Chapter 242: The Last Dinner

Christ's last meal before he died was not a severed head meal in a prison cell, but a very lavish Jewish Passover meal, equivalent to the Chinese New Year's Eve meal. After eating the Christmas Eve dinner in Taranto, hosted by the ambassador of the Chinese Empire to the Papal States (Bai Jia's second son, young diplomatic star, White Dragon), the five Christian monarchs and the newly appointed bishop of Naples in southern Italy, Vittorio, were feasting on the five Christian monarchs who tried to divide the property and rights of the Papal States. Emanuele was in the lounge next to the banquet hall to discuss how to divide the Papal States' legacy.

Although there were still many mercenaries and small and medium-sized feudal lords loyal to Pope Geracius II in Venice and Austria, these did not pose any threat to the forces of the Five Powers and did not affect the mood and appetite of the participants in the slightest. Gerasius II, who had come to participate in the negotiations in person, was chewing wax in the hall eating tuna jelly cooked by the chef from the Chinese Empire, and everyone in the lounge looked comfortable and spoke lightly on the map dividing the Pope's territory.

In fact, the papacy had no power to resist in the face of absolute force. These armies are just good bargaining chips on the negotiating table, and if someone tries to flip the table and really start a war, the Pope's nominal army will immediately defect or disappear before going to war. The reason why the monarchs of the five countries did not break this was because of the poor network of connections of the pope and the opposition of the few nobles in their own countries who had not yet fully pledged their allegiance.

Once the Papal States, the backstage of the most secessional power of various countries, falls, many small and medium-sized nobles who do not obey the instructions of the monarch will have to make a final choice. Either completely surrender power and submit to the king, or start a civil war and a duel with the monarch. The five scheming agents also knew that the layout and goal of the Chinese Empire was to unify the countries of Europe, but not to unify them, so they still let the Pope go.

It is still necessary for geographical terms to become political units - national terms. It was conducive to the establishment of a European market economic order by the Chinese Empire, but it was not in the interests of the Chinese Empire to unify the whole of Europe under one country. Although this probability is low to almost none, in addition to the arms dealers who are happy about the war, other merchants and capitalists are not happy, so to dispose of the Papal States within the scope permitted by the Chinese Empire, it can not cause a large-scale and prolonged war and cause too much economic loss. And it can't be too united, united enough to fight against the Chinese Empire.

Such a scale is narrow, and many high-ranking officials in the Papal States only supported Gerasius II to give it a go. smashing pots and selling iron to organize military strength to seek bargaining chips.

"So said Vittorio. Bishop Emanuele supported us in changing the election of the Pope to an election? ”

"Of course that's the case, the position of the clergy should have been in the hands of believers, and this kind of religious legal person system in the Chinese Empire is simply too good, and we should do our best to learn and introduce it. All priests at the grassroots level should be seminary graduates. All of them must pass a rigorous examination before they can be hired. Otherwise, there will be another big scandal of an illiterate married man acting as a priest, and the foundations of the Holy See will be destroyed. Middle- and high-ranking clergy can no longer be appointed, appointed and dismissed by several high-level members of the Holy See, but should be elected by the grassroots and the faithful or after a long period of technical qualifications. The whole city knew that a large number of bishops with bastards could no longer steal high positions. All bishops should be highly respectable and capable of learning from each other, and those who accept bribes to buy and sell clergy should all be sent to prison. After the end of the era of the dismissal of the pope, both high and low faculty should be elected by the subordinate faculty members in the area covered by the office in an open and fair public scrutiny environment, so as to not only convince the public, but also cultivate talents and improve the level of competition. Naturally, the reform of the Holy See can bring more glory to God and allow more believers to better bathe in the glory of the Lord. ”

"Yes, yes, yes. We all agree with this reform proposal, and we can't help but want the Papal States and Italy to do the same. All the religions of Byzantium must be reformed in this way, and if the reform is completed within the time limit, I will issue a nationwide missionary license, and if the reform is not completed, I will not issue a missionary permit to a foreign country. "Knowing that the Chinese Empire likes to create approvals without approval, it is always timely for the Byzantine king, Alexios I, the usurper, to hold his thighs without approval.

Since the usurpation of the throne, Alexios I, who had not had a single comfortable day, lived every day in the nightmare of the Seljuk army of the Turks breaking the capital or the Normans storming Constantinople by sea. Although Urban II relieved the Turkic offensive, it was easy to invite the gods, and the Crusaders' continuous encroachment on Asia Minor and Cyprus became a major problem for Byzantium.

