Empire, he set out from a distinctively German rather than from a general standpoint. His first care was rather with the German Church, needed as an ally for his internal government, than with the Papacy representing a general conception of wide importance. The new series of Emperors are concerned with the Papacy more as it affected Germany and Italy than under its aspect of a world-wide power built on a compact theory. The future history of the Empire in its relations to the Papacy turns, then, mainly upon the fortunes of the Church first in Germany and then in Italy: conflict arises, when it does arise, out of actual working conditions and not out of large conceptions and controversies. This is certainly true of our present period and of the Imperial system under Otto. Upon the Papal side things were very different. From it large statements and claims came forth: Nicholas I presented to the world a compact and far-reaching doctrine which only needed to be brought into action in later days; although, as a matter of fact, even with the Papacy, actual jurisdiction preceded theory.
Ecclesiastics were naturally, more than laymen, concerned with principles (embodied in the Canon Law), of which they were the special guardians, and they remained so until Roman Law regained in later centuries its old preeminence as a great system based on thought and embodied in practice. Its triumph was to be under Frederick Barbarossa and not under Otto the Great, although its study, quickened through practical difficulties, began both in France and Lombardy during the eleventh century. To begin with, churchmen led in the realm of thought, and, when clash and controversy came, were first in the field. Laymen, from kings to officials, were, on the other hand, slowly forging, under pressure of actual need, a system that was strong, coherent, and destined to grow because it was framed in practice more than in thought. But for the moment we are concerned with the Empire and not with the Feudal system, to which we shall return.
The exact extent of St Augustine’s influence upon medieval thought has been much discussed: to write of it here would be to anticipate what must be said later on. But it came to reinforce, if not to suggest, the medieval view of society, already held, though not expressed in the detail of Aquinas or Dante. Life has fewer contradictions than has thought, and in the work of daily life men reconcile oppositions which, if merely thought over, might seem insuperable. To the man of practice in those days, as to the student of St Augustine’s City of God, Christian society was one great whole, within which there were many needs, many ends to reach, and many varied things to do. But the society itself was one, and Pope or Monarch, churchman or layman, had to meet its needs and do its work as best he could. This was something quite unlike the modern theories of Church
