pretext of dispensation is brought forward, as if by a dispensation debauchery could be authorized and the canons violated. Dispensation, if I am not mistaken, is intended to imitate the mercy of God; it extends its hand to the sinner and lifts him up, but it does not permit him to remain in the sin into which he has fallen."
This perfectly just doctrine was not that of Rome. At one time, under pretence of observing the canons, she would throw an entire kingdom into confusion, as under Nicholas I., in relation to the marriage of Hloter; then again she could give dispensation without difficulty in equally important cases. This was because her study was always to establish the principle of her absolute power over laws as well as men. Her will was her law, and the interest of her sovereignty her only rule.
The Patriarch Nicholas felt the consequences of the palace intrigues; he was banished and again reïnstated. Peace was finally reëstablished in 920, by an imperial decree which again recognized the discipline for which Nicholas had suffered persecution. This Patriarch wrote to Pope John X. to renew friendly relations between the churches of Rome and Constantinople. But John X. was more engrossed by his adulterous amours with Theodora, Marozia's sister, than by the affairs of the Church.
For a century there was scarcely any intercourse between the churches of Rome and Constantinople; which did not tend to reünite them in matters of doctrine.[1] In 1024 the Patriarch Eustathius attempted to have himself recognized at Rome as the ecclesiastical chief of the East, in the same way as the Pope was chief of the West. His envoys were on the point of succeeding — thanks to their money, of which the court of Rome was very greedy; but the intrigue transpired,
- ↑ Nat. Alex. in Hist. Eccl. Dissert. IV. Sæcul. ix. et x.
