Excerpt from Cathedra Petri: A Political History of the Great Latin Patriarchate; Books I. And II., From the First to the Close of the Fifth Century The work, of which this volume is a first part, is complete in Ms. Down to the close of the great contest of investitures in the thirteenth century. If printed in its present form, it would fill at least five volumes of equal bulk with the volume now be fore the reader and if called for by the public, might, provided life and health be granted, be completed in the same number of years by annual volumes. The original plan extended to the Reformation of the sixteenth century; but the enormous mass of the materials to be studied of itself presented an insuperable impediment; unless, indeed, the writer could have satisfied him self with a very superficial survey of those materials, or have contentedly followed in the wake of other compilers a mode of composition destitute of all interest to himself, and probably also of instruction to his readers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.