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 LIBERATION

Emperor, indicate roles in the oldest drama of politically organized humanity. For Christian Europe a clash between these powers was inevitable as soon as both were arrayed against each other in representa- tives of self-confident strength. No one will say that Henry IV was a great man. Nevertheless, he did not speak jestingly of the honour of the Empire; and while his was a wavering figure, it also testified to the fury of the storms which blew across his path. The old Imperial system had been hollowed out when he took the crown. That which under the name of "investiture" constituted the thing over which the battle raged, went down deep to the roots of both Church and State. The structure erected by the Ottos rested upon Germanic conceptions of the law, the essence of which was that the unity of the clergy and officialdom, of ecclesiastical property and Imperial possessions, was to find its symbol and its guaranty in the conferring of spiritual offices by the Emperor's hand. When the rulers were men who had the inter- est of the Church at heart, they chose those who assured the well-being of the Church; but when the system was misused both the Church and the State were led by the necessity latent in human nature to bar- ter for positions, and that meant the simultaneous deterioration of both powers. The State was no longer the State, and the Church was no longer the Church. It was inevitable that the religious movement of reform should take up a position hostile to the Imperial authorities who had gained the upper hand over ecclesiastical administration. The struggle between the two spheres of life, at first a battle over pos- sessions and rights, soon became a conflict to decide which sphere was to be dominant in the Christian world.

If the balance of power in the Christian conception of society was to be shifted, it was not necessary that new ideas should be advanced but only that a powerful man should appear. Hildebrand was this man, and the lever he used was an idea of the Papacy which, from the time Christ had spoken the words of foundation recorded in Matthew until the time of pseudo-Isidore, had consistently remained through good and evil days the most influential idea in the world. Gregory himself developed this idea to its ultimate conclusions in the twenty- seven sentences of his Dictates Ptpa of 1075. Perhaps these are only an improvisation, perhaps also they are only notes he wrote down fot

PAPAL