It is important to
remember that the struggles between the Popes and the Emperors that fill
so large a space of mediaeval history were not struggles between Church
and State. Western Europe was conceived of as one Christian Society--an
attempt to realise the City of God of St Augustine's great treatise--and
the question at issue was whether the Pope or the Emperor was to be
regarded as the supreme head of this great society.
The unity of Western Christendom found a crude, but real, expression in
the Crusades, and it is significant that the decline of the crusading
impulse coincides in time with the rise of national feeling in the two
western states, England and France. What was to be the attitude of the
Catholic Church towards this new national instinct? In the 14th and 15th
centuries the question becomes increasingly urgent, and the Council of
Constance may be regarded as the last sincere effort to find an answer.
The answer suggested there, to which the English Church still adheres,
was the recognition of a General Council of the Church as the supreme
spiritual authority. Such a General Council might gather the glory and
honour of the nations into the City of God, and might even, it was
hoped, restore the broken unity between East and West.
Pages:
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223