The Pope conferred the imperial
dignity on Charlemagne and his successors, but not the civil
power, at least out of the Pope's own temporal dominions. The
emperor of Germany was at first elected by the Pope, and
afterwards by hereditary electors designated or accepted by him,
but the king of the Germans with the full royal authority could
be elected and enthroned without the papal intervention or
permission. The suzerainty of the Holy See over Italy, Naples,
Aragon, Muscovy, England, and other European states, was by
virtue of feudal relations, not by virtue of the spiritual authority
of the Holy See or the vicarship of the Holy Father. The right
to govern under feudalism was simply an estate, or property; and
as the church could acquire and hold property, nothing prevented
her holding fiefs, or her chief from being suzerain. The
expressions in the papal briefs and bulls, taken in connection
with the special relations existing between the Pope and emperor
in the Middle Ages, and his relations with other states as their
feudal sovereign, explained by the controversies concerning
rights growing out of these relations, will be found to give no
countenance to the theory in question.
These relations really existed, and they gave the Pope certain
temporal rights in certain states, even the temporal supremacy,
as he has still in what is left him of the States of the Church;
but they were exceptional or accidental relations, not the
universal and essential relations between the church and the
state.
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