THE PAPACY AND THE WESTERN EMPIRE. Dur ing these centuries the Papacy, on which natural ly devolved the leadership of Christendom in the warfare for the Cross. attained its greatest power. The popes made and deposed emperors and kings, accepted whole kingdoms as fiefs of the Church, and exercised jurisdiction in international con troversies. The German emperors of the House.
of Hohenstaufen (1138-1254) seemed indeed al most as powerful as their predecessors of the eleventh century, \ vho had made and unmade popes; and \vim] by marriage the emperors gained control of the Norman kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, the hub-pent knee of the Papacy ap 'feared to be seriously menaced. Among the German princes, however, and in the Lombard cities the popes found trustworthy, because inter ested, allies; and a century of intermittent (00 Ilict ended in the destruction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. See HUELPHS AND HIIIIIELLINES; HO HENSTAUFEN.
EURoPE AT TIIE END OF THE CRUSADES. At the close of the thirteenth century Germany and Italy had iwoline of praetically in dependent principalities, secular or ecclesiastical, and, of free cities. Kings were elected in Germany, and these kings called themselves Roman em perors; but they had almost no power in Italy and little in Germany. Poland and Hungary were no longer even nominally subject to the empire, and Burgundy was drifting to France. in the northeast, however, Germany had expanded by Saxon conquests and colonization, and the gains thus effected proved more durable than those made by the military monks. The kings of England had retained Normandy through the twelfth century, and had acquired by marriage so many other French fiefs that they ruled half of that kingdom ; but all these possessions except Guienne had been lost by the unlucky John early in the thirteenth century. In France, as in England, the crown had become hereditary, and at the close of the thirteenth century the power of the French kings was increasing. In Spain the united kingdom of Leon-Castile (in which also the royal power was increasing) covered the greater part of the peninsula ; hut Portugal, inde pendent since 1139, had attained its present boun daries, and all eastern Spain was ruled by tile King of Aragon. During these centuries there
was a sensible increase of commerce in western Europe. The control of European trade with the East passed out of the hands of the Greeks into those of the Italians, and a much more active traffic was developed on the trade routes between the Mediterranean and northern Europe. espe cially on those that ran through Germany. The result was a great increase in the wealth and power of the cities, first in Italy, later in Ger many. France, and Spain. Everywhere the citi zens bought or fought themselves free from their ecclesiastical or secular lords; in many parts of Europe the cities formed alliances for mutual pro tection. The league of the Lombard cities played an important part in the struggle between the popes and the emperors; the great league of the Hansa, which soon controlled the trade in the northern seas, was formed at the close of the thirteenth century. (See HANSEATIC LEAGUE.) It was a natural result of the increasing impor tance of the cities that their were summoned to meet with the other estates of the realm in diets or parliaments. This occurred in the Spanish kingdoms in the twelfth century. in England and in Germany in the thirteenth century. and in France in the fourteenth century. In the intellectual life of Europe the universi ties played an increasingly important part. The age of the Crusades was also the age in which scholasticism reached its highest development. It was also the age in which the study of the law-books of Justinian was revived, and in the legists a new learned class appeared from which the kings and princes, heretofore dependent upon the clergy for their administrative officials, were able to draw servants wholly devoted to their interests. The cities furnished the wealth and power which in the following centuries made monarchy independent of the feudal nobility ; the legists formulated the theories and furnished the trained service which was to make the modern State independent of Pope and Church.