The personal dilemma of the poet with his fortune to make, but desirous of doing right, mirrors the desperate situation of the State: "Woe is thee, German tongue; ill stand thy order and thy honour!—I hear the lies of Rome betraying two kings!" And in verses of wrath Walther inveighs against the Pope. The sweeping nature of his denunciation raises the question whether he merely attacked the supposed treachery of the reigning pope, or was opposed to the papacy as an institution hostile to the German nation.
The answer is not clear. Mediaeval denunciations of the Church range from indictments of particular abuses, on through more general invectives, to the clear protests of heretics impugning the ecclesiastical system. It is not always easy to ascertain the speaker's meaning. Usually the abuse and not the system is attacked. Hostility to the latter, however sweeping the language of satirist or preacher, is not lightly to be inferred. The invectives of St. Bernard and Damiani are very broad; but where had the Church more devoted sons? Even the satirists composing in Old French rarely intended an assault upon her spiritual authority. It would seem as if, at least in the Romance countries, one must look for such hostility to heretical circles, the Waldenses for example. And from the orthodox mediaeval standpoint, this was their most accursed heresy.
It would have been hard for any German to use broader language than some of the French satirists and Latin castigators. If there was a difference, it must be sought in the specific matter of the German disapproval viewed in connection with the political situation. Was a position ever taken incompatible with the Church's absolute spiritual authority? or one intrinsically irreconcilable with the secular power of the papacy? At any time, in any country, papal claims might become irreconcilable with the royal prerogative—as William the Conqueror had held those of Gregory VII. in England, and as, two centuries afterwards, Philip the Fair was to hold those of Boniface VIII. in France. But in neither case was there such sheer and fundamental antagonism as men felt to exist between the Empire and the Papacy. Perhaps it was possible in the early thirteenth century for a German whose whole heart
