Principles of western civilisation

268 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

the imagination of the monks of Cluny, begins to be embodied in the claims of the papal power, the lines along which the development proceeds follow an inevitable course. The first matter in which issue is joined is that of lay investiture, in which the position on either side had become already well defined. It is necessary to remember that in that political ideal, which had now become general throughout Western Europe, in which the head of the State, following Charlemagne’s ideal, was conceived as the ultimate authority alike in matters of temporal and of the spiritual power, the choice of the bishops of the Church was in practice made by the Ruler of the State. With the development of the feudal system there had arisen a natural consequence. A bishop had now become not only a dignitary of the Church, but also a prince of the realm, whose duty it was to send contingents to the king’s army and also to act as councillor at his court. Half the land and wealth of Germany is said to have thus passed into the hands of bishops and abbots of the Church.’ As we had one side of Charlemagne’s ideal of the Czuz¢as Dez in the fact that it is recorded that in the Anglo-Saxon States after conversion thirty queens and kings went into the cloister;? so we had now the other side of the development in the fact, that we are told that within thirty years, towards the close of the ninth century, two archbishops and eight bishops died on the field of battle fighting by the side of counts and lords. The result which followed was

1 The Holy Roman Empire, by James Bryce, c. x. * Civilisation during the Middle Ages, by G. B. Adams, c. xi. 3 The Beginning of the Middle Ages, by R. W. Church, c. x.