48 Contemporary Evolution. 



At the period of Innocent III., the Christian theocracy 

 in Europe had proximately attained its greatest actual 

 development. 



The social institutions and whole political fabric 

 avowedly reposed upon an all but universally accepted 

 divine authority, and upon a revelation the declarations 

 of which were interpreted and systematically applied to 

 all circumstances as they arose by spiritual authorities re- 

 cognised as the revealed system's God-appointed adminis- 

 trators, of whom one supreme pontiff was the acknow- 

 ledged head. 



The Christian political system having thus temporarily 

 organised itself and grown up into this near approach 

 to a universal theocracy, began slowly to disintegrate. 



Incipiently resurging paganism first showed itself 

 politically in a spirit of religious " nationalism " opposing 

 itself to the cosmopolitan religious conception embodied 

 in the papacy. Paganism was especially national, and 

 the principle of " nationalism " in religion when once 

 introduced into Christendom by legislative impediments to 

 the free exercise of the Christian central and controlling 

 power, rapidly developed itself and expanded fatally to 

 the Christian theocracy. 



In France that " eldest son of the Church," Philip the 

 Fair, dealt the first great blow to the Christian political 

 system in the persons of Boniface VIII. and the Knight 

 Templars. Thenceforward the anti-theocratic spirit mani- 



