Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: About the eleventh century the foreign invadeis of Europe had been expelled, or incorporated and tonverted to Christianity, the nations had recovered peace and order, and the tide of civilisation so long checked began to" flow again with a steady and accelerating course. During the whole period from the disruption of the Reman empire the Church in general was gaining in power. In the constitution of the Roman empire the clergy had never formed a part of the State; but the national councils of the new nations gave a constitutional position to the bishops as great landowners, while the superior civilisation of the bishops gave them a legitimate leading influence in those councils. The same facts gave the leading ecclesiastics of each nation a great influence in the private counsels of the king. The religious veneration entertained by these half-civilised men but faithful Christians for the hierarchy greatly increased the influence the clergy derived from their learning and their wealth. The result was that the power of .the clergy in the nations of Europe during the ninth and tenth centuries was very great. The power of the papacy also increased greatly. Rome had still to the rude nations of the north and west the prestige of a great name, and the Bishop of Rome was beyond question the head of the Western Church. The popes only followed the general example in asserting, as far as circumstances permitted, their sovereign independence in their own states. The disputes of other sovereigns, in which they were sometimes invited to arbitrate, and in which they sometimes interfered on the invitation of one side only, gradually gave the opportunity of putting forth the pretensions to crown and uncrown the kings of the earth, which afterwards found their greatest exponents in Gregory VII,...