§ 4. SECULAR ELEMENTS
Secular causes also account for the growing unpopularity of the Church. On the one hand the seigneurs resented the increasing wealth and land encroachments of Bishops and Abbots. "In the eleventh century the fear of the approaching final judgment and the belief in the speedy dissolution of the world spread throughout all Europe. Some bestowed the whole of their possessions on the Church."[17] But when the donors recovered from their alarm, they regretted their sacrifice, and their descendants would be provoked every day at the sight of others in enjoyment of their ancestral lands. Moreover, the break-up of Charlemagne's vast kingdom threw great power into the hands of the Dukes and Counts. In their own domains they were practically autocrats. The only check upon their sovereignty came from the Church, whose Bishops and Abbots were often able to protect themselves by their own routiers or by ecclesiastical penalties, such as excommunication. But the lords countered this by thrusting their own nominees, often their own relations, into the most powerful and lucrative offices of the Church, or by keeping them vacant and appropriating their revenues. A semblance of legality was thrown over this practice by the fact that "the Bishoprics being secular fiefs, their occupants were bound to the performance of feudal service," and the investiture into the temporalities of the office belonged to the sovereign. Thus the freedom of the Church in the election and appointment of her officers was curtailed.