212 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS
the pretensions of the papacy. The investiture struggle
between the Church and the Empire was ended by the Con-
cordat of Worms. In 1106, Henry agreed to surrender the
investiture of the clergy with their symbols of office, and the
Church undertook that the Emperor should have the right
to receive homage from the bishops for their temporal
possessions. The Concordat was a compromise, but although
the Church had been forced to give up some of its original
demands, it had humbled the Emperor, the strongest secular
leader in Christendom. Success in this contest would have
been impossible but for the First Crusade. The miracle of a
great army recruited in every land in Christendom by the
Church, to serve the Church, and achieve the ambition of the
Church had restored the prestige of the papacy.
The investiture question was part of a wider problem:
whether the Church was to dominate the Empire or the
Empire to dominate the Church. In the new trial of strength
which broke out between them in 1125, the papacy was to
meet with many grave reverses. In that year died Henry V,
the last of his house of Franconia. Two claimants fought
for the throne of the Empire—Lothaire of Supplinburg, the
leader of the Guelphs, and the Hohenstaufen Frederick,
Duke of Swabia, the leader of the Ghibellines, who, however,
subsequently resigned his claims in favour of his brother
Conrad. The Pope (Honorius II) supported Lothaire and
excommunicated the Hohenstaufen Conrad, but the latter
ascendedtheimperial throne in 1137 on the death of Lothaire.
Conrad had little respect for the papacy. When the Pope
was chased from Rome by the citizens and adherents of the
anti-pope, Conrad III found excuses for not coming to the
assistance of the Holy See for over twelve years. On his
return from the Second Crusade, Conrad was broken in health
and died soon afterwards (1152), leaving the Empire to his
nephew, Frederick Barbarossa.
Frederick Barbarossa had even less respect for the papacy, and