It is nevertheless to the eleventh century we may trace up in many churches the custom of an oath, by which each newly elected prelate bound himself “to defend the domains of St. Peter against every aggressor; to preserve, augment, and extend, the rights, honours, privileges, and powers, of the lord pope and his successors; to observe, and with all his power cause to be observed, the decrees, ordonances, reservations, provisions, and directions whatever, emanating from the court of Rome; to persecute and combat heretics and schismatics to the utmost extremity, with all who will not render to the sovereign pontiff all the obedience which the sovereign pontiff pleases to exact.”
This oath, who can believe it? has been taken by bishops whose sovereigns were not catholic princes.
How are we to conceive that sovereigns, catholic or not, could have allowed their subjects to enter into engagements so opposed to the good order of society at large:—it was complained of in Hungary, in Tuscany, and in the kingdom of Naples; and the prelates of Germany placed restrictions on this formula. But it is in itself so revolting, and besides so foreign to the discipline of the ten first centuries of the church, that we cannot believe they mean seriously to allege it as a proof of the necessity of bulls of investiture.
Some French authors have observed how the public and notorious dissensions between pope Innocent XI. and Louis XIV. seemed to present a favorable opportunity for re-establishing the ancient discipline, and for terminating this shameful subjection, which drew after it the obligation of soliciting and obtaining pontifical bulls for consistorial benefices. By so doing, there would not only remain in the kingdom immense sums of money, now sent every year to Rome, but the bishops would again enter into their ancient rights, and the clergy, as well regular as secular, would be in consequence better governed.—On the Government of the Church translated from the Latin of Febronius, vol. i. c. 4. s. 3.—For original see Appendix B.
Another formula was introduced in the thirteenth century, to wit, that by which the prelates were termed “bishops.... by the grace of the Holy Apostolic See.” An archbishop of Nicosia first employed it in 1251, and was followed in it by many of his brethren. The French bishops did not adopt it till a later period; and some suppressed it as incorrect, abusive, and novel: Bossuet termed himself ‘bishop by the divine permission.’