became territorial princes, went rapidly forward; although the Crown was strengthened rather than weakened by their exaltation.
It is indisputable that the alliance between the Church and the Monarchy brought immense advantages to both. The former, favoured by the Crown, still further improved its high position. The king, on his side, obtained the services of men highly educated and familiar with business; who could form a counterpoise to the hereditary nobility, and yet could never establish themselves as an hereditary caste; who set an example within their dioceses of upright and humane administration; and who shewed themselves prudent managers of their estates. Besides all which, the revenues of their churches and the military aid of their vassals were at his command. Their corporate feeling as members of a national church had revived; and their general employment in the service of the Crown, which claimed the headship of that church, made them the representatives of national unity on the secular no less than on the ecclesiastical side.
Yet the coalition of the two powers contained the seeds of future calamity to the Church. It was inevitable that bishops so chosen and so employed could not rise to their spiritual vocation. Even within their own dioceses they were as much occupied by secular as by pastoral work. Insensibly they became secularised; and the Church ceased to be either a school of theologians or a nursery of missionaries. At such a price were its temporal advantages secured. Nor was the gain to the Crown without its alloy. For the royal supremacy over the Church depended on the monarch keeping a firm hold on episcopal appointment. That prerogative might become nominal; and during a minority it might disappear. The result in either case would be the political independence of the bishops, whose power would then be all the greater through the favours now lavished upon their churches. This was the latent political peril; and beside it lurked an ecclesiastical danger yet more formidable. Henry had mastered the German Church; and, so long as it remained the national institution he had made it, the tie of interest which bound it to the throne would hold. Yet it was but part of a larger ecclesiastical whole, whose acknowledged head was the Pope. The present thraldom of the Papacy to a local despot made its claim to the obedience of distant churches a shadowy prerogative which could be safely disregarded; but with a future recovery of freedom and of moral influence the pretension of the Roman See to apostolic authority over the Western Church would revive, and the German prelates would have to choose between King and Pope. Within sixty years of Henry's death that question presented itself.
In his government of the Church Henry was accustomed to act both on his own sole authority and in co-operation with the bishops in synod. No sharp distinction is apparent between the matters he decided himself and those he referred to the synods; in general, however, breaches of
