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* EUROPE. 287 EUROPE. ral sovereignty of the Emperor at Constantinople, the Eastern Church, under the influence of the Emperors and already tending l" separation on account of disciplinary distinctions, drifted rap- idly from Latin unity. The separation became definite and final, in the eleventh century, in consequence of a doctrinal difference concerning the Procession of the IIqI.v Ghost. The Eastern Church never became independent of the secular authority, and its dependence facilitated the de- velopment of national churches. See Byzantine Empire; Greek Church. Age of the Crusades. Except in Spain, where the Kings of Leon had gradually reconquered a fourth part of the peninsula, Christian Europe had remained for nearly three centuries on the defensive against Islam. In the eleventh century a new and ruder people, the Seljuk Turks, became dominant in Mohammedan Asia, maltreated Christian pilgrims, and conquered Asia Minor (1071). At the appeal of the Creek Emperor, Pope Urban II. called Christian Europe to arms (1005); and before the close of the century a great host of crusaders had marched through Asia Minor and occupied Syria, establishing there a kingdom of Jerusalem and oilier principalities. (See Crusades.) The struggle thus opened con- tinued for two centuries. The retainers of the Christian princes in Syria and the military monks (see Hospitalers; Templars, Knights; Teu- tonic Knights) constituted the standing army of the Christians; repeated crusades from all parts of Europe brought volunteer assistance. The strug- gle ended at the close of the thirteenth century with the evacuation of Syria by the Christians. An episode of the Crusades was the temporary overthrow of the Greek Empire ( 1204) by French crusaders in alliance with Venice. A Flemish count (see Baldwin I.) was made Emperor at Constantinople, and the European territories of the Empire were assigned to French kings and dukes or to the Doge and Commune of Venice. The Greek emperors, meanwhile, continued to reign in Asia Minor ; and in the latter half of the century, with the aid of the Genoese, they recovered Constantinople (1201) and the greater part of their former possessions. The Venetians, however, kept much of the territory they had acquired, and became the leading commercial power in the eastern Levant ; although the Geno- ese, on better terms with the Greeks, had control of trade in the Black Sea. The only permanent gains made by Christendom during these centu- ries were in Spain and on the Baltic. War against the heathen in these places also was re- garded as a crusade. By the middle of the thir- teenth century the Christians had conquered all of Spain except Granada ; the Teutonic Knights had subdued and converted the Prussians ; and another body of military monks, the Brethren of the Sword, were doing the same work in Livonia and Esthonia. In this same century, however, Christendom lost ground in eastern Europe through the conquest of Russia by the Mongols. See Mongolian Race. The Papacy and the Western Empire. Dur- ing these centuries the Papacy, on which natural- ly devolved the leadership of Christendom in the warfare for the Cross, attained its greatest power. The popes made and deposed emperors and kings, accepted whole kingdoms as fiefs of the Church, and exercised jurisdiction in international con- troversies. The German emperors of the House of Hohenstaufen ( li:i.s-12. r )4) seemed indeed al- most as powerful as their predecessors "i the eleventh century, who had made and unmade popes; and when bj marriage the emperors gained control of the Norman kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, the independence of the Papacy ap- peared to be seriously menaced. Among the German princes, however, and in the Lombard cities the popes found trustworthy, because inter- ested, allies; ami a century of intermittent con llict ended in tin- destruction of the Eohenstaufen dynasty. See Guelphs and GhiBELLINES; Ho HENSTATJFEN. ErjBOPE at Tin: END OF THE Cbusades. Al the close of the thirteenth century Germany and Italy had become aggregations of practically in- dependent principalities, secular or ecclesiastical, and, of free cities. Kings were elected in Germany, and these kings called themselves Roman em- perors; but they had almost no power in Italy and little in Germany. Poland and Hungary were no longer even nominally subject to the empire, and Burgundy was drifting to France. In the northeast, however, Germany had expanded by Saxon conquests and colonization, and the gains thus effected proved mine durable than those made by the military monks. The kings of England had retained Normandy through tlie twelfth century, and had acquired by marriage so many other French fiefs that they ruled half of that kingdom ; but all these possessions except Guienne had been lost by the unlucky John (ally in the thirteenth century. In France, as in England, the crown had become hereditary, and at the close of the thirteenth century the power of the French kings was increasing. In Spain tin' united kingdom of Leon-Castile, (in which also the royal power was increasing) covered the greater part of the peninsula ; but Portugal, inde- pendent since 1139, had attained its present boun- daries, and all eastern Spain was ruled by the King of Aragon. During these centuries there was a sensible increase of commerce in western Europe. The control of European trade with the East passed out of the hands of the Greeks into those of the Italians, and a much more active traffic was developed on the trade routes between the Mediterranean and northern Europe, espe- cially on those that ran through Germany. The result was a great increase in the wealth and power of the cities, first in Italy, later in Ger- many. France, and Spain. Everywhere the citi- zens bought or fought themselves free from their ecclesiastical or secular lords; in many parts of Europe the cities formed alliances for mutual pro- tection. The league of the Lombard cities played an important part in the struggle between the popes and the emperors ; the great league of the Hansa, which soon controlled the trade in the northern seas, was formed at the close of the thirteenth century. (See Hanseatic League.) It was a natural result of the increasing impor- tance of the cities that their representatives were summoned to meet with the other estates of the realm in diets or parliaments. This occurred in the Spanish kingdoms in the twelfth century, in England and in Germany in the thirteenth century, and in France in the fourteenth century. In the intellectual life of Europe the universi- ties played an increasingly important part. The age of the Crusades was also the age in which scholasticism reached its highest development. It was also tin' age in which the study of the