ially of the regular clergy. All the great
German emperors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who saw the
evils of feudalism, and attempted to break it up and revive imperial
Rome, became involved in quarrels with the chiefs of the religious
society, and failed, because the interest of the Popes, as feudal
sovereigns and Italian princes, and the interests of the dignified
clergy, were for the time bound up with the feudal society, though
their Roman culture and civilization made them at heart hostile to it.
The student of history, however strong his filial affection towards the
visible head of the church, cannot help admiring the grandeur of the
political views of Frederic the Second, the greatest and last of the
Hohenstaufen, or refrain from dropping a tear over his sad failure. He
had great faults as a man, but he had rare genius as a statesman; and
it is some consolation to know that he died a Christian death, in
charity with all men, after having received the last sacraments of his
religion.

The Popes, under the circumstances, were no doubt justified in the
policy they pursued, for the Swabian emperors failed to respect the
acknowledged rights of the church, and to remember their own
incompetency in spirituals; but evidently their political views and
aims were liberal, far-reaching, and worthy of admiration. Their
success, if it could have been effected without lesion to the church,
would have set Europe forward some two or three hundred years, and
probably saved it from the schisms of the fourteenth and sixteenth
centuries. But it is easy to be wise after the event. The fact is,
that during the period when feudalism was in full vigor, the king was
merely a shadow; the people found their only consolation in religion,
and their chief protectors in the monks, who mingled with them, saw
their sufferings, and sympathized with them, consoled them, carried
their cause to the castle before the feudal lord and lady, and did,
thank God, do something to keep alive religious sentiments and
convictions in the bosom of the feudal society itself. Whatever
opinions may be formed of the monastic orders in relation to the
present, this much is certain, that they were the chief civilizers of
Europe, and the chief agents in delivering European society from feudal
barbarism.

The aristocracy have been claimed as the natural allies of the throne,
but history proves them to be its natural enemies, whenever it cannot
be use