traditions were more abundant and life generally was more settled. In Germany a greater burden was, therefore, thrown upon the kings and, as was so generally the case with men in those days, they rose to their responsibilities. Accordingly the kingship grew in strength, and Otto the First was so firmly seated at home as to be able to intervene with success abroad. His Marches, as later history was to shew, served adequately their purpose of defence, and German suzerainty over the neighbouring lands became more real. The basis of his power was Saxony, less feudalised than the other duchies and peopled mainly by freemen well able to fight for their ruler. Otto understood, moreover, how necessary for strength and order was close fellowship in work between State and Church. Throughout his land the Bishops, alike by duty and tradition, were apostles of civilisation, and, on the outskirts of the kingdom above all, the spread of Christianity meant the growth of German influence, much as it had done under Charlemagne himself. To the Bishops, already overburdened with their spiritual charge, were entrusted administrative duties. In England individual Bishops were counsellors of the king: in France Bishops, although later to be controlled by neighbouring nobles, had been a more coherent body than elsewhere, and the legislative authority of synods had been so great that the Episcopate had even striven to become the leading power in the realm. But it was characteristic of Germany to make the Bishops, with large territories and richly endowed, a part, and a great part, of the administration in its local control, working for the Crown and trusted by it, but with the independent power of Counts or even more: thus there grew up in Germany the great Prince-Bishoprics, as marked a feature of the political life as the tribal Duchies but destined to endure still longer. And furthermore, because of this close alliance between German Crown and German Episcopate, the later struggle between Church and King, which arose out of forces already at work, was to shake with deeper movement the edifice of royal power. Because of this special feature of German polity, the eleventh century strife between Pope and German King meant more for Germany than it did for other lands. And this was something quite apart from the revival of the Western Roman Empire.
Otto’s political revival, with its lasting influence on history, was in the first place a bringing to life again of the Carolingian Empire. Like the earlier Empire it arose out of the needs of the Church at Rome: Otto the Great, like Charlemagne and his forerunners, had come into Italy, and Rome with the Papacy was the centre, indeed the storm-point, of Italian politics and strife. But Otto, unlike Charlemagne, was more a protector than a ruler of the Church, and here too, as on the political side of the