Embattled, he had no choice but to take refuge in the Chinese Empire, the big benefactor, after Marco Polo's threading the needle, asking for a demote and diplomatic title

From emperor to king, he became the monarch of a vassal state like Marco Polo. Since then, he has become the vanguard of the Chinese Empire's march into Europe, with the help of loans and arms from the Chinese Empire, he has expanded to the north and west, taking Bulgaria within three years, pacifying Serbia within five years, and finally annexing Hungary, an old Eastern European power established by Attila, before this conference, completely sweeping away the threat to himself from the Turkic nation in the northwest.

Although the present partition of the Papal States had little benefit, and only nominally established the final verdict of the present rightful owners of the Western ecclesiastical property confiscated 78 years earlier (the Great Schism of the Eastern and Western Churches in 1054 Christmas) and several estates that had just been confiscated from the newly conquered regions such as Hungary, he received access to the sea on the northeastern shore of the Adriatic Sea - the port of Trieste adjacent to Venice and the essence of the entire Balkan Peninsula - the Lower Danube Plain.

As for Consilio, who was about to dominate the Apennine Peninsula, he was even less anxious. At this time, the Duchy of Tuscany annexed many small and medium-sized Italian nobles, and following the example of Marco Polo's United Kingdom of Solomon, the basic team of the Kingdom of Italy was formed. The many small and medium-sized nobles who were absorbed were soon defeated by Consilio's silver bullet attack, and after surrendering military power, they became rice worms with annuities. The three full-fledged divisions that Conceilio was proud of were all powerful forces armed with instructors, munitions, and institutions aided by the Chinese Empire, and were the foundation of all Italian opposition. So such a powerful force was also a decisive factor in swallowing one of the greatest legacies of the Papal States.

The newly baked King Lothair II of Germany, who was smashed by pie in the sky, was a warlord who was forcibly promoted to the position of leader of a great power, and although he was keen to use violence to solve problems, he was also very knowledgeable about current affairs. Although he could not completely eliminate the Papal States, the old enemy of the Holy Roman Empire, he also reaped a lot of benefits, and Germany was known as the Pope's cow, which proved that its output was also ranked among many dioceses.

Although it is not really a cow at this moment without flooding and looting, it is also fat. Having won the throne, he was the biggest winner in all of Germany. He gained great fame after he spoke about the abolition of the tithes in all churches in Germany. Although the Holy See and many monasteries that make a living from it are ruthlessly offended, the Holy See, a grasshopper with a clear eye after the autumn, can see that anyone can go up and cut a knife.

Many tax collectors and small and medium-sized German princes who participated in the tide of the market economy saw that Lothair II, who had the support of the Chinese Empire behind him, could lead his family to make a fortune. Therefore, they quickly joined the newly established Kingdom of Germany and shared the dividends of the great powers (the economic treatment of trade preferences, aid clauses, and tariffs for the great powers is naturally not comparable to the small ones such as the separatist powers).

During this secret meeting in the break room, he could not help but get an opportunity to consolidate Germany's eastern border, unite with the Eastern Roman Kingdom to divide the last Hungarian territories and annex the Czech Kingdom, and also planned the Wars of Religion to annex his old neighbor to the north of the Duchy of Saxony, the Kingdom of Denmark. As soon as Denmark refused to ally with him against the Norman pirates and the English king Henry I, an ignorant bastard who always supported the Holy See, he immediately sent troops to annex Denmark. Completely solve the worries of Germany's north.

"Yes! A church without reform can only be a stumbling block to social progress. It's time for the insatiable buying and selling of teaching to come to an end. Louis VI also spoke out.

The king of France, who was the weakest and had the smallest and poorest crown territory, now had less than a quarter of the area under his control over Consilio in Tuscany, but he was valued far more than several other monarchs, so he was naturally qualified to participate in the feast of the great powers to divide the Holy See.

Although the crown territory near Paris is small, it is the most important commercial distribution center and tax source on the Seine. It provided one-eighth of the tax revenue of the entire Kingdom of France, only behind the county of Champani (also known as Champagne, which produced the famous sparkling white wines). In the arrangement of the Crossing Congregation, this royal family will lead the unification of France. and leveled the Iberian Peninsula controlled by the British and Arabs under the rule of the Norman dynasty and became the most important pawn in Western Europe. It is a decisive force to contain the entire North Sea to the Western Mediterranean.

