ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE.
The ancient classic culture was in the days of the Carolingians revived for the last time before its final extinction by the Gothic races, who were now spread over Western Europe, and who overwhelmed with destruction all those external conditions under which alone a great civ ilization can flourish. The world lapsed again into barbarism, with all its attendant passions and miseries. Accompanying these evils, however, was an intense longing for better things. An Ideal began to form— the establishment of lasting peace throughout the world and the attain ment of virtue by each individual. The possessors of this Ideal were not the inhabitants of some special country, nor did it arise where external conditions were so decisive or where the reactive influence of the older races which the Germans had overthrown had been so potent that almost a new people had developed. The possessors of this Ideal were all that family of Western Christian races under Teutonic dominion, even as these races were themselves the seat of the evil.
Diverse as was the nature of all the peoples who were subject to the Germanic tribes, and who gradually again forced themselves into promi nence, yet the bond of the Church and the still widely-prevalent impress of the ancient autocratic rule of the emperors (whose last great representa tive, Charlemagne, was fresh in the memory of all) had so much in com mon with the status these emperors had established, and the supremacy of the Teutons was everywhere so complete, that all minor differences vanished. Though the unity of the empire was gone, though everywhere the leaders founded small independent kingdoms whose existence 'each neighbor menaced that he might aggrandize his own, vet all were vividly impressed with the idea that the empire had been a useful institution, had promoted that peace after which mankind yearned amidst battle and rapine.
Church and Stain—That great Ideal contemplated two authorities— an inner, spiritual, and an outer, material, power--which should rule the world in common. The Church was the first of these; its office was to civilize, to teach, to cultivate the arts of peace, to soften manners, to reconcile men to God, to prepare all for another life, and to organize the dispensation of the sacraments. To protect and sustain the Church was the office of the temporal power, to take the sword whenever necessary for the maintenance of right or the overthrow of wrong, and to arrange temporal affairs.
As the pope AN'aS the head of the Church, so should the emperor be thesource of temporal authority; all kings should derive their power from him and delegate that power to their vassals, just as bishops and priests in their various grades receive their missions from the pope. The vassal's duty was that of fealty and obedience; so that the whole of society, from its highest ranks to its lowest, should be made up of a series of dependent relations the basis of which was reciprocal loyalty, to the end that the highest should be as little independent as the lowest. The Church and the temporal power—pope and emperor—were to be related like sun and moon.
But this was only an Ideal—an Ideal which for a long period found not even a definite expression, and was felt and perceived rather than systematically established; an Ideal which in the course of time varied in particular features, but which through self-interest, ambition, and other human passions, was cast aside as often as it became inconvenient, and which no authority was sufficiently powerful constantly to sustain.
Since Teutonic races ruled the Western World, it was but natural that Germany itself should take the lead, and though it was also the representative of the dominant world-idea, though it was recognized as the highest political power in Europe, it could not entirely acquire tem poral rule, it could not unify the states of Europe into a complete system such as that which the Church had developed. The latter existed as a dominant and unchangeable unity notwithstanding it was assailed by the inconsiderate maintenance of individual interests in opposition to the sys tem. These individual interests, in fact, prevented the state from devel oping into a European unity. But the Ideal had been best maintained in Germany. It is true that the defencelessness of small dominions had made itself felt here more than elsewhere. Within the empire smoul dered civil war; foreign enemies overran the boundaries; the Slays swept in, and the tenth century had not far progressed before the Magyars threw themselves in countless swarms over Germany and spread over the duchies of Franconia, Bavaria, Swabia, Lorraine, and Saxony.