FOUNDED UPON ROCK: PART V STRUGGLE AND GLORY: THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES
Historians often divide the latter half of the Middle Ages into the High Middle Ages, which roughly span from 1000 to 1300, and the Late Middle Ages, which roughly span from 1300 to 1500.
Most people’s idea of medieval society comes from the religious and cultural situation of the High Middle Ages The High Middle Ages was a time of economic growth, increase in scholarship, and theological and technical advancement, but also an era of increasing strife as great powers came into conflict with each other and with the Church.
It was the era when feudalism was at its height and the ideals of chivalry came into focus. The Popes, the kings and the bishops both increased in power and were able to use the better transportation and communication to promote their causes. This increased control would sometimes lead to cooperation between the ecclesial and civil realms and sometimes bring them into conflict. The notion of a rule of law that governs governments also increased with such developments as the organization on ecclesial law and agreements with the monarchs, most notably the Magna Carta.
The Catholic and Orthodox Churches became formally separated in 1054. There would be continuous efforts to unite them again, with some failures and some successes.
The Crusades started in 1095 and continued into most of the thirteenth century. After an initial success, they failed in their effort to keep control of the Holy Land and to unite East and West. But, for a time, they did stave off the attacks on the Byzantine Empire. And one unforeseen result was the introduction into Europe of more learning, technology and trade with the Muslim world. In addition, the Iberian peninsula came more under the control of the Christian kingdoms.
The great universities flourished, and theology advanced rapidly in this era. The scholastic approach to theology and philosophy and the notion of the liberal arts came from this time. Seven of the Church’s 36 officially declared Doctors of the Church come from these 300 years.
With the increased technology and trade, the economy flourished. And the additional wealth likewise led to more magnificent churches and castles. However, the resulting worldliness also led to much criticism.
Responding to all of the great issues, saints founded many of the great religious orders, such as the Franciscans, the Dominicans and the Carmelites.
The Late Middle Ages was a time of more struggle, but also arguably a time of increase in popular piety.
The kingdoms of increasingly got into conflicts with each other and sometimes
with the Church. The Church herself endured a time of schism that divided Christendom as two lines of claimants for the papacy developed.
The bubonic plague (also called the Black Death) swept through Europe and killed off a third of the population. The resulting crisis led to great social and economic shifts.
There was an increasing learning among the upper classes, which arguably led to a great increase in works of popular piety. The likes of St. Catherine of Siena, St. Julian of Norwich, Dante and Geoffrey Chaucer reflect the popular piety of this age.
Politically and economically, the Church and the monarchs became more organized, which led to a greater capacity to advance religious and political unity, but also to greater conflict.
Beginning in the early eleventh century, the Popes were able, with better roads and means of communication, and well as better candidates for the papacy and episcopacy, to exert more authority over bishops, which led to an increasing ability to insist on discipline and learning.
However, this very increased control led to more conflicts with the civil authorities, as both sides wanted to govern appointments of high ecclesial offices.
Typically, when a diocese needed a new bishop, the priests, or the central priests of a diocese (sometimes the canons of the cathedral) would nominate a successor. However, the election needed direct or indirect papal approval. Likewise, the monks of a monastery and the nuns of a convent would select the abbots and abbesses. However, from a practical standpoint, the monarch, the local nobles, other influential families, and popular opinion would also often play a large role. And, because the bishops and abbots were often also noble lords, controlling great amounts of land, the kings and great nobles often claimed the authority to appoint them. Abbesses were not themselves in the feudal system, but they likewise often did control a great deal of land; and, as a result, the kings and nobles also often wanted to control this position as well
This situation sometimes led to conflict, including the strife between the Emperor Henry IV of the Holy Roman Empire and Saint Pope Gregory VII, also known as Hildebrand, his name before becoming Pope.
Gregory VII spearheaded many needed reforms, increasing clerical learning and discipline. And, in order to ensure good bishops, he insisted on final control over who was appointed, and final authority over Church affairs.
Because Henry IV tried to control the Church in his domains, and beyond, Gregory VII excommunicated him at a time when some German nobles were rising up in rebellion. Due to the danger of overthrow, Henry IV repented and came personally to Gregory VII to receive forgiveness. Gregory VII reconciled with him.
