§ 97.2. =The Political Importance of the Superior Clergy= (§ 84) reached its highest point during this period. This was carried furthest in Germany, especially under the Saxon imperial dynasty. On more than one occasion did the wise and firm policy of the German clergy, splendidly organized under the leadership of the primate of Mainz, save the German nation from overthrow or dismemberment threatened by ambitious princes. This power consisted not merely in influence over men’s minds, but also in their position as members of the states of the empire and territorial lords. Whether or not a warlike expedition was to be undertaken depended often only on the consent or refusal of the league of lords spiritual. It was the policy of the clergy to secure a united, strong, well-organized Germany. The surrounding countries wished to be included in the German league of churches and states; not, however, as the emperor wished, as crown lands, but as portions of the empire. Against expeditions to Rome, which took the attention of German princes away from German affairs and ruined Germany, the German clergy protested in the most decided manner. They wished the chair of St. Peter to be free and independent as a European, not a German, institution, with the emperor as its supporter not its oppressor, but they manfully resisted all the assumptions and encroachments of the popes. One of the most celebrated of the German dignitaries of any age was Bruno the Great, brother of the Emperor Otto I., equally distinguished as a statesman and as a reformer of the church, and the unwearied promoter of liberal studies. Chancellor under his imperial brother from A.D. 940, he was his most trusted counsellor, and was appointed by him in A.D. 953 Archbishop of Cologne, and was soon after made Duke of Lorraine. He died in A.D. 965. Another example of a German prelate of the true sort is seen in Willigis of Mainz, who died in A.D. 1011, under the two last Ottos and Henry II., whom he raised to the throne. The good understanding that was brought about between this monarch and the clergy of Germany was in great measure owing to the wise policy of this prelate. Under Henry IV. the German clergy got split up into three parties,--the papal party of Clugny under Gebhard [Gebhardt] of Salzburg, including almost all the Saxon bishops; an imperial party under Adalbert of Bremen, who endeavoured with the emperor’s help to found a northern patriarchate, which undoubtedly tended to become a northern papacy; and an independent German party under St. Anno II. of Cologne (§ 96, 6), in which notwithstanding much violence, ambition, and self-seeking, there still survived much of the spirit that had characterized the policy of the old German bishops. Henry V., too, as well as the first Hohenstaufens, had sturdy supporters in the German clergy; but Frederick II.