ministration. This was found in the organisation of the Church. Its dignitaries Henry employed as crown officials, whom he appointed himself. Though the bishops and greater abbots were spiritual chiefs, they were called upon to act also as servants of the king, advising him in council, fulfilling his missions abroad, preserving his peace within their own territories. Further, they, even more than lay princes, had to provide him with military contingents of their vassals, often to follow him in person into the field, sometimes even to conduct his campaigns. And while heavy calls were continually being made upon their revenues for the public need, the right to dispose of their vacant fiefs was frequently claimed by the king for some purpose of his own. More especially did the royal monasteries suffer loss at Henry's hand; for the pious king in several cases did not hesitate at extensive confiscation of monastic lands. Yet these severe measures were not the outcome of caprice or greed, but of a settled policy for the kingdom's weal.
In thus employing the Church Henry resumed the policy adopted by Otto the Great. But while Otto, in using the Church to fortify the throne, had cared little to interfere in matters purely ecclesiastical, Henry sought to exercise over the Church an authority no less direct and searching than over the State. Filled with the ecclesiastical spirit, he set himself to regulate Church affairs as seemed to him best in the Church's interest; and the instinct for order which urged him from the first to promote its efficiency developed at last into a passionate zeal for its reformation.
To achieve his purpose it was essential for Henry to secure an effective mastery over the Church. But only through its constitutional rulers, the bishops, could he, without flagrant illegality, obtain command of its wealth, engage its political services, and direct its spiritual energies. In order, however, to be sure of bishops who should be his willing agents, the decisive word in the appointment to vacant sees must be his. In the Frankish kingdom the old canonical rule that the choice of a new bishop rested with the clergy and laity of the diocese had never been quite forgotten; but from early times the kings had claimed and been allowed the right of confirming or disapproving an episcopal election, and this had been enlarged into the greater right of direct nomination. The claim of the Crown to intervene in episcopal appointments had been fully revindicated by Otto the Great. In a few German dioceses the privilege of free election had been expressly confirmed or granted afresh by charters, yet Otto had never allowed the local privilege to hinder the appointment of any man he desired. The effect of such methods was to fill the bishoprics with royal nominees. Though the procedure was prejudicial to the independence of the Church, yet it freed episcopal elections from those local influences which would have made the bishops mere creatures of the secular magnates, or at best their counterparts in an ecclesiastical disguise.
