[247] The introduction of Roman law into Germany, as the accepted law of the empire, had begun in the XII Century. With the decay of the feudal system and the increasing desire of the rulers to provide their government with some effective legal system, its application became more widespread, until by the end of the XV Century it was the accepted system of the empire. The attempt to apply this ancient law to conditions utterly different from those of the time when it was formulated, and the continual conflict between the Roman law, the feudal customs and the remnants of Germanic legal ideas, naturally gave rise to a state of affairs which Luther could justly speak of as "a wilderness."
[248] "Sentences" (Sententiae, libri sententiarum) was the title of the text-books in theology. Theological instruction was largely by way of comment on the most famous book of Sentences, that of Peter Lombard.
[249] Cf. Vol. I, p. 7.
[250] i. e., Doctors.
[251] The head-dress of the doctors.
[252] See above, p. 118, note 2.
[253] i. e., The monasteries and nunneries.
[254] i. e.. The name of Christian.
[255] This section did not appear in the first edition; see Introduction, p. 59.
[256] Charles the Great, King of the Franks, was crowned Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in the year 800 A. D. He was a German, but regarded himself successor to the line of emperors who had ruled at Rome. The fiction was fostered by the popes, and the German kings, after receiving the papal coronation, were called Roman Emperors. From this came the name of the German Empire of the Middle Ages, "the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation." The popes of the later Middle Ages claimed that the bestowal of the imperial dignity lay in the power of the pope, and Pope Clement V (1313) even claimed that in the event of a vacancy the pope was the possessor of the imperial power (cf. above, p. 109). On the whole subject see Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, 2d ed. (1904), and literature there cited.