human
Ah, yes; ah, yes, continued the Bishop, musingly,
gpt
Christianity is no longer the Church of Christ, it is the Church of Rome. Why keep up the pretence longer? I am but seeking to bring the people back to Christ as St. Francis did before me.
human
Ay! as St. Francis did before you. He was so sure that all the world needed was the Word and his Rule of Poverty. Well, how many years after his death was it that the people complained to the authorities of the great wealth of the Franciscan monasteries?
gpt
The Church is a more intricate matter than any one Book or any one Rule, went on the Bishop.
human
Why think you it was that the wolves of the north, as St. Jerome well called them, those wild tribes of Franks and Burgundians, of Vandals and Goths and Visigoths, savage as their onslaught was, yet paused in the face of Rome? Was it not because the Churchmen at the critical time were no idle dreamers, but the greatest statesmen the world ever saw? Ah, my son, if temporal power meant a fall from the early apostolic Church, do not forget that it was a fall brought about by the very greatness of its own servants. It was to the early Bishops that the world was forced to look for its rulers when the reins of government were slipping from the weak hands of all others. It was Cyprian at Carthage, Jerome and Leo at Rome, Ambrose at Milan, Augustine in Africa, Boniface at the court of Pepin, Martin at Tours, Hilary at Poitiers, and Marcel at Paris who were doing the work of the world. It is easy to speak of the Pope's need for Charles the Great when he placed the diadem of the Cæsars on the Frankish Emperor's brow; yet if Leo needed Charles, Charles needed Leo, as well, and we do not quite so often hear that. My son, the mitre has resisted many a blow that would have shattered the sword.