Faithful Eastern Rome controlled the Aegean and Black Seas; Literary Italy controlled the Adriatic, Ionian, Alvoran, Ligurian and Tyrrhenian Seas; Romantic France controls the entire coastline of the Western European continent from Rotterdam to Marseille and traverses the map of the future of trade.

In fact, the papal estates were not worth the money at all, but were worth the privileges of tithes and interfering with the succession rights of the secular nobility, and the abolition of these powers rather than transferring them to the monarch was also a good reform for the benefit of the people. The renunciation of these rights did cause great difficulties for the Church, but it was only temporary, and the huge theocratic control accumulated over the years could not be destroyed in an instant by the rich cultural consumer goods imported from the East, so the Travelers found a nirvana to deal with the spiritual realm of the Church's defenses.

This is the one that can cut off the two arms of the church in the economic and political fields (confiscation of church property and abolition of the tithes and other taxes to bankrupt the church, abolish the canonization and coronation of the great nobles, interfere with the right of the minor nobles to inherit and make the church no threat to the secular aristocracy), and ruthlessly insert a knife in its heart to publish the evidence that the church is an illegal organization - the forgery of the "Constantine consecration" document. In this way, the last fig leaf of the church is gone, and what little legitimacy that remains after the politics of adulteresses is gone.

"After talking about it for a long time, everything that can be divided is finished. You can go back and get busy, it will take a lot of preparation to receive the estates and wealth of these monasteries, and I hope you all have a smooth journey. The business of the Holy See has been taken care of. You will be done with your signatures and seals on these agreements. After signing and stamping the Holy See, you will be able to take the photocopies to the various places to receive the property. After the white dragon sent the kings away from the banquet, he walked up to Pope Kirasius II and handed him the agreement signed and stamped by the monarchs of the five kingdoms.

"Your Majesty, the collapse of the Papal States has now become an immutable inevitability, and no matter how much the Church struggles, it is impossible to avoid this disgraceful end, but if His Majesty can give up what these articles require the Church to give up. With the spirit of sacrifice and dedication of the true preachers and saints who pioneered the cause in the early days of the Church, we will lead the long-decayed and degenerate Church to reappear in front of the world as a shelter for people's souls and a solidarity organization for healing and saving people. The white dragon persuaded.

Unable to read the terms, Kirasius II sat down on the upper seat of the banquet hall without saying a word, and ate the last piece of white bread baked with fine flour imported from the Chinese Empire. After drinking the last sip of Turpan purple jade wine, he picked up a hero brand pen and signed his name, and then pressed the signet ring on the dripping wax oil with the signet ring on his hand to complete his mission.

Relieved, the Pope collapsed in a high chair. The Papal States are over. The estates belonging to the Church that the popes have worked so hard to obtain for hundreds of years have all been lost, all the authority has completely disappeared, and the Church can be said to have worked hard for hundreds of years to return to the state religion overnight. Since becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire, Christianity has truly become a major force in the current situation, but after the signing of this article, Christianity has been completely knocked off the altar, not only losing the huge industrial system established for hundreds of years. It also lost its fundamental power to control the secular world of Western Europe, and can be said to have returned to the initial stage before it became the state religion of the Roman Empire. Keeping such a small territory as the Vatican can only be said to be a self-consoling excuse. Is the Papal State, which has lost more than 50,000 square kilometers of Papal territory (equivalent to 99% of the territory), still a Papal State? The country has perished.

Among the many articles, the most memorable thing for the pope was not how to dispose of the papal estates and monasteries in other regions, but the simple sentence that all the territories of the Papal States, except for the Vatican, were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy from the date of the signing, and the Kingdom of Italy had not yet appeared.

The full title of the German monarchs of the past was King of the Romans (since the coronation of Otto I by the Pope, every king of the Roman people wanted to receive the title of Emperor. But the empire created by Otto I derives its title of emperor from the title of "Emperor of Western Rome" given by the Pope, who gained legitimacy as "Roman Emperor" by conquering Italy. The so-called electors of the empire were supposed to be directly elected as "kings of the Romans", not emperors. As a result, not every German ruler could become emperor, and only those who marched into Italy and were crowned by the pope could receive this honor. But the Chinese Empire did not want another 'empire' with the title of Roman Empire in Europe, so future monarchs would have to have kings and no popes.

