History of Rome in the Middle Ages. By Ferdinand Gregorovins.
Translated by Annie Hamilton. Vol. IV., Parts I. and II. (G. Belt and Sons.)—Herr Gregorovins carries on in this volume, divided, for convenience' sake, into two parts, the history of Rome up to the end of the twelfth century. A period of about two hundred years is included in its scope ; the first of these two centuries is noticeable for the contrast, greater, as the author remarks, than any to be found elsewhere in history, between the Papal power at its worst and at its best. Who could have imagined it possible that the dignity that had been degraded by the boy-Pope Benedict IX., should have risen to the grandeur which it bore under Gregory VII. ? Yet between the abdication of Benedict, or rather his sale of St. Peter's Chair to Gregory VI., and the accession of Hildebrand, little more than a quarter of a century intervenes. The abuses of the time did not, as a matter of fact, shock the moral and religious sense of the age as much as one would have expected. King Canute paid a visit to Rome at a time (1027) when things, if not quite at their worst, were not far from it. Yet the sanctity of the place did not fail to impress him. The religio loci, as he says in his remarkable " Letter to the English People," made him resolve to rule thenceforward his people justly, and to atone for the sins of his youth by the judg- ment of his riper years. It was well for the world that it was so. Rome was corrupt, but Christendom could not do without it. But surely it is difficult to believe that the succession could have passed unimpaired through a profligate boy of twelve. What would Roman theologians have said if one of the prelates who con- secrated Parker had been such a creature as Benedict IX. ?
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