Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/183

Rh diction in Rome under the Othos. Excommunication and intrigue were their sole arms; and even when, in an age of anarchy, they became the real sovereigns, they never dared to assume the title. I defy the astutest of those fabricators of titles who abound in your court to find a single one in which the pope is described as prince by the grace of God. A strange princedom, when one fears to avow it!

The imperial cities of Germany, which have bishops, are free; and you, Romans, are not. The archbishop of Cologne has not even the right to sleep in that city; and your pope will hardly allow you to sleep in your own. The sultan of the Turks is far less despotic at Constantinople than the pope has become at Rome.

You perish miserably in the shade of superb colonnades. Your noble and faded paintings, and your dozen gems of ancient sculpture, bring you neither a good dinner nor a good bed. The opulence is for your masters: the indigence is for you. The lot of a slave among the ancient Romans was a hundred times better than yours. He might acquire a large fortune; you are born serfs, you die serfs, and the only oil you have is that of the Last Anointing. Slaves in body and in soul, your tyrants do not even allow you to read, in your own tongue, the book on which they say your religion is founded.

Awake, Romans, at the call of liberty, truth, and nature. The cry rings over Europe. You must hear it. Break the chains that bind your generous hands—the chains forged by tyranny in the den of imposture.