March, 1906.
Book I. On The Eve Of The Reformation.
Chapter I. The Papacy.[1]
§ 1. Claim to Universal Supremacy.
The long struggle between the Mediæval Church and the Mediæval Empire, between the priest and the warrior,[2] ended, in the earlier half of the thirteenth century, in the overthrow of the Hohenstaufens, and left the Papacy sole inheritor of the claim of ancient Rome to be sovereign of the civilised world.
Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi.