higher; until, in the end, his
idea was to concentrate all ecclesiastical power in the hands of the
pope, and to raise the papacy to the dominion of the world. Thus was to
be realized the old dream of Augustine: that of a Kingdom of God on
earth under the rule of the Church. But it was not given to Gregory to
reach this goal, and his successors had to return again to the strife
over investiture. The settlement of 1111 may be said to have embodied
the only solution of the great question that was right in principle,
since it pronounced in favour of a clear distinction between the
spiritual and temporal spheres. However, a solution that was right in
principle proved impossible in practice, and the long struggle ended in
a compromise by the Concordat of Worms (1122). The essential part of
this was that the Empire accepted the canonical election of bishops, and
allowed the metropolitan to confer the sacred office by gift of ring and
pastoral staff; while the Church acknowledged that the bishop held his
temporal rights from the Empire, and was therefore to be invested with
them by a touch from the royal sceptre. A similar solution was arrived
at in England. Henry I. also renounced his claim to bestow ring and
pastoral staff, but kept the right of induction into the temporalities
(1106-1107). In France the demands of the Church were successful to the
same degree as in England and Germany, but without any conflict. Thus
the Germanic element in the law regarding appointment to bishoprics was
eliminated. Somewhat later it disappeared also in the case of the
churches of less importance, patronal rights over these being
substituted for the former absolute ownership. The pontificate of
Alexander III. (1159-1181) decided this.

Since the time of Charlemagne Germanic influence had preponderated in
the West, as is shown in the expansion of the Church no less than in
matters of ecclesiastical law. The whole progress of Christianity in
Europe from the 9th to the 12th century was due--if we exclude Eastern
Christendom--to the Teutonic nations; neither the papacy nor the peoples
of Latin race were concerned in it. German priests and bishops carried
the Christian faith to the Czechs and the Moravians, laboured among the
Hungarians and the Poles, and won the wide district between the Elbe and
the Oder at once for Christianity and for the German nation. Germany,
too, was the starting-point for the conversion of the Scandinavian
countries, whi