In the time of Leo there were none of these things.  It was a poor, miserable, ignorant, anarchical, superstitious age.  In such an age the concentration of power in the hands of an intelligent man is always a public benefit.  Certainly it was wielded wisely by Leo, and for beneficent ends.  He established the patristic literature.  The writings of the great Fathers were by him scattered over Europe, and were studied by the clergy, so far as they were able to study anything.  All the great doctrines of Augustine and Jerome and Athanasius were defended.  The whole Church was made to take the side of orthodoxy, and it remained orthodox to the times of Bernard and Anselm.  Order was restored to the monasteries; and they so rapidly gained the respect of princes and good men that they were richly endowed, and provision made in them for the education of priests.  Everywhere cathedral schools were established.  The canon law supplanted in a measure the old customs of the German forests and the rude legislation of feudal chieftains.  When bishops quarrelled with monasteries or with one another, or even with barons, appeals were sent to Rome, and justice was decreed.  In after times these appeals were settled on venal principles, but not for centuries.  The early Mediaeval popes were the defenders of justice and equity.  And they promoted peace among quarrelsome barons, as well as Christian truth among divines.  They set aside, to some extent, those irascible and controversial councils where good and great men were persecuted for heresy.  These popes had no small passions to gratify or to stimulate.  They were the conservators of the peace of Europe, as all reliable historians testify.  They were generally very enlightened men,—­the ablest of their times.  They established canons and laws which were based on wisdom, which stood the test of ages, and which became venerable precedents.

The Catholic polity was only gradually established, sustained by experience and reason.  And that is the reason why it has been so permanent.  It was most admirably adapted to rule the ignorant in ages of cruelty and crime,—­and, I am inclined to think, to rule the ignorant and superstitious everywhere.  Great critics are unanimous in their praises of that wonderful mechanism which ruled the world for one thousand years.

Nor did the popes, for several centuries after Leo, grasp the temporal powers of princes.  As political monarchs they were at first poor and insignificant.  The Papacy was not politically a great power until the time of Hildebrand, nor a rich temporal power till nearly the era of the Reformation.  It was a spiritual power chiefly, just such as it is destined to become again,—­the organizer of religious forces; and, so far as these are animated by the gospel and reason, they are likely to have a perpetuated influence.  Who can predict the end of a spiritual empire which shows no signs of decay?  It is not half so corrupt as it was in the time of Boniface