John's death, in fact, seems to have caused the support of the barons to swing back yet again to the rightful heir to the Crown. Amongst other degradations which he had brought on his country John had sworn fealty to the Pope for his possession of England and Ireland. Our islands had, therefore, in theory, become a possession of the Pope held by the English king as his vassal, and few things in the whole of our great story are more remarkable than the power which the Popes continued to wield over all Europe, except its eastern fringe, at the very time when the position of the Popes {163} themselves was so very insecure at Rome that we actually find them, not only unable to enforce their authority in the city, but now and then compelled to fly from it for their own personal safety. [Sidenote: The cities of Italy] It is very interesting to see what happened in the country which we now call Italy, because it was something that was rather different from that which happened elsewhere. It was different just because there was this contest between the Pope and the Emperor going on all the while, complicating the already difficult position caused by the feudal system. It is necessary, for the understanding of what happened, that we should free our minds of any idea of a single country, a unity, called Italy, as we know Italy now. There was no such idea in men's minds at the time reached by our story, and we can understand what happened much better if we can get back to their point of view. For them there was the Emperor, with his very extensive but rather vague claim over a good deal of what Charlemagne had made his own. Then the feudal system had created what were practically independent provinces in the north of Italy as elsewhere. And then there came in the Pope, the power of the Church. And the power of the Church had its principal political influence, as regards Italy, in this: that just as at Rome the Pope, who was originally no more than the Bishop of Rome, had come to have almost, if not quite, sovereign power in the city and its neighbourhood, so too in other cities the bishops began to exercise, not so much sovereign power as the power of chief magistrates in addition to their own spiritual power. Important cities, like Florence, Milan, and Pisa, claimed an independence which the Emperor found it his best policy to concede to them. They were fortified with walls which the inhabitants were well able to defend at need. The feudal lords {164} at the same time had their castles in the country, outside the towns.