The imperial
position of the Hapsburgs was far less splendid than that of the
Hohenstauffen; it rapidly became more German and less European, until
by and by people began to forget what the empire originally meant.
The change which came over the papacy was even more remarkable. The
grandchildren of the men who had witnessed the spectacle of a king of
France and a king of England humbled at the feet of Innocent III., the
children of the men who had found the gigantic powers of a Frederick II.
unequal to the task of curbing the papacy, now beheld the successors of
St. Peter carried away to Avignon, there to be kept for seventy years
under the supervision of the kings of France. Henceforth the glory of
the papacy in its political aspect was to be but the faint shadow of
that with which it had shone before. This sudden change in its position
showed that the medieval dream of a world-empire was passing away,
and that new powers were coming uppermost in the shape of modern
nationalities with their national sovereigns. So long as these
nationalities were in the weakness of their early formation, it was
possible for pope and emperor to assert, and sometimes to come near
maintaining, universal supremacy. But the time was now at hand when
kings could assert their independence of the pope, while the emperor was
fast sinking to be merely one among kings.
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