In the middle ages 29

lords, who sold the episcopal offices, and they pro-

claimed aloud that the bishops ought to be elected

by the people and by the clerics, — in the famous in-

vestiture strife. The abuse, however, exercised its

most baneful influence in Germany, where the dukes

and abbots and bishops were, as we have seen, mere

creatures of the Emperor.^ Moreover, the Pope

himself had served as a German functionary ever

since Otto I had conquered Italy and placed upon

his own head the crown of Charlemagne. It was

the great abbey of Cluny which altered this state

of affairs. It was Cluny that by one of its

daughter-houses, the abbey of Hirschau in the

Black Forest, introduced the ideas of the French

feudal system along with its monastic reform. The

French influence of Cluny not only softened the

barbaric habits of the German feudal lords, but it

also put an end to that dangerous privilege of

naming the Pope, which the German Emperors

had appropriated to their own advantage ; and thus

it delivered the Papacy from that humiliating yoke.

The famous Hildebrand had been formerly a monk

of Cluny; and, as Pope Gregory VII, he waged the

famous investiture strife against the Emperor,

Henry IV. This duel issued in the defeat of the

Emperor at Canossa. In that dramatic scene,

which concluded the struggle, were symbolized with

early mediaeval harshness the humiliation of the

Emperor and the triumph of the Cluniac ideas.

8 See above, p. 22.

30 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Henry IV was forced to cross, in midwinter and

without escort, the snow covered Alps, and for

three days to await audience with the Pope. Hugh,

the abbot of Cluny, was witness of the Emperor's

humihation. For the first time, French ideas had

triumphed over the power of Germany,^ and these

French ideas were the ideas of Cluny. It was be-

cause of such widespread and profound influence,

exercised on the mentality of the Middle Ages by

the celebrated monastery, that in 1910, at the mil-

lennial congress which reunited at Cluny learned

men from everywhere, one of them could say, "We

are come to Cluny to sing a hymn to civihzation."^"

But the very prosperity of Cluny, especially with

its extraordinary wealth, became one of the chief

causes of its declining influence. At the beginning

of the twelfth century its monastic life had become

more lax, and henceforth its influence as a social

force waned.

But, after the order of Cluny had performed its

great service, there was established another Bene-

dictine congregation, which renewed that famous

rule: the order of Citeaux in Burgundy, which im-

mediately spread throughout all France, and Eu-

rope generally, in the twelfth century. This new

order, commonly called Cistercian, was also a fed-

eration of Benedictine houses, although /each of

them was more independent than was the case in the

C/. Lamprecht, Deutsche Oe.trhichfe, III, pp. 192 and 193.

io Millenaire de C'lvny, Academic de Ma^on, 1910, vol. XV, p. Ixxiv.