A recent article by Roberto de Mattei, entitled “A High Point of the Middle Ages: The Dictatus Papae of St. Gregory VII”, published on July 30, 2025, on the Corrispondenza Romana website, recalls one of the most significant documents of medieval Christendom. The author presents the twenty-seven statements of Pope St. Gregory VII (1073–1085), which define the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff, his superiority over temporal authority, and his power to judge and depose emperors. De Mattei presents the Dictatus Papae as a pillar of medieval political theology, affirming the plenitudo potestatis of the Vicar of Christ and the principle that the Church holds both swords, the spiritual and the material. The article celebrates this doctrine as an “essential text for understanding the Church’s thought on the relationship between the spiritual and temporal orders,” seeing in it the foundation of the moral and spiritual reform that culminated in the epic of the Crusades.
Mattei’s analysis, though historically accurate in its presentation of facts, risks remaining incomplete if not placed within the context of a struggle that transcends centuries. The Dictatus Papae is not merely a medieval document; it represents the juridical formulation of a civilization—the Christian civilization—in direct and irreconcilable opposition to another, which today calls itself modern. The latter is nothing less than the political manifestation of a long-standing conspiracy whose ultimate goal is the complete destruction of the social and religious order born of the Redemption.
The society that Pope St. Gregory VII defended and structured was one in which the authority of the Prince submitted to the authority of God, and civil law harmonized with Divine Law. This is the essence of Christian civilization, where “the temporal power of the Popes, the denunciation of kings as officials of Christianity, and the right to depose them if they became apostates” were logical consequences of an order in which the supernatural informed and elevated the natural (Delassus, [n.d.], p. 30). In this conception, authority does not reside in man’s will but in God’s, and sovereigns govern not by popular mandate, but as “vicars of Christ” for the temporal order. The papal plenitudo potestatis, therefore, was not a political ambition, but the expression of the social kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ over all peoples and nations.
In direct opposition to this principle stands what the anti-Christian sect calls “the sovereignty of the people.” This revolutionary dogma, conceived during the Renaissance and formulated by the philosophism of the Enlightenment, asserts that power does not come from God but from man. Its juridical expression is Rousseau’s Social Contract, which serves as a blueprint for the construction of the “Masonic Temple” upon the ruins of the Catholic Church (Delassus, [n.d.], pp. 1, 109). If the Dictatus Papae affirms that no earthly power can judge the Pope and that the Roman Church has never erred, the Social Contract establishes that “no body or individual may exercise authority that does not expressly emanate from the nation” (Delassus, [n.d.], p. 30), thus subjecting divine truth to human suffrage.
The struggle between these two conceptions of authority constitutes the drama of modern history. The papal right to “release subjects from their oath of fidelity to the unjust” (n. 27 of the Dictatus Papae), mentioned by de Mattei, is based on an objective order of justice, of which the Church is the guardian. The Revolution, for its part, perverts this notion: the “unjust” ruler becomes one who does not submit to the “general will,” that is, to the dictates of the sect that manipulates public opinion. The Revolution “sought to wrest the old Christian nations, of which France was the head, from the empire of Jesus Christ” (Delassus, [n.d.], p. 32) precisely by denying the existence of any authority superior to the human will.
The affirmation that the Pope “is the only one who may use imperial insignia” (n. 8) encapsulates, as de Mattei notes, medieval political theology. It symbolizes that the source of all legitimate authority in Christendom, even temporal authority, resides mediately or immediately in the authority of Christ, represented by His Vicar. The revolutionary project aims precisely to invert this order: the modern State not only refuses to submit to spiritual authority but seeks to absorb it, making itself the sole source of all law and all morality. The Masonic State, “sovereign lord of all things” (Delassus, [n.d.], p. 112), claims for itself both swords—but to wield them against God and His Church.
The persecution waged against the Church for over a century, from the Napoleonic Concordat to the separation laws, is the methodical and persistent application of the revolutionary principle against the Catholic principle. The goal is always the same: “to secularize social life in all its degrees and in all its forms” (Delassus, [n.d.], p. 133). Every papal prerogative listed in the Dictatus Papae finds its direct negation in the dogmas of the Revolution: the universality of the Pontiff is denied by humanitarian internationalism; his supreme authority, by popular sovereignty; his infallibility, by free examination; and his power over kings, by the deification of the State.
It follows, therefore, that the work of St. Gregory VII should not be seen as a mere historical relic but as the perennial affirmation of the principles upon which the one true civilization rests. Roberto de Mattei’s text, in recalling the greatness of medieval Christendom, serves—albeit unintentionally—to measure the depth of the abyss dug by modern civilization. The battle described in the Dictatus Papae did not end in the 11th century; it continues today, more disguised and universal, and its outcome will determine whether society will be rebuilt under the primacy of Christ the King or will sink definitively into the kingdom of Man made god.
References
Delassus, H. ([n.d.]). The Anti-Christian Conspiracy: The Masonic Temple That Seeks to Rise upon the Ruins of the Catholic Church. [n.p.]: [n.p.].