However, Henry renewed his ambitions a few years later and invaded Rome. Gregory VII had to call on the Kingdom of Normandy in southern Italy to help him out. They kept off they invasion, but compensated themselves engaging in pillaging in Rome and the surrounding areas.
Due to outrage over this pillaging, Gregory VII was forced into exile to the Kingdom of the Normans. With Gregory VII out of the way, Henry VII tried to install an antipope, who took the name Clement III. However, Pope Urban II (1088-99) was able to force Clement out of Rome and into obscurity.
Meanwhile, Henry II’s own sons conspired to overthrow him. And the reforms of Gregory VII, along with the machinations of the German court increased the influence and prestige of the papacy.
Another famous conflict between Church and state involved King Henry II of England St. Thomas a Beckett, the archbishop of Canterbury and leading prelate of that land.
Henry II arranged for the election of his good friend Thomas a Becket to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. However, when Thomas took charge, his began defending the independence of the Church, which led Henry II to retaliate and at one point force Archbishop Thomas into exile.
In 1170, some of Henry II’s knights took a statement of his to be a call to assassinate Thomas a Beckett, which they did in the cathedral of Canterbury. This murder led to a revolt in England, which forced Henry II to capitulate and give the Pope and other ecclesiastics control over these appointments, at least for the time.
Popes and monarchs also clashed over other issues, with Pope Innocent III (1198 – 1216) taking a leading role.
One conflict occurred when, due to disputes over imperial control over northern Italy, the German Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa invaded that area in the 1170s. Pope Alexander III organized the successful resistance for the time. The Pope wanted to defend the independence of northern Italy, both because he thought those city states should be independent and because he was worried about having the Emperor with possessions just to the north of his lands. To make matters worse, the German Emperor (also called the Holy Roman Emperor) began to gain control of the Kingdom of the Normans to the south of the Papal States.
A similar issue arose as the Emperor Otto of Brunswick invaded Italy in the first decade of the 1200's. Pope Innocent III, who would become the very model of powerful Popes, excommunicated him. This move eventually led to his overthrow by Frederick II Hohenstaufen, who at first seemed like a great ally of the Church, although things would later turn out very differently.
Another critical dispute was between Innocent III, King John of England and the nobility of England, which led to the Magna Carta.
Pope Innocent III excommunicated King John of England in 1208 because the king tried to prevent him from appointing Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury.
The excommunication was the opportunity for a baronial revolt, which threatened John’s throne. King John then submitted his reign to Innocent III, who called for the barons to call off the revolt.
When they refused to do so, now Archbishop Langton brokered a deal between then that is now called the Magna Carta. The first provision of that document is, “In the first place we grant to God and confirm by this our present charter for ourselves and our heirs in perpetuity that the English Church is to be free and to have all its rights fully and its liberties entirely.”
The Magna Carta also provided that the king could only raise new taxes with the consent of the nobility. The nobility and later the full Parliament would use this provision to gain more power in later centuries.
In France, King Philip Augustus wanted an annulment of his marriage, for he had fallen in love with another woman. Pope Innocent refused, but King Philip remarried anyway. When Pope Innocent III excommunicated him, King Philip eventually capitulated and took his first wife back.
Meanwhile, the tensions between the Pope and the eastern patriarchs came to a head with the filioque controversy, which became central in the formal break between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches that continues to this day.
In 1024, Patriarch Eustatuius and the eastern Emperor Basil II proposed an agreement that acknowledged the primacy of the Pope, but recognized little of his authority over the eastern churches. The Pope could not accept this formula, and negotiations broke down, but there was no actual schism.
Tensions with the Normans who controlled southern Italy led Pope Leo to try to form an alliance with the Byzantine Emperor in the 1040s, for the Byzantine Empire was beginning to gain control again in southern Italy. However, that effort faltered over the issue of the areas the Byzantine Emperor controlled would be Latin or eastern rite.
In 1043, Michael Cerularius became the Patriarch of Constantinople, and was more directly critical of Latin customs, such as the filioque formula and the use of unleavened bread at Mass.
