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 Pope Gregory VII. He strove to free the Church from the State, to centre it in the Papacy, to make it one organised body throughout Europe, with one definite head who should be powerful enough and remote enough to save the National Churches and protect them against the too great power of the political institutions with which they were connected. That attempt was to a certain extent successful. Simony was to a large extent abolished, clerical celibacy became the rule, the Church was separated from the trammels of the State, and its right of self-government was recognised. But with these reforms came one great disadvantage, the growth of papal supremacy; a supremacy which rested on the idea that its power came from God to be exercised for the good of the people, and that the Papacy was responsible for this exercise.

This led to a period of conflict between Church and State in which the Church fought for preeminence, clothed itself in grandeur, sought for wealth and recognition. The cry for reform was put into the second place, and the cry for the supremacy of the Church over the State became the first and immediate object.

Once more the Church lost its spiritual hold upon the minds of the people, and then came the reformation of the twelfth century following close upon the reformation of the eleventh century. It went back to the old lines of primitive times and was monastic in its nature. Many new Orders arose. The Cluniacs, the Cistercians, the Augustinian canons, like the waves in an advancing tide, each in their turn succeeded in