of Worms in 1122, none of them explicitly permanent, it was agreed that kings might be present at episcopal elections and invest the successful candidate with the estates of his see. The conflict thus ended with an agreement on investitures, and from this it rather misleadingly takes its name.
The practical results of the controversy were smaller than the theoretical ones, but were not negligible. Kings no longer had a decisive voice in episcopal elections though their words could still be very influential. Attempts to override a determined opposition generally provoked an appeal to the papacy, though the extent to which that appeal was heeded could vary considerably according to political considerations. The possibility of a strong papal intervention thus became another of the numerous considerations which kings had to bear in mind, sometimes at the expense of otherwise preferable factors. At the same time, it became much harder for kings to shield their bishops from the appeals of their inferiors and the judgements of popes and their legates, and this at once fixed some bounds to their conduct and lessened the extent to which bishops looked in the first instance to the king.
Developments within Christendom and within the Church thus came to change the nature of kingship. Other intellectual currents had a more ambivalent effect. During the twelfth century the example of Ancient Rome and a wave of fresh intellectual and artistic initiatives combined with an exceptional fertility; the term Renaissance is not misapplied. Perhaps the first area to be affected was that of law. Roman law had been replaced by tribal customs in most of northern Europe, and these customs were seldom collected and seldom consciously altered. It is rare before the eleventh century to find any king following the example of his Carolingian predecessors and issuing fresh law. Two influences helped to change this situation. One was the survival of Roman Law in much of Italy, where German kings were often active. The other influence was also Italian; from the time of Gregory VII's ponti-
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