suppose that in the appointment of bishops, kings and princes would disregard all worldly motives and appoint men solely for the good of souls. On the other hand, the great bishoprics and abbeys were among the most important fiefs in a king's gift, and carried with them feudal privileges of sovereignty, such as rights of coinage, toll, holding courts, etc.; in short, they were mere secular fiefs with ecclesiastical prerogatives added. It was natural that the German Emperors should claim the right to appoint and invest these spiritual barons, and insist that their episcopal territories should be subject to the same feudal obligations and the same civic duties as the territories granted to lay barons. This third article was a direct attack on the civil power. If all Imperial participation were to be stricken out, and bishops put into possession of their fiefs solely by the Pope, then vast territories, estimated to be nearly half the Empire, would be withdrawn from civic obligations, even from military service, and the Pope, ousting the Emperor, would become monarch of half the Imperial domains. According to the canons of the Church, the clergy and the people of the diocese elected the bishop, and the Church bestowed on him ring and staff, the signs of episcopal office. The trouble arose over the fief. In feudal times the kings had enfeoffed bishops with great fiefs in order to counterbalance the insubordinate secular lords, and because, in episcopal hands, these fiefs did not become hereditary. When the reformers took the matter up, they found that in practice the kings did not wait for a canonical election of episcopal candidates, but invested their henchmen in return for money or some service which had no savour of sanctity. The episcopal office, as St. Peter Damian complained, was got "by flattering the king, studying his inclination, obeying his beck, applauding every word that fell from his mouth, by acting the parasite and playing the buffoon." The real difficulty lay in the double nature of the episcopal office, half ecclesiastical and half feudal; and, like other great political difficulties, would not yield to a peaceful solution, until there had been a trial of strength between the discordant interests. The first consequence, however, of the reforming spirit was to ennoble the whole Church, to purify her members, and animate them with a common zeal, and to uplift her head, the Papacy. It carried on, in a larger way and with a greater sweep, the work of ecclesiastical reformation begun by the intervention of the Emperors in the election of Popes, and gave a loftier tone to European politics. FOOTNOTES: [8] _Le cronache italiane del medio evo descritte_, Balzani, p. 123. CHAPTER X THE STRUGGLE OVER INVESTITURES (1059-1123)