Page:History of Freedom.djvu/399

 DÖLLINGER ON THE TEMPORAL POWER 355

during their absence that the Italian Republics fell under the tyrannies, and their dominions ,vere divided among a swarm of petty princes. The famous expedition of Cardinal Albornoz put an end to these disorders. He recovered the territories of the Church, and became, by the 'Ægidian Constitutions, which survived for ages, the legislator of Romagna. In 1376 eighty towns rose up in J the space of three days, declared themselves free, or recalled the princes whom Albornoz had expelled. Before they could be reduced, the schism broke out, and the Church learnt the consequences of the decline of the empire, and the disappearance of its advocacy and protectorate over the Holy See. Boniface IX. sold to the republics and the princes, for a sum of money and an annual tribute, the ratification of the rights which they had seized The first great epoch in the history of the temporal power after the schism is the election of Eugenius IV. He swore to observe a statute which had been drawn up in conclave, by }Vhich all vassals and officers of State \vere to swear allegiance to the College of Cardinals in con- junction with the Pope. As he also undertook to abandon to the cardinals half the revenue, he shared in fact his authority with them. This was a new form of government, and a great restriction of the papal power; but it did not long endure. The centrifugal tendency, which broke up Italy into small principalities, had long prevailed, when at last the Popes gave way to it. The first \vas Sixtus IV., who made one of his nephews lord of I mola, and another of Sinigaglia. Alexander VI. subdued all the princes in the States of the Church except the Duke of Montefeltro, and intended to make the whole an hereditary monarchy for his son. But Julius II. recovered all these conquests for the Church, added new ones to them, and thus became, after Innocent III. and Albornoz, the third founder of the Roman State. The age which beheld this restoration was marked in almost every country by the establishment of political unity on the ruins of the