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 CHRISTENDOM

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CHRISTENDOM

in the varying degrees in which the Teutonic invaders of the Roman Empire coalesced with its old inhabi- tants. In the twelfth century, though the sense of a common Christianity is the predominant character-

i the age, the development of national distinc- tions proceeded apace. Germany was long to regret the glories of the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, yet even his power failed to level the Alps politically and

rcome the still hardly conscious nationalism of the Lombard cities. The social and intellectual influ- ence which France had exerted in the middle of the century began under Philip Augustus to take a politi- irm; while in England conquerors and conquered were fast amalgamating, and a national feeling, fos- tered by insular position, had grown up. though it was concealed for the moment by the extent of the Angevin Empire and the foreign interests of Henry II and Richard I. This empire broke into pieces under John, and. after an interval of weakness and hesita- tion. England appears in the reign of Edward I as the country where nationality had most rapidly devel- oped. Elsewhere, too, the process continued. The personality of St. Louis gave to the French monarchy a halo comparable to the spiritual character which was to cling for 30 many centuries to the Holy Roman Empire. The fall of the Hohenstauffen decided finally what had lo i. that Germany was to

be not it any rati a nation severed from

Italy, and that Italy its If was to live its own turbu- lent city life so fruitful in war. in tyranny, in saints, and in works i

Meanwhile the new monarchies of the West became self-conscious through their lawyers. Secular law in the twelfth century had given its support to the civil power, but it had been overshadowed, on the whole, by the great development of canon law. Towards the close of the thirteenth it had its revenge as the ally of the national sovereigns. Edward I was both one of the most legal and one of the most powerful of English kings, yet in his ease legal abso- lutism was mitigated by customary law. In France the enigmatic figure \i Philip the Fair was half-con- cealed by his legist ministers, men who combined a lericalism, ready to go any lengths, with

the most frank acknowledgment ol the absolute "ii. It is an instance of the irony of history that Edward and Philip should be the con- temporaries of Boniface VIII, the boldest assertor of papal supremacy. The probable explanation is that the recent victory over the empire misled the papalist writers and perhai themselves.

The disappearance of the Hohenstauffen seemed to leave the papacy an undisputed supremacy in the Christian world. It hail been the practice to speak of the spiritual and temporal powers in terms of pope

motor, and it was l"ng before it was realized, ' on the papal side, that the civil power, de- had returned to the attack with more aggressive vigour as the Monarchy and the

the papal-imperial controversy continued,

though with increasing unreality, when the pope was at >n, and I he emperor was Louis of Bavaria, and to the new conditions era of Church ■ie. li.it! i of i nn Mediate Divine origin but differ- ing in dignity.

The struggle between Boniface and Philip cul- minated in the me igni, where Nogaret, the French lawyer. .,[ pope. It was a

brutal ful only to the p. rpet rator. Un-

fortunately, it was follower) by the migration, a few- years later, of the papal court to the prison-palace

of Avigi ! i remature development of French

absolutism was followed by year- of war and anarchy; but from her misfortunes France rose up a consoli- dated monarchy. In England, aristocratic misrule and some fort intermittent civil war pro-

duced the same result. In Spain, and even in the German and Scandinavian principalities and king- doms, different causes tended in (he same direction. Thus grew up those monarchies, powerful at home, jealous of foreign interference, which contributed so much to the Reformation.

While in the political sphere nations were drawing apart, in the social sphere the Church was losing much of her influence on the thoughts of men. Some of this loss was perhaps inevitable. New interests were springing up on every side with the growth of wealth, of education, and of the complexity of life, new professions, other than that of arms, were being opened to the educated laity. Religion could hardly expect to keep the hold she had exercised on the outward lives of Christians. Meanwhile the improve- ment of secular law would in time render unneces- sary and invidious many of the clerical privileges which had been so essential in a simpler age. Thus, as European society developed, the clergy, the most cosmopolitan element of it, would necessarily lose some of the commanding influence they had exer- cised in the ages when they represented civilization as well as religion. But other causes were at work. The high religious enthusiasm of the earlier twelfth century was not maintained at the same level either in clergy or people. And indeed even that Christian age had had its dark side. Passion, the fierce pas sionate character of a primitive people, was not yet subdued. What had been won by the Hildebrandine movement had to be preserved. No moral victory is final: no generation can afford to disarm. The very success of the Church brought its dangers, and increased power tended to ambition and worldliness. The faults and the wealth of the clergy must have contributed something, it would be difficult to say how much, to the darkest feature of the age. the heresy which even in St. Bernard's time lurked in secret nearly everywhere. This evil spread like a plague through Southern France and Italy, and kept appear ing sporadically north of the Alps. It seemed to threaten Christian morals and Christian faith alike So acute did the danger become in France that it almost justified the violences of the Albigensian Cru- sade; but the Church of the thirteenth century had nobler weapons than those of l)e .Mont fort or the Inquisition: the Friars and Scholastic movement attacked heresy, morally and intellectually, and routed it. Henceforth, however, till the sixteenth century, no great religious or monastic movement, eon a i ion to i 'hristendom. was provoked by the many moral and intellectual causes which led to the decline and fail of the medieval system and finally to the Reformation itself.

The history of the papacy cannot be separated from that of the Church. The great popes of the past had had a share which can hardly be oxer-esti- mated in binding together Christian society and raising its moral level; it is not surprising that the diminished influence of thi among tin'

causes of the disintegration of Christendom. It i- ditlieult not to trace the decadem 'niggle

with Frederick II. Before that struggle, in the days of Innocent III, the difficulties ol tie papacy were due to its agents, its subjects, to the very grea of the bask it had undertaken, not to tie character or aims of the popes themselves, Hit from < Gregory IX a different spirit seemed to prevail. Tie popes were engaged in a hand-to I • itl a power

which aimed at establishing a strong monarchy in Italy which threatened to stifle Roman and papal

freedom: tin- contest was not I ,. in<j waged with an imperious but distant German: it was Italian, 'ei

ritorial ami bittei it ual ruler seemed

almost merged in ' : ol Rome and the

feudal lord of Sicily. Money w a and in

order to obtain it funds lad to be raised in