Romans (for the higher style was by no means regularly added), became insensibly a mere ornamental adjunct to a principality which had only a real existence, it might be, in Bavaria, in Austria, or in Bohemia: at best its holder was but a German sovereign, and each attempt to achieve the higher distinction of the empire, and to supplement the crown of Aix by those of Milan and Arles and Rome, ended in increasingly disastrous failure. It was exactly this period of decline that produced a literature in which the imperial idea was developed and glorified to a splendour unthought of hitherto. No less exaggerated are the claims now put forward for its rival. For in the third place, while the vitality of the empire was diminishing, the church was making rapid steps towards occupying the prerogatives left unclaimed or unrealised by it. As early as the middle of the twelfth century an anxious observer had remarked [1] that men spoke more of the Roman curia than of the Roman church. It was becoming a state among states while it aspired to be the supreme state that commanded and united all inferiors. Innocent the Third had made in his person the 'vicegerent of Peter' into the 'vicegerent of Christ'; and with Innocent the papacy reached its zenith. Nor did it for a long time exhibit any symptoms of decline. The conqueror of the empire fell beneath the defiance of the French king Philip the Fair, or more truly beneath the irresistible opposition of a strong national spirit in the kingdoms of Europe. The universal authority of Rome became confined within the narrow territory of Avignon: the means by which it was exerted became more and more secular, diplomatic, mercantile; and its spiritual efficiency was so far impaired that the loyallest servants of the catholic church could stand forth as the stoutest champions against the policy of the papacy, just because that policy was seen to be the surest means towards the destruction of the church.
It is not a little remarkable that the secret of the reformation, namely, the incompatibility of the claims
- ↑ m
