THE THRONE OF THE WORLD
rime had not wholly liberated the troops of the Church. The tragic dissonance between the two bearers o one theocratic state idea lived on. But a third element slowly presented itself and was destined to give the struggle another meaning.
Nationalistic powers, the communes eager for self-rule, lay culture, and theories of the autonomous state, were directed just as much against the Empire (which, having once more been confirmed in its rights, was likewise anxious to confirm its power as well) as against the Gregorian Papacy * (which by reason of the fact that it was both a Civitas Dei and a state owning worldly possessions was tending toward temporal rule) . Present also was the father of all change not merely the crude stroke and counter-stroke of armed forces, but also the intellectual warfare of right against right. Legality in the juridical sense likewise increased the tension incident to the decisive struggle be- tween these great forces. The Roman science of law, resurrected in Bologna, drew the attention of both sides to the ancient imperittm; and in this city a new codification and exigesis of ecclesiastical law began to be differentiated from theology as an independent science. Those who looked back upon the past could also, it is true, suppose that the polis of antiquity and the republic of a newer time desirous of innovation were commendable forms of the common life. If now in the temporal sphere Empire and nationalistic spirit imperium and city state struggled for control of the future, the fact remained that the Church reposed upon a social form decreed by its own law; and therefore it did not need to feel that its innate significance as the community of the Kingdom of God would suffer, regardless of what happened in the world around. Indeed the Church was really threatened only by the serious danger that she would lose sight of her real destiny. Her religious world-dominion was not based upon a political world rule by the Bishop of Rome, but on guidance from a Papacy which would not desert the Church however politically strong or weak. If one were now to ask whether the political world dominion of the Popes has been beneficial to mankind, one could answer only if one were able to look across time and space and see history which to the human eye is always an incomplete happening as a perfect whole. That the Papacy erred is proved sufficiently by the voices of con- temporaries who drew from their own Christian strength the right to
PAPAL
