families.

The collision between Rome and the emperor came quickly. The victory at
the outset fell to the pope, and Henry IV. was compelled to humble
himself and entreat pardon as a penitent at Canossa. Superficially, the
tables were turned later; when Gregory died, Henry was ostensibly
victor.

But Gregory's successor, Urban, as resolute and more subtle, retrieved
what had only been a check. The Crusades, essentially of ecclesiastical
inspiration, were given their great impulse by him; they were a movement
of Christendom against the Paynim, of the Church against Islam; they
centred in the pope, not the emperor, and they made the pope, not the
emperor, conspicuously the head of Christendom.

The twelfth century was the age of the Crusades, of Anselm and Abelard,
of Bernard of Clairvaux, and Arnold of Brescia. It saw the settlement of
the question of investitures, and in England the struggle between Henry
II. and Becket, in which the murder of the archbishop gave him the
victory. It saw a new enthusiasm of monasticism, not originated by, but
centring in, the person of Bernard, a more conspicuous and a more
authoritative figure than any pope of the time. To him was due the
suppression of the intellectual movement from within against the
authority of the Church, connected with Abelard's name.

Arnold of Brescia's movement was orthodox, but, would have transformed
the Church from a monarchial into a republican organisation, and
demanded that the clergy should devote themselves to apostolical and
pastoral functions with corresponding habits of life. He was a
forerunner of the school of reformers which culminated in Zwingli.

In the middle of the century the one English pope, Hadrian IV., was a
courageous and capable occupant of the papal throne, and upheld its
dignity against Frederick Barbarossa; though he could not maintain the
claim that the empire was held as a fief of the papacy. But the strife
between the spiritual and temporal powers issued on his death in a
double election, and an imperial anti-pope divided the allegiance of
Christendom with Alexander III. It was not till after Frederick had been
well beaten by the Lombard League at Legnano that emperor and pope were
reconciled, and the reconciliation was the pope's victory.

_III.--Triumph and Decline of the Papacy_

Innocent III., mightiest of all popes, was elected in 1198. He made the
papacy what it remained for a hundred years, the greatest power in