and left, in the act of receiving from the Apostle the pallium and the
gonfalon, the symbols of their respective offices.

No powerful Emperor ever accepted the Gelasian principle entire. To
refute it was, however, difficult, so well did it harmonise with the
current conception of the State. Under the later Carolingians it became
the programme both of reformers and of mere ecclesiastical politicians.
The new monasteries, founded or reorganised under the influence of
Cluny, placed themselves beneath the special protection of the Pope,
thus escaping from secular burdens. The national hierarchies hailed the
forgeries of the Pseudo-Isidore as the charter of ecclesiastical
liberty. Pope Nicholas I took his stand at the head of the new movement,
and gave it a remarkable development when he asserted his jurisdiction
over the adulterous Lothaire II (863). Nicholas died before he couldgive
further illustrations of his claim to be supreme, even over kings,
in matters of morality and faith. From his time to that of Hildebrand
there was no Pope vigorous enough to make a similar example. Dragged
down by their temporal possessions to the level of municipal seigneurs
and party instruments, the Popes from 867 to 962 were, at the best, no
more than vigorous Italian princes. To that level they returned after
the period of the Saxon Ottos (962-1002). In those forty years there
were glimpses of a better future; the German Pope, Gregory V, allied
himself to Cluny (996-999); as Sylvester II (999-1003) the versatile
Gerbert of Aurillac--at once mathematician, rhetorician, philosopher,
and statesman--entered into the romantic dreams of his friend and pupil,
Otto III, and formed others on his own behalf which centred round the
Papacy rather than the Empire. Sylvester saw in imagination the Holy See
at the head of a federation of Christian monarchies. But fate was no
kinder to him than to Otto; he outlived his boy patron only by a year.