In the middle ages 103

the feudal nobility gained more independence ; cities

began to show their power.

Even in Italy, which the German Emperors had

so long claimed as their own, Frederic II, son of

Frederic Barbarossa, had to reckon with the Lom-

bard cities which were powerful principalities, seek-

ing to shake off his yoke. In his person the family

of the Hohenstaufen underwent defeat at the hands

of the Pope.

Above this process of beginning nationalization,

states which were striving towards an autonomous

national life, stood the Papacy, which assumed in

the person of Innocent III its most perfect me-

diaeval expression. Its mission being above all

regulatory, the Papacy followed a religious and in-

ternational policy whose effect on the whole centurj-

will be defined later in this chapter.^ It was In-

nocent III who affirmed the unitary role of the

Papacy in the political life of his age: he was the

first to set up as a right that which his predecessors

had practiced in fact — that is, the nomination of

the Emperor.^'

But politics, whether of kings or of popes, con-

stitute only the body of civilization. Its inner

life circulates in religious and moral feelings, in

social, artistic, philosophical, and scientific doc-

trines.

5 See below iii.

5" See the Bull Venerabilem: "jus et auctoritas examinandi per-

sonam electam in regem ct promovendum ad imperium ad nos spec-

tat."

104 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Christian dogma and Christian ethics permeated

the whole human fabric, no activity being exempted

from their influence. They endued with a certain

supernatural sanction the life of individuals, fami-

lies and peoples, who were all on a pilgrimage {in

via) towards the heavenly home (in patfiam).

Christianity gave a spirit of consecration to the

workers in guilds, to the profession of arms (pro-

vided the war was just) , to ateliers of painters and

of sculptors, to the builders of cathedrals, to cloister-

schools and universities. The new religious orders

organized themselves in the new spirit of the age.

While the Benedictine monks belonged to a par-

ticular abbey, as to a large family, the Dominicans

and Franciscans belonged far more to their order

as a whole, — they were delocalized, being sent out

for preaching like soldiers to a battlefield.^

Similarly, in the whole field of art there was the

same dream of universality, and the same attempt

to realize rigorously the ideal of order.

The Gothic cathedrals, which are the most per-

fect flowering of mediaeval genius, amaze modern

architects with the amplitude of their dimensions.

"They were made for crowds, for thousands and

tens of thousands of human beings; for the whole

human race, on its knees, hungry for pardon and

love."^ At the same time, they astound the mod-

7 Henry Adams, op. oit., p. 367.

Cf. E. Baker, The Dominican Order and Convocation, Oxford,

Clarendon Press, 1913.