him. The prelates of Germany, therefore, remained vassals of the
Crown.

[Sidenote: on Papacy.]

On the other hand, the Papacy had definitely shaken itself free from
imperial control. Henry III was the last Emperor who could impose his
nominee Papacy upon the Church as Pope; the proteges of his successors
are all classed among the anti-Popes. At the same time the papal
privilege of crowning the Emperor and the papal weapon of
excommunication were very real checks upon the German King; while the
success of those principles for which the Cluniac party had striven
established the theoretical claim of the Pope to be the moral guide,
and the part which he played in starting the Crusades put him in the
practical position of the leader of Christendom in any common
movement. It was no slight loss to the Emperor that he had been the
chief opponent of the Pope and the reformers, and that in the matter
of the Crusades he and his whole nation had stood ostentatiously
aloof.




CHAPTER IV

THE SECULAR CLERGY


[Sidenote: The work of the Church reformers.]