Naturally these Papal pretensions led to feuds with the Empire. The freedom of secular aspirations clashed with the claims of spiritual dominion. In the portentous struggle of the two Powers for the supremacy, a struggle which inflicted heavy losses on the German Empire, the Imperial cause was worsted. It was unable to mould the widely different and too independent subdivisions of the empire into a homogeneous whole, and to crush the selfish particularism of the estates. The last Staufer died on the scaffold at Naples under the axe of Charles of Anjou, who was a vassal of the Church. The great days of the German-Roman Empire were over. The German power lay on the ground in fragments. A period of almost complete anarchy followed. Dogmatism and lack of patriotic sentiment, those bad characteristics of the German people, contributed to extend this destruction to the economic sphere. The intellectual life of the German people deteriorated equally. At the time when the Imperial power was budding and under the rule of the highly-gifted Staufers, German poetry was passing through a first classical period. Every German country was ringing with song; the depth of German sentiment found universal expression in ballads and poems, grave or gay, and German idealism inspired the minnesingers. But with the disappearance of the Empire every string was silent, and even the plastic arts could not rise above the coarseness and confusion of the political conditions. The material prosperity of the people indeed improved, as affairs at home were better regulated, and developed to an amazing extent; the Hanseatic League bore its flag far and wide over the northern seas, and the great trade-routes, which linked the West and Orient, led from Venice and Genoa through Germany. But the earlier political power was never again attained. Nevertheless dislike of spiritual despotism still smouldered in the breasts of that German people, which had submitted to the Papacy, and was destined, once more to blaze up into bright flames, and this time in the spiritual domain. As she grew more and more worldly, the Church had lost much of her influence on men's minds. On the other hand, a refining movement had grown up in humanism, which, supported by the spirit of antiquity, could not fail from its very nature to become antagonistic to the Church. It found enthusiastic response in Germany, and was joined by everyone whose thoughts and hopes were centred in freedom. Ulrich von Hutten's battle-cry, "I have dared the deed," rang loud through the districts of Germany.