4, Pope Leo IX’s secretary Cardinal Humbert of Moyen-Moutier wanted to assert the Pope’s position more forcefully. In 1054, Pope Leo sent him and another
legate went to Constantinople to argue for the Pope’s views and negotiate with the Emperor and the Patriarch. Negotiations broke down badly, and Cardinal Humbert excommunicated Patriarch Michael, accusing him of heresy and misconduct in office. The leaders of the church in Constantinople then excommunicated Cardinal Humbert and his party, who had just left town.
- It turns out that Pope Leo had actually died before Cardinal Humbert arrived in Constantinople, and so his authority to issue the excommunication was actually void. But that detail did not prevent the break from occurring.
Popes did try to reestablish a unity between east and west, and the Crusades largely began as such an effort.
During the 11th century, the Muslim Sultan of Bagdad was increasingly threatening both the Byzantine Empire and Christians’ access to the Holy Land.
Until the mid – 11th century, the Sultan of Egypt controlled the Holy Land, as well as the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina. When a new dynasty arose in Egypt. For the most part, Christians were allowed to live in the Muslim lands, although under taxation and disabilities. And the Fatimad caliphate of Egypt generally allowed pilgrimages to the Holy Land, with the exception of the fanatical Califh al-Hakim, who had the Church of the Holy Sepulcher destroyed in 1009.
However, a new power arose in the eastern part of the Islamic world called the Seljuks, or Seljuk Turks. The Seljuk Turks were initially from central Asia, but gradually moved in to the area north of Persia. They converted to Islam in mass in the 10th century, and used their trading connections with China and India to grow in power. They were also often hired as mercenaries by the rival powers. In the early 11th century they took over Persia, modern day Iran. And, in 1055, they took control of Bagdad. And the caliph of Bagdad agreed that their leader should be the Sultan of Bagdad, controlling the eastern part of the Islamic world.
The Sultan of Bagdad then advanced on both Asia Minor, which belonged to the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Land. He gained control of the Holy Land. And, with the Byzantine Empire weakened by dynastic disputes, Asia Minor gradually came more under the control of the Seljuk Turks and other allied powers. Meanwhile, the situation in the Holy Land became much more difficult, due to the fighting with the Sultan of Egypt
In 1084, the city of Nicea fell to the Turks, and Constantinople itself seemed to be at risk. And so, it the 1090s, the Byzantine Empire appealed to the west for help. That request, as well as the rising prestige of the Pope and a desire for access to the Holy Land, led Pope Urban II to call for a crusade to drive the Turks back in 1095. When he made this call, the crown responded enthusiastically, “God wills it.”
There was precedent for this idea of a re-conquest, for the Christians in Spain were gradually retaking that peninsula. Starting in 798 King Alfonso of the kingdom of Asturius in northern Spain began reconquering the Iberian peninsula. Throughout the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, three Christian kingdoms, called Aragon, Castile and Leon, expanded their domains. In 1086, a large Muslim force led by Yusif ibn-Tashfin invaded Spain again. But, led by Rodrigo Diaz, better know as El Cid Campeador (meaning Lord and Master Warrior), the Christians beat back the attacks.
Surpassing expectations, many younger sons of the nobles of Europe organized what would later become known as the First Crusade was quickly organized.
The first attempt at a crusade was led by Peter the Hermit, who led many commoners with little military experience into a disastrous expedition. However, soon a more organized crusade developed with more experienced leaders and knights.
2 After some initial setbacks, the crusaders began winning victories and conquered Jerusalem in 1099.
It was a rather brutal war, and the Crusaders slaughtered most of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. But most of Christendom rejoiced to see the Turks driven back and Jerusalem, along with the Holy Land in general, once more under Christian control.
The initial idea was that the Holy Land would once again become a part of the Byzantine Empire, an arrangement that was supposed to help unite east and west. However, instead, the Crusaders established four Latin kingdoms in the Holy Land. What is worse, these kingdoms soon began feuding and were thus weakened.
The Muslims took advantage of the situation and soon started making advances. The weakest kingdom, Edessa, fell in the 1140s, sending shock waves throughout Europe. And so the second Crusade was organized in 1144, headed by the kings of England and France and the Holy Roman Emperor. Unfortunately, when they arrived in the Holy Land in 1146, the monarchs argued among themselves and the Crusade soon broke up, having accomplished nothing.
