successors had raised the church to dignity and power, and bestowed upon it all the privileges of
a state religion. The transfer of the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople withdrew from the
Western church the protection of the secular arm, and exposed Europe to the horrors of barbarian
invasion and the chaos of civil wars. The popes were among the chief sufferers, their territory,
being again and again overrun and laid waste by the savage Lombards. Hence the instinctive desire
for the protecting arm of a new empire, and this could only be expected from the fresh and vigorous
Teutonic power which had risen beyond the Alps and Christianized by Roman missionaries. Into
this empire "all the life of the ancient world was gathered; out of it all the life of the modern world
arose."^256
The Empire and the Papacy, The Two Ruling Powers of the Middle Ages.
Henceforward the mediaeval history of Europe is chiefly a history of the papacy and the
empire. They were regarded as the two arms of God in governing the church and the world. This
twofold government was upon the whole the best training-school of the barbarian for Christian
civilization and freedom. The papacy acted as a wholesome check upon military despotism, the
empire as a check upon the abuses of priestcraft. Both secured order and unity against the
disintegrating tendencies of society; both nourished the great idea of a commonwealth of nations,
of a brotherhood of mankind, of a communion of saints. By its connection with Rome, the empire
infused new blood into the old nationalities of the South, and transferred the remaining treasures
of classical culture and the Roman law to the new nations of the North. The tendency of both was
ultimately self-destructive; they fostered, while seeming to oppose, the spirit of ecclesiastical and
national independence. The discipline of authority always produces freedom as its legitimate result.
The law is a schoolmaster to lead men to the gospel.
Otho the Great.
In the opening chapter of the history of the empire we find it under the control of a
master-mind and in friendly alliance with the papacy. Under the weak successors of Charlemagne
it dwindled down to a merely nominal existence. But it revived again in Otho I. or the Great
(936–973), of the Saxon dynasty. He was master of the pope and defender of the Roman church,
and left everywhere the impress of an heroic character, inferior only to that of Charles. Under Henry
III. (1039–1056), when the papacy sank lowest, the empire again proved a reforming power. He
deposed three rival popes, and elected a worthy, successor. But as the papacy rose from its
degradation, it overawed the empire.
Henry IV. and Gregory VII.
Under Henry IV. (1056–1106) and Gregory VII. (1073–1085) the two power; came into
the sharpest conflict concerning the right of investiture, or the supreme control in the election of
bishops and abbots. The papacy achieved a moral triumph over the empire at Canossa, when the
mightiest prince kneeled as a penitent at the feet of the proud successor of Peter (1077); but Henry
recovered his manhood and his power, set up an antipope, and Gregory died in exile at Salerno,
yet without yielding an inch of his principles and pretensions. The conflict lasted fifty years, and
ended with the Concordat of Worms (Sept. 23, 1122), which was a compromise, but with a limitation
of the imperial prerogative: the pope secured the right to invest the bishops with the ring and crozier,
but the new bishop before his consecration was to receive his temporal estates as a fief of the crown
by the touch of the emperor’s sceptre.
(^256) Bryce, p. 396 (8th ed.)