Two other results of this great conflict ought not to pass unnoticed. The Emperor was alienated from the Church at the most unfortunate of all moments, the era of the Crusades. To conduct a great religious war against the enemies of the faith, to head the church militant in her carnal as the Popes were accustomed to do in her spiritual strife, this was the very purpose for which an Emperor had been called into being; and it was indeed in these wars, more particularly in the first three of them, that the ideal of a Christian commonwealth which the theory of the mediæval Empire proclaimed, was once for all and never again realized by the combined action of the great nations of Europe. Had such an opportunity fallen to the lot of Henry III, he might have used it to win back a supremacy hardly inferior to that which had belonged to the first Carolingians. But Henry IV's proscription excluded him from all share in an enterprise which he must otherwise have led--nay, more, committed it to the guidance of his foes. The religious feeling which the Crusades evoked--a feeling which became the origin of the great orders of chivalry, and somewhat later of the two great orders of mendicant friars--turned wholly against the opponent of ecclesiastical claims, and was made to work the will of the Holy See, which had blessed and organized the project. A century and a half later the Pope did not scruple to preach a crusade against the Emperor himself. Again: it was now that the first seeds were sown of that fear and hatred wherewith the German people never thenceforth ceased to regard the encroaching Romish court. Branded by the Church and forsaken by the nobles, Henry IV retained the affections of the faithful burghers of Worms and Liege. It soon became the test of Teutonic patriotism to resist Italian priestcraft. [Sidenote: Limitations of imperial prerogative.] [Sidenote: Lothar II, 1125-1138.] [Sidenote: Conrad III, 1138-1152.]