This is not to say that spiritual considerations were necessarily far from their minds. Great churches were dedicated to saints and richly endowed with their relics. Something of the importance which these had can be seen from the eagerness with which relics were purchased or stolen. Otto I of Germany's Italian expedition of 962 was marked by a very considerable transfer of relics, while in the twelfth century Barbarossa rewarded an archbishop of Cologne for his service by granting the relics of the Three Kings to his see. One of the tactics adopted by a bishop of Compostella against a rival see was the theft of its relics in 1102. Saints could make a marriage fertile or cure illness, and their friendship had to be won by gift at their shrine or the foundation of a church in their honour, which was probably the main reason for the proliferation of churches in the eleventh century. Churchmen liked to point out that saints could be less friendly, bringing a sudden end to those who mocked them. The victims might include the founder or his kin if they disregarded a church's rights; but they were more likely to include their secular rivals and enemies. Secular and religious ends could march in perfect harmony because saints and lords were linked in competition with their rivals.

In this sphere kings thus lost some of the importance which they had once had. It was more common in Germany than in France for great churches to look to them for protection from their oppressors, but they were likely to look closer to home as well, and to judge a king by his willingness to vindicate their rights. When Otto II of Germany suffered a shattering defeat in Italy in 982, a chronicler interpreted the disaster as divine punishment for the incorporation of the see of Merseburg within Magdeburg. A century later successive archbishops of Magdeburg, whose interests had not been well served by the intervening kings, were in the forefront of the opposition to the monarchy.

Within the Church a series of developments took place which were to deal still heavier blows to the position of kings as representatives of God. In the disorder of tenth-century France, churchmen began to express new views on the relations between clergy and laity, evolving the famous theory of the Three

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