The war between the two supreme powers was inev- itable ; it was even necessary. The question could not be settled without war; it could not be settled by war; but the bitter and long-continued contention prevented either power from becoming absolute, and finally para- lyzed both. The confiict about investitures broke out afresh, as has been said, but soon changed its form. Under the Suabian emperors it was complicated with the resistance of the Lombard League to the empire ; still later, with the effort of the popes to exclude the imperial supremacy from Italy, or, at least, to restrict it to the valley of the I'o. Hence sprang the savage strife of Guelphs and Ghibellines, which extended its perni- cious influence beyond the period of the Renaissance. But the second act of the great drama ended with the Coimcil of Lyons in 1245, and with the death of Freder- ick II in 1250, leaving the papacy ostensibly possessed of resistless dominion, the empire crushed, shattered, mangled; introducing, at the same time, chronic wars into Italy, and anarchy and divisions into Germany, from which that great country has not yet recovered. Into the instructive details of these mighty and ominous transactions there is no time to enter. A few words on the effects of the struggle must terminate these sum- mary and inadequate remarks.
IV. Consequences of the Strife heiireen the Chiirch and the Empire. — The disastrous issues of this unseemly con- tention were immediate, continuous, and progressive. None but the most prominent can be specified now, and they must be noted without being discussed. The dead- ly duel was ruinous to both combatants. It weakened fatally both the papacy and the empire; but it prevent- ed the permanent predominance of either. It frustrated any harmonious agreement forthejinnt direction of the growing Christian commimity. It precluded the estab- lishment of wholesome reciprocal restraint over tlie spir- itual and the temporal authority. The imperial su- premacy over the nations ceased to be anj'thing more than a hollow pretence. The imperial control even over the Germanic principalities and municipalities was almost annihilated. There was neither unity nor union. The capacity of the empire to sliield Cliristendoni from attack was sacrificed. The proof of this was given by the great Mongol invasion, by the Ottoman conquest of
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Constantinople, bj' the fearful ravage and encroachment of the Turkish sultans. Germany was thrown into chronic convulsions and feudal anarchy till the acces- sion of Rodolph of Hapsburg. These discords, which consumed the strength and divided the energies of the country, descended to the field of Sadowa. They have not been buried by the coronation at Versailles. Italy was lacerated and corroded by unceasing wars, under Ho- henstauflfen, Angevin, Arragonese, and Bourbon princes. City was arrayed against city, family against family, kinsman against kinsman. Lawlessness, rapine, mur- der, treacherj', and the licentious usurpations and tyran- nies of chiefs of Condottieri were domesticated through- out the beautiful peninsula.
The Church, though triumphant, was more disastrous- ly injured: it was smitten in the house of its friends. There was a separate life in the bruised and dissevered members of the imperial system. They might recom- bine in altered relations, or be refashioned as distinct entities. Such change was incompatible with ecclesi- astical unity or pontifical supremacy.
The papacy seemed to have asserted and assured its absolute dominion at the Council of Lyons. It was de- luded. It lost, with the excommunication and death of its imperial opponent, prestige, influence, and respect. It fell into imbecility and corruption. The flight of Innocent IV from Rome was the prelude to the Baby- lonish captivity, and to the French pontificate at Avi- gnon. This, again, generated the Great Schism, with the consequent alienation of tlie nations, especially of England and Germany, which had little share in the ecclesiastical spoils. As early as 1137, the emperor Lo- thaire II had overawed pope Innocent II bj' declaring that in case of the pope's continued opposition, " Impe- rium ab illo die et deinceps scissum a pontificio omnibus modis sciret." Twenty-four j-ears afterwards — at the Council of Toulouse, held to decide between Alexander III and the anti-pope Victor — a party, favorable to nei- ther, boldly proposed to " avail themselves of the present opportunitj' to shake off the yoke of the Roman Church." The great councils of the 15th century — Pisa, Constance, Basle, Ferrara, Florence — still further undermined the pontifical supremacy ; and the last resulted in the final severance of the Greek and Latin churches, which ren- dered ecclesiastical unity impossible ; and in the over- throw of Constantinople and the Byzantine empire.
.During the two centuries of imperial impotence, ava- rice, vice, crime, tyranny, extortion, sensuality, had per- meated the ecclesiastical hierarchy in all lands, render- ing certain and necessarj' the religious reformation so often demanded, so earnestly required by the Council of Constance, so hopelessly sought within the pontifical fold.
The great revolutions of society are never due to a single cause, nor to a brief catalogue of causes. Many tendencies combine, in most complex and shifting modes, to determine the result; yet, certainlj', the conflict be- tween the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Church contributed most potently to the disintegration of both, to the dissipation of the wondrous mediieval dream, and to the religious and political constitution of our modern civilization.