fect followed
the cause instantaneously. As soon as Gregory VII. made the Papacy
independent of the Empire, the great conflict began; and the same
pontificate gave birth to the theory of the sovereignty of the people.
The Gregorian party argued that the Emperor derived his crown from the
nation, and that the nation could take away what it had bestowed. The
Imperialists replied that nobody could take away what the nation had
given. It is idle to look for the spark either in flint or steel. The
object of both parties was unqualified supremacy. Fitznigel has no more
idea of ecclesiastical liberty than John of Salisbury of political.
Innocent IV. is as perfect an absolutist as Peter de Vineis. But each
party encouraged democracy in turn, by seeking the aid of the towns;
each party in turn appealed to the people, and gave strength to the
constitutional theory. In the fourteenth century English Parliaments
judged and deposed their kings, as a matter of right; the Estates
governed France without king or noble; and the wealth and liberties of
the towns, which had worked out their independence from the centre of
Italy to the North Sea, promised for a moment to transform European
society. Even in the capitals of great princes, in Rome, in Paris, and,
for two terrible days, in London, the commons obtained sway. But the
curse of instability was on the municipal republics. Strasburg,
according to Erasmus and Bodin, the best governed of all, suffered from
perpetual commotions. An ingenious historian has reckoned seven thousand
revolutions in the Italian cities. The democracies succeeded no better
than feudalism in regulating the balance between rich and poor. The
atrocities of the Jacquerie, and of Wat Tyler's rebellion, hardened the
hearts of men against the common people. Church and State combined to
put them down. And the last memorable struggles of mediaeval liberty--the
insurrection of the Comuneros in Castile, the Peasants' War in Germany,
the Republic of Florence, and the Revolt of Ghent--were suppressed by
Charles V. in the early years of the Reformation.

The middle ages had forged a complete arsenal of constitutional maxims:
trial by jury, taxation by representation, local self-government,
ecclesiastical independence, responsible authority. But they were not
secured by institutions, and the Reformation began by making the dry
bones more dry. Luther claimed to be the first divine who did justice to
the civil power. He made t