In 1187, at the Battle of Hattim in the north of the Holy Land, the Muslim forces, now led by the most famous Muslim general of the age Saladin, decisively defeated the Christian forces after the latter tried to cross a desert to attack the Muslim forces in Tiberias. Following up this victory, the Muslim forces recaptured Jerusalem.
The monarchs of England, France, and Germany again organized the Third Crusade, headed once again by those nations’ leaders and other high nobles. The Crusaders fought in the Holy Land from 1189 to 1192, with some successes and some failures. Richard I, called Richard the Lionhearted, became famous as a model of chivalry
during this Crusade. However, the kings and nobles soon had to go back and govern their lands again. And when they departed, that Crusade too fell apart.
Pope Innocent III then called for the Fourth Crusade, which turned out to be the greatest disaster of his papacy.
This crusade was not led by nobles, but rather mostly by mercenaries, who began by invading Christian cities to pay for their way.
Then, in 1204, they found a claimant to the throne of the Byzantine Empire, and invaded the city to put him on the throne. The effort succeeded briefly, and they took over the Empire for a few years.
- Even though it was totally contrary to Innocent III’s wishes, this treachery set reconciliation efforts back further than ever. A few years later, the Byzantine nationals retook control, and divisions between east and west were even worse than before.
There were four other efforts at Crusades, two by the German Emperor Frederick II, who conducted them reluctantly, and two by St. Louis IX, king of France, who conducted them enthusiastically, but unsuccessfully. These efforts did not regain much land, and the crusading effort faltered, at least with regard to the Holy Land. Finally, in 1291, the city of Acre, the last crusader holdout, fell to the Muslims.
Although the Crusades only regained the Holy Land for a short time, and certainly did not help unite east and west, there were other ways in which the Crusades had a very positive impact on Europe.
Many philosophic ideas, especially from Aristotle, had been lost to Europe for centuries, but now were rediscovered in the Byzantine Empire and in Muslim lands. In addition, the need to respond intellectually to Islam, as well as the challenges posed by this newly rediscovered philosophy, led to an increase in scholarship.
Furthermore, as fighting in the east increased, fighting among the nobles in the West decreased, partially because their military ventures were elsewhere, and partially because the monarchs were becoming more powerful.
Many technological innovations in such fields as agriculture, medicine, mathematics, and architecture came into Europe and led to an increasing prosperity.
When people from Christian and Muslim lands came in contact with each other, there was also an increased desire for each others’ goods and talents, which increased trade between the sides.
Furthermore, Muslims did start letting Christians visit the Holy Land again, although often with a great many fees. St. Francis of Assisi particularly impressed the Sultan, who allowed the Franciscans to establish many sites in the
Holy Land. And in fact, to this day, the Franciscans of the Holy Land run most of the Catholic pilgrimage sites there.
Furthermore, the idea of a noble warrior fighting for the faith would join up with the notion of chivalry to give a greater sense of moral nobility to the warrior classes.
The overall increase in prosperity and learning led to a certain flourishing of cultural life, although also to more worldliness.
The relative peace within Europe, as well as the knowledge and goods coming in from the East led to an increase in trade and prosperity.
The greater level of technology resulted in building on a greater scale than ever before.
Thus, starting with the renovation of the Basilica of St. Denis in 1140, Gothic architecture began to become very prominent, particularly in France, the German lands and England. Innovations allowed much more light, higher ceilings and complex stained glass windows. Cities prided themselves on having the largest or finest cathedral in the area.
Castles likewise became more comfortable and ornate, leading to a greater emphasis on culture.
Devotional life in general was increasing, with such devotions as pilgrimages, processions, organized prayers such as the rosary, and Eucharistic Adoration rapidly gaining force.
The Church began developing the notion of chivalry to bring about Christian ideals among the warrior class.
In the tenth century, knights became central to warfare as technological developments made the mounted knight a fearsome force in battle, as tanks would later become. However, initially knights were basically hired as mercenaries and did not have a moral good reputation.
The Church gradually developed codes of conduct fitting to a knight. And the process of dubbing a knight took on a religious quality, complete with vows to take up arms only in a just cause, and to protect women, the poor and all in need.
Popular literature, such as the Arthurian legends, the Song of Roland, and the accounts of El Cid, helped established the chivalric ideal as central to the concept of knighthood.
