Eustace, John Cretwode: A classical tour through Italy An. MDCCCII (Vol. 3): 3. ed., rev. and enl (London: J. Mawman, 1815)

Ch. VI.

THROUGH ITALY.

229

Rome indeed seems to owe her existence to her
Pontiffs, and had not the chair of St. Peter re-
placed the throne of the Caesars, and the seat of
empire become the sanctuary of religion, Rome
would probably have sunk into a heap of uninha-
bited ruins, and left to posterity nothing more
than the whistling of a mighty name.
From the re-establishment of the Western
Empire to the tenth century the Popes employed
their influence in opposing the growing power of
the Saracens, and in protecting the coasts of Italy
and the Capital itself against the predatory in-
cursions of those barbarians. Shortly after com-
menced their contests with the German Caesars,
contests which arose more perhaps from Roman
pride and a rooted hatred to Transalpine, that is,
in their eyes, barbarian domination, than from
prelatical arrogance; thecause to which they are
very generally and very confidently attributed.
That such arrogance existed is indeed sufficiently
evident, and that it operated as a very active
principle is equally clear; but it may be ques-
tioned whether the insolent claims of universal
dominion advanced by Gregory VII. did not ori-
ginate as much from the lofty spirit of the Ro-
man as from the ambition of the Pontiff. Cer-
tain it is, that this extraordinary personage seem-
ed better formed to fill the imperial throne than