their war with Frederick. But they did this only because they could not
tolerate a rival near their base of spiritual power; and the very
reasons which had made them side with the cities in the wars of
liberation would have roused their hostility against a federative union.
To have encouraged an Italian Bund, in the midst of which they would
have found the Church unarmed and on a level with the puissant towns of
Lombardy and Tuscany, must have seemed to them a suicidal error. Such a
coalition, if attempted, could not but have been opposed with all their
might; for the whole history of Italy proves that Machiavelli was right
when he asserted that the Church had persistently maintained the nation
in disunion for the furtherance of her own selfish ends. We have
furthermore to add the prestige which the Empire preserved for the
Italians, who failed to conceive of any civilized, human society whereof
the representative of Cæsar should not be the God-appointed head. Though
the material power of the Emperors was on the wane, it still existed as
a dominant idea. Italy was still the Garden of the Empire no less than
the Throne of Christ on earth. After the burghs had wrung what they
regarded as their reasonable rights and privileges from Frederick, they
laid down their arms, and were content to flourish beneath the imperial
shadow. To raise up a political association as a bulwark against the
Holy Roman Empire, and by the formation of this defense to become an
independent and united nation, instead of remaining an aggregate of
scattered townships, would have seemed to their minds little short of
sacrilege. Up to this point the Church and the Empire had been,
theoretically at least, concordant. They were the sun and moon of a
sacred social system which ruled Europe with light and might. But the
Wars of Investiture placed them in antagonism, and the result of that
quarrel was still further to divide the Italians, still further to
remove the hope of national unity into the region of things
unattainable. The great parties accentuated communal jealousies and gave