Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/218

200 order than to absolve it from social restraints and to enforce upon it a special code of morals which not all desired to keep and which many, if not most, found it easy to elude. At the same time the preponderant balance of church authority was precise against the toleration of a married clergy, and this part of the reform was rightly defended as a recurrence to patristic, if not to primitive, usage. Moreover the sharper the distinction, the separation, between clergy and laity, the more readily could the former be applied as an external and consolidated force against the disorders of civil society. On general grounds it is perfectly clear that if the church was to exercise that sway which all Christians agreed it ought to exercise, over the consciences of men, it must be as free as possible from those ties which bound it to the secular state; if, for instance, the churchman had to look to his king for preferment, he was not likely to be as vigilant or as courageous in the carrying out of his duty as if he depended solely upon his spiritual chief. The isolation and independence of the clergy being then postulated, it was but a step further to assert their superiority, their right of controlling the state. Gregory had a search made in the papal archives and found what he believed to be irrefragable evidence of the feudal dependence of the different kingdoms on the Roman see. Civil power,—so he wrote to bishop