The Cambridge Medieval History - Book XIII

Learning and Literature in the Early Middle Ages

The alluring dream of Charles the Great has vanished; after his death no temporal prince was found capable of carrying on his work, and it fell to ruins. Nevertheless, the root idea which had inspired him still persisted: the idea of the unity of the Christian world, bound together and grouped round a single head, ready to give battle to the infidel, and to undertake the conversion of the barbarians. But it was the Church which now appropriated the idea, and which alone, amidst the surrounding confusion, succeeded in maintaining itself as the principle of order and the power of cohesion. To show in broad outline how and to what extent the Church succeeded in this design during the disturbed period which preceded the great Church reform of the eleventh century is the object of these few pages which will thus sum up the history.
Under the ever-present influence of scriptural ideals, Charles the Great had really come to see in himself what he was so often called, a new David, or another Solomon, at once priest and king, the master and overlord of the Bishops of his realms; in reducing those Bishops to the level of docile fellow-laborers with him in the work of government, he had believed himself to be working for the consolidation of his own power. But in this matter, as in so many others, the results of his policy had not accorded with his wishes and expectations. The Bishops, having been called upon to take part in affairs of State, were consequently quite ready to busy themselves with them even uninvited, while, on the other hand, by the investment of the Emperor with a semi-sacer­dotal character the clergy were encouraged to see in him one of themselves, and, despite his superior position, to look upon him as amenable to their jurisdiction...