Principles of western civilisation

260 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP,

—signalised at last in the historic spectacle of the crowning by the Pope in the year 800 of Charlemagne as the successor in men’s minds of the Roman emperors of the West—we have in reality but one controlling principle developing beneath all the events of Western history.

To perceive the significance of the central problem of the Middle Ages, it is necessary for the evolutionist to keep steadily in view the principal political symbol in Western history for nearly a thousand years; namely, that of the Holy Roman empire, which may be said to have been begun with the crowning of Charlemagne in the year 800, though more formally with the accession of Otto I. in 962, and to have lasted down to 1806. Inthe image which the empire presented in the period of its highest development the underlying conception was that of a universal State, the Pope representing the spiritual head and the Emperor the temporal head; both possessing universal jurisdiction over Christendom. From the popular identification of the empire with the history of medizeval Germany, it is sometimes overlooked how near this ideal often was to actual realisation in Western history. In it, as Mr. Bryce has remarked, the world’s highest dignity remained for many centuries in Europe the only civil office to which any free-born Christian was legally eligible.’ Even the rulers of States claiming virtual independence of the empire in most cases admitted the superior rank of the Emperor. For the office of Emperor the competition was often international, not only princes of German, but of Italian, French, Spanish, and English nationality being from time to

1 The Holy Roman Empire, ch. xxi.