Universities also expanded rapidly as education, especially for the clergy and nobles, was increasingly valued.
Great universities flourished in cities such as Paris, Bologna, Oxford, Cambridge and Padua.
- In the early middle ages, cathedral schools had gradually grown up to educate the clergy, monks and also some nobility. Some of these schools began taking on professors and students from all over the world and would eventually be recognized as universities.
The idea of the liberal arts developed, with specialties built upon them
The basis for the liberal arts was studies in grammar, rhetoric and logic.
The fields of mathematics, music, geometry (involving engineering) and astronomy filled out the basic classes.
There were also specialties in law, medicine, and theology.
Philosophy was not thought of so much as a separate field, but rather tied in with all the other fields.
Science came to be much more appreciated, especially under the influence of the great thirteenth century Dominican St. Albert the Great, who argued that people honored God by studying His creation.
The academic method of scholasticism rose under the influence of the likes of the volatile Peter Abelard and the venerated Peter Lombard from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Scholasticism is a method of looking at seemingly contradictory views, and especially views contrary to one’s own, and developing ideas by responding to or resolving such contradictions.
The increasing wealth and power of the government and the Church led to some problems, as many ecclesiastics and lords lived in opulence, sloth, and sometimes decadence. That development in turn led to some cynicism and the ability of nobles and monarchs to play a larger role in the Church.
Largely in reaction to such developments, the mendicant orders were founded. These mendicant orders relied on free donations, rather than revenues from lands and taxes.
The Franciscan order was founded by St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare of Assisi, who focused strongly on being radically open to the callings of God though a life of extraordinary simplicity and contact with God.
St. Francis (1181-1225) was born to a wealthy family of merchants. He was at first a generous, but often vain, young man and a soldier who desired to be a knight. He was not particularly successful in battles, but was still honored for his chivalry. After a couple of military adventures, he received a vision of Jesus in a church near Assisi, in which Jesus told him, “Rebuild my church.” And he saw a vision of Lady Poverty, whom he found to be supernaturally beautiful.
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Attracted to this call, and believing that it was to be fulfilled in his home town, he left everything to rebuild a church near Assisi called San Damiagno. He endured public ridicule for a time, but soon his joyfulness
of life attracted others to him. Eventually, his followers wanted some organization in the form of a religious order. And so he quickly wrote a rule and went to Rome to gain approval for the new order, which he had not thought he was going to found. Pope Innocent III was at first reluctant to approve this strange new order, but a vision in a dream and the efforts of Cardinal Ugolino (later Pope Gregory IX) persuaded him that the idea was from God.
A few years later, his good friend St. Clare of Assisi (1194-1253) was from one of the noble families of Assisi. She was devout from a young age and defied her parents’ desire for her to “marry up,” instead choosing religious life. With the help of St. Francis and his brother friars, she founded the women’s side of the order. She was, through great penance and austerity of life, able to show forth the power of God to the world.
The order soon flourished and the Franciscans formed numerous smaller groups. St. Bonaventure was elected Minister General in 1257 and organized the order into more of what we see today.
The Order of Preachers (commonly known as the Dominican Order) was also founded in the early thirteenth century to focus on receiving and sharing the light of heaven through a disciplined life of prayer, study, teaching and service.
Saint Dominic de Guzman (1170-1221) was a canon of a cathedral in Osma, Spain at about the same time as St. Francis’ life.
In 1204, while traveling with his bishop Diego to help arrange a royal wedding, he was passing through southern France, where Albigensians (a sort of Gnostic sect) held sway. By prayer, argumentation, patience and an exemplary life, they were able to reconvert most of the heretics.
From this experience, St. Dominic realized his mission to form a preaching order. This order, called the Order of Preachers was confirmed by Pope Innocent III and, when he died, Pope Honorius III in 1216.
The Franciscans and Dominicans were the most famous examples of the mendicant orders. The mendicant orders were set off from both the dioceses and the established religious orders in part because they would not own large estates, but instead depended on alms from the people. In addition, they elected their own superiors in a kind of democratic process, with more of a notion of brotherhood than hierarchy; that is why they would call each other friars, or brothers. Along similar lines, they resisted being a part of the feudal system. Such factors put them largely outside of the established order; and as a result, some tensions arose between them and the other clerics.
