extent a power which depended on the existence of alternative lay authorities because priests found it convenient to turn to the jurisdiction of a spiritual power in Rome as a safeguard against more immediate threats near at hand. Nevertheless, it was a considerable power which enabled Innocent III to carry on a successful diplomatic battle against King John of England and which tempted Boniface VIII, admittedly with disastrous results, to set his authority against that of Philip IV of France. It enabled the popes for a long period to fight wars in Italy with funds collected far away in northern Europe and to intervene successfully in appointments in Scotland and Ireland.

The centralizing power of the papacy was connected with the great religious orders which emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The early medieval Benedictine monasteries, which contributed so much to the colonization and education of Europe, had in common their devotion to the rule of St Benedict, one of the most important documents of the Middle Ages, but they were independent foundations not linked in a common organization. The novel monastic enterprises of the twelfth century, such as the Cistercians, had a much stronger sense of belonging to a single administration. The mendicant orders of the thirteenth century, the Franciscans and Dominicans, went still further in their devotion to the papacy, in acceptance of papal privileges which freed them from the control of the local bishop and in attendance at annual general chapters made up of representatives drawn from convents throughout Europe. The mendicant orders were in a sense the fullest expression of the sense of ecclesiastical unity.

This can also be seen in the world of ideas, with which of course the papacy was very much concerned. The university of Paris in the thirteenth century had a prestige and influence in matters of philosophy and theology to which there is no parallel in any educational institution in modern Europe. There were of course other important universities. But Padua and Oxford, for example, belonged to an important extent to the ideological world dominated by Paris. Other thinkers might not agree with the conclusions reached by Albertus Magnus or Thomas Aquinas but they were involved in the same problems

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