded the words of Peter, its purported leader, "But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or as a meddler in other people’s affairs." - I Peter 4:15  As it is, the Latin Church can neither deny the charges of murder, the doing of evil, nor the fact that it meddled in the affairs of nations and of empires.  Rome bears the stains from the bloodshed of needless wars, the shed blood of the saints; and the bloodstains of countless souls convicted of heresy merely because of their misinterpretation of the Scriptures, or their reluctance to acknowledge the legitimacy of the apostate Church.

Since the time of the persecutions of the Early Church until the present day, the Church has ignored Daniel's warning that the world and the devil win - until the intervention of the Ancient of Days.  The angel told Daniel that before the end, "the power of the holy people will be completely shattered." - Dan. 12:7  The Church erred at the time of Constantine when it assumed that man should rise up and establish Christ's kingdom on earth.  For almost two thousand years the Church has sought to attain the status of Christ's glorious second coming, instead of submitting to the example of Christ's first coming.  Jesus clearly laid out the life that His followers should expect; to be rejected, handed over to men, to suffer and even die, but then to be raised again to eternal life.  The fallen sin-self hates and rejects this teaching.  But to ignore the words of Christ in this matter is as heretical as any other twisting of the Scripture.

"If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.  If you were of the world, the world would love its own.  Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.  Remember the word that I said to you, 'A servant is not greater than his master.'  If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.  If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.  But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me." - John 15:18-21

"Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake.  And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.  Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.  And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.  But he who endures to the end shall be saved.  And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come." – Matt. 24:9-14

The last two of statements of Martin Luther's The Ninety-Five Theses embody these principles: "94. Christians should be exhorted to strive to follow Christ their head through pains, deaths, and hells; 95. And thus trust to enter heaven through many tribulations, rather than in the security of peace."⁷²

The achievement of absolute power by the papacy, magnificent as it was, represents an ideal utterly at fault, whether we consider the teaching of Scripture or the prevailing judgment of the present time.  Ambitions, pride, avarice, were mingled in popes with a sincere belief that the Roman see inherited from the Apostle plenitude of authority in all realms.  Europe, more enlightened, cannot accept such a claim and the moral degeneracy and spiritual incompetency of the popes, in the period following this, were an experimental proof that the theory was wrong.⁷³ 

The world's reaction to the Church-gone-wrong is the subject of our next chapter.  Just as individual sin, even though forgivable, must often bear the consequences of that sin; even so, the consequences for the sin of claiming to sit in the seat of Christ has not gone unchastened.  Striking the rock in anger disqualified Moses from entering into the Promised Land.  The papal misrepresentation of Christ was an error that altered the course of Western Christianity.  Christians must recognize that retribution from God and through men was to be expected for this most grievous of sins.  Some of the consequences from the catastrophic failure of the Roman Church may well follow the Church into the end of the age.

Dear Christian reader, our Church Fathers have sinned.  May we remember the deeply repentant prayer of Daniel in captivity, and sincerely confess as he did, "O Lord, to us belongs shame of face, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against You." – Dan. 9:8

Merciful Lord, do not hold the sins of our fathers against us.