Lothair II was just a belligerent ordinary military feudal lord, and he did not have the ability to govern a large country, not even the ability to integrate the various princes within the German region, so he could only sit on the throne with his thighs held wholeheartedly. And Consilio at least has a certain ability to manage, can govern such a large area as northern Italy, although now it is only a Tuscan archduke, but becoming a king is also a matter of convening a general assembly of all Italian nobles, as long as the great lords do not oppose him to be the king of Italy, then it is an iron throne.

After this dinner, the church lost its physical body but was spiritually resurrected as if Christ had been after the Last Supper. Those moths who have bribed the church to serve as middle and senior clergy because of their privilege and wealth have no choice but to go bankrupt or get out of the way when their last hope is dashed (the most tragic thing about not recovering the cost of bribery is that most of them are in debt). Needless to say, the real estate of the church is the goal of the secular feudal lords, not to mention the movable property, not to mention the movable property, not only the valuables such as robes and gold and silver tableware are all auctioned and confiscated to the state treasury, but even the curtains and furniture of the church must be auctioned. The cellars of the monasteries of the Church have sold off the treasured wines and antiques of all ages, the moths who have been forced to starve rats to death have died in despair like the tragic concubines who have left their homes, and even the few prescient bishops who have transferred their wealth are inevitably accused by the masses of criminals of embezzlement and murder, and obediently spit out their ill-gotten gains and ambush them. For details, please refer to the Decameron. In the end, all that was left for the church was the ornate and tall empty church. Most of the low-level clergy and ascetics continued their work and life conscientiously, living a life of full hunger, but they all had a head, and according to the new religious decrees and systems, they all had the possibility of being promoted to middle and high priesthood, and the atmosphere of the church was greatly enhanced.

The number of church evangelists restored to their initial state was drastically reduced (moths and clinging rent-seekers left), and the efficiency of the streamlined organization increased exponentially. Despite the loss of the tithes and the grey income from various privileges, the reduction in expenditure was even greater, without the extravagant expenses of mass, lamps, candles, clothing, pomp and meals, and the daily expenses of each clergyman were less than one hundredth of what a bishop used to be.

The virtues of simplicity and frugality are back in the church. The vast number of tenant farmers, who are still in abject poverty, are becoming richer and richer in the tide of marketization, and they are more willing to donate to churches that often do charity activities such as free clinics.

The signing of the treaty that led to the demise of the Papal States was unforgettable for Girassius II, and soon after his return to the Vatican, he was summoned by the Lord, and the new pope was Vittorio, the most active in the Chinese Empire. Bishop Emanuele, he issued a new papal election decree in accordance with the will of the Chinese Empire, completely ending the contradiction between the church and the secular feudal lords (no feudal lord can interfere in the election of the pope anymore, each member of the bishopric is selected by each diocese, according to the rules, only more than 90% of the members of the bishopric participate in the vote, and the candidate can be elected as a new pope if he gets more than 75% of the votes of the participants. The diversity and breadth of the membership of the bishopric put an end to the possibility of the Italian monopoly on the papacy. ）

The upper echelons are also in Vittorio. Emanuele, the new Pope Innocent III, was energized after the Great Purge, and developed a more concise ritual and austere doctrine, prioritizing mutual aid and the work of guiding people to good, rather than promoting the supremacy of the Church and the inviolability of divine authority. Reforms and penances should be used as the main means of dealing with criminals and those who indulge in evil virtues, rather than burning them all at once. Acknowledging past mistakes and crimes of disregard for human life, through harsh self-disclosure and criticism, kills a group of moths and criminals hiding within the church.

After gaining the approval of the people, the new church naturally stopped the trend of the rapid decline of the Christian church like an avalanche, and began to develop and proselytize normally, and everything was improved under the control of Innocent III, and all of a sudden, Innocent's prestige and status were consolidated, and the young bishop in his 30s could continue to enjoy the life of the Holy See for at least 50 years after becoming pope. In this life-and-death crisis of the church, he became the biggest winner in the church.

Under the patronage of Concilio, a number of new and famous painters collaborated to paint a huge oil painting dedicated to Innocent III to commemorate the fateful dinner of the Church, the Last Supper, which bears a strong resemblance to Leonardo da Vinci's monumental work, The Last Supper. The painting became fame far faster than Leonardo da Vinci's, and the day after receiving it, Innocent III donated it to the newly built St. Peter's Basilica Museum, and visitors quickly spread the name of the painting throughout Christendom. (To be continued......)