The freedom of secular aspirations clashed with the claims of spiritual dominion.

In the portentous struggle of the two Powers for the supremacy, a struggle which inflicted heavy losses on the German Empire, the Imperial cause was worsted.

It was unable to mould the widely different and too independent subdivisions of the empire into a homogeneous whole, and to crush the selfish particularism of the estates.

The last Staufer died on the scaffold at Naples under the axe of Charles of Anjou, who was a vassal of the Church.
The great days of the German-Roman Empire were over.

The German power lay on the ground in fragments.