Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/311

 Popes, Emperors, and Princes in the Middle Ages 223 of its members. It enjoyed, in addition to the revenue from its vast tracts of lands and a great variety of fees, the income from a regular tax, the tithe. Those upon whom this fell were forced to pay it, just as we all must now pay taxes imposed by the government. 3. It is clear, moreover, that the medieval Church was not merely a religious body, as churches are today. Of course it maintained places of worship, conducted devotional exercises, and cultivated the religious life ; but it did far more. It was, in a way, a State, for it had an elaborate system of law and its own courts, in which it tried many cases which are now settled in our ordinary courts. One may get some idea of the business of the Church courts from the fact that the Church possessed the right to try all cases in which a clergyman was implicated, or anyone connected with the Church or under its special protection, such as monks, students, crusaders, widows, orphans, and the helpless. Then all cases where the rites of the Church, or its prohibitions, were involved came ordinarily before the Church courts, as, for example, those concerning marriage, wills, sworn contracts, usury, blasphemy, sorcery, heresy, and so forth. The Church even had its prisons, to which it might sentence offenders for life, if they were convicted of serious heresy. 4. The Church not only performed the functions of a State, it had the organization of a State. Unlike the Protestant min- isters of today, all churchmen and religious associations of medie- val Europe were under one supreme head, the Pope, who made laws for all, and controlled every church officer, wherever he might be, whether in Italy or Germany, Spain or Ireland. The whole Church had one official language, Latin, in which all com- munications were written and in which its services were every- where conducted. The control of the Pope over all parts of the Christian Church was exercised by his legates. These papal ambassadors were in- trusted with great powers. Their haughty mien sometimes of- fended the prelates and rulers to whom they brought home the authority of the Pope.