From these and similar indications of the public feeling of the mediceval time, the ad vocates of this theory of the temporal power infer that orthodoxy and obedience to the pope, in all essential matters of faith and discipline, were by the consent, express or tacit, of sovereigns and of peoples accepted as a condition of the tenure of supreme civil authority—a condition similar in its character and objects to that which forms the basis of the limitation settlement of the succession to the English crown, to the heirs of the princess Sophia of Hanover, " being Protestant." Hence they conclude that the function really exercised by the popes in relation to heterodox or scandalously immoral sovereigns, or oppressors of the church and church liberties, was in itself a spiritual one, and that the civil consequences which it entailed of deprivation or deposition arose, not from the church law, but from the expressed or understood international civil law of the age. This notion of the origin and nature of the pope's power over sovereigns and states may lie regarded as the view now commonly received, and it may help to a better understand ing of some points of the controversy regarding the celebrated Syllabus. It may be
added, that this view is not confined to Catholic writers, but is held by Leibnitz, Pfeffel, Eichhorn, Void, Frederick Hurter (while still a Protestant), and others.
On tne other hand, it is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile this theory with the language used by the popes themselves in enforcing their claim to temporal authority, and with the arguments upon which they rest that claim. Nor can it be denied that whatever is said of the cases of the exercise of such a power which occurred in the 12th and 13th centuries, the power continued to be claimed and to be exercised down to and even after the reformation, when it would be idle to suppose that any such public un derstanding, if it had existed in the middle ages, had not been revoked, if not by all, at least by those nations which had revolted from the Roman church.
The history of most of the principal instances of the exercise of this power by the popes, will be found detailed under the separate articles which refer to the particular popes or sovereigns who engaged in the contest of church and state.—See Gosselin's Pouvair du Pape au Moven Age