Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/243

Rh to give a short and easy method of avoiding wars so far as the king of France is concerned; and for this purpose, the author holds, the best thing for society would be that the whole world should be subject to French rule. For, he explains, it is a peculiar merit of the French to have a surer judgement than other nations, not to act without consideration, nor to place themselves in opposition to right reason. To reap the full advantage of the arrangement it is necessary moreover that the king should be born and bred in France, because experience teaches that there the stars present themselves under a better aspect and exercise a happier influence than in other countries.

These postulates being granted, du Bois proceeds to indicate the steps by which the desirable result might be attained. He concedes the right of the papacy to all the territories comprised in the grant of Constantine, but adds that it is plainly beyond the power of the pope to carry his rights into effect. Being commonly an old and infirm person, and since he is not and cannot be a soldier, his very position is an incitement to the ambition of wicked men. Wars therefore are stirred up; numbers of princes are condemned by the church with their adherents, and thus there die more people than one can count, whose souls probably go down into hell and whom nevertheless it is the pope's duty to guard and to preserve from all danger. If however he should surrender his temporal domain, he would be all the freer to devote himself to the proper functions of his office, and a main cause of strife would be removed. But the means by which our speculator proposes to secure this end shew with singular directness how entirely the papacy had come to be regarded, not as a spiritual power standing apart from and above the temporal polity of Europe, but as a state to be treated with like any other state. The diplomatic agency, we read, of the king of Sicily might be employed to obtain from the church the title of senator of Rome for the French king, who should receive the holy patrimony, the city of Rome, Tuscany, the coasts and the mountains,