Both the Dominican Order and the Scholastic style of teaching and writing came to their heights with St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 -1274.)
Thomas of Aquino a member of a high noble family in central Italy; and his family had arranged that he would be the abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, one of the two most prominent monasteries
in Europe, the other one being in Cluny.
But, after studying with Dominicans, he instead decided to join that new order, a decision that his family tried unsuccessfully to prevent.
At first, he was called “the dumb ox” by his fellow Dominican students. because of his slow gait and his quiet demeanor. Soon, however, his brilliance was recognized, especially by his most brilliant teacher St. Albert the Great.
St. Thomas’s systematic texts, especially his great work the Summa Theologica , are still central texts in teaching to this day. In such fields as Eucharistic theology and the virtues based approach to morals, his insights advanced Catholic thought to great heights.
He died on his way to a council at Lyons that was called in part to try to reconcile East and West. Shortly before his death, he received a vision of heaven, about which he said, “I have seen things and things have been revealed to me that make everything I have written look like straw.”
As this flourishing of theology, culture and the economy was occurring, more problems with the states of Europe were developing
Pope Innocent III and the Emperor Frederick II fought each other over control of the Church and of Italy, and their successors continued the struggle throughout most of the thirteenth century.
When Pope Innocent III favored young Frederick II as Holy Roman Emperor over Otto of Brunswick in the late twelfth century, he thought that Frederick would be an ally. Among other things, Frederick promised to give up his claim on Sicily and southern Italy and launch another crusade to regain the Holy Land.
Frederick became a very powerful, but also very arrogant monarch, referring to himself by such titles as “the Divine Emperor” and “the Invincible Sun.”
Eventually, he not only failed to lead the promised crusade, but invaded northern Italy. Pope Gregory IX took him on and excommunicated him in 1227.
The situation went back and forth, with some temporary reconciliations and a launching of the promised crusade.
However, Frederick continued trying to control the Church and northern Italy, and also settled with the Muslims by exchanging land in Italy for some land in the Holy Land.
And so in 1245 Innocent IV, a former friend of Frederick, reinstated the excommunication. Frederick then invaded all of Italy, plunging the peninsula into a war that would last for most of the century.
The kings of France, including St. Louis IX, assisted the Popes. The struggle
continued throughout the thirteenth century until the line of Frederick II died out.
But in the meantime, Italy had suffered ruinous damage; and the Popes had become very dependent on outside revenues and especially the kings of France.
In the 1290s, conflicts with France would arise as King Philip IV began taxing clergy in order to finance his increasing government
Pope Boniface VIII condemned this taxation in 1296, saying that clergy could only be taxed with the consent of the Church.
Philip IV responded by cutting off revenues from French churches to the Papal States; and the Pope gave his consent for the taxation, while still claiming a right to prevent any future taxes.
But conflicts arose again in 1301 when Philip IV arrested the bishop of Palmiers for misconduct. Again, Pope Boniface VIII condemned the actions saying that such moves were the Church’s province.
Both sides started a propaganda war against each other. And, after further escalation, Philip IV invaded Italy and briefly captured Boniface VIII. The Italian populace rose up and rescued the Pope, but he died soon thereafter at the age of 85.
The attempt to settle things with France then led, through no intentional plan, to the movement of the Papal Court to Avignon, France for 70 years.
After the death of Boniface VIII in 1305, the cardinals wanted to put an end to the strife with France. And so they elected a Frenchman Bertand do Got as the next Pope, Clement V. Clement V decided to stay for awhile in Avignon, territory in southern France that the Papacy controlled, in order to deal with the problems in France. But he never moved back.
When he died in 1304, his successor Pope John XXII, also a Frenchman, simply stayed there, preferring that environment to Rome.
The papal court stayed there in Avignon until 1378, for the location was more central, more pleasant to live in, and easier to manage than Rome. In Avignon, the papal court was resolving more church cases than ever.
But Avignon had nothing to do with the tradition of the Church and the life of Saints Peter and Paul. And, the Church became ever more bureaucratic, taking on larger and larger expenses and paying them through indulgences and heavier taxes on the dioceses around Europe. In addition, the papacy was becoming more and more dominated by the French, which made the rest of Europe suspicious.
The result was that the many people around Europe were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with this more worldly bureaucracy.