The great days of the German-Roman Empire were over.  The German power lay on the ground in fragments.  A period of almost complete anarchy followed.  Dogmatism and lack of patriotic sentiment, those bad characteristics of the German people, contributed to extend this destruction to the economic sphere.  The intellectual life of the German people deteriorated equally.  At the time when the Imperial power was budding and under the rule of the highly-gifted Staufers, German poetry was passing through a first classical period.  Every German country was ringing with song; the depth of German sentiment found universal expression in ballads and poems, grave or gay, and German idealism inspired the minnesingers.  But with the disappearance of the Empire every string was silent, and even the plastic arts could not rise above the coarseness and confusion of the political conditions.  The material prosperity of the people indeed improved, as affairs at home were better regulated, and developed to an amazing extent; the Hanseatic League bore its flag far and wide over the northern seas, and the great trade-routes, which linked the West and Orient, led from Venice and Genoa through Germany.  But the earlier political power was never again attained.

Nevertheless dislike of spiritual despotism still smouldered in the breasts of that German people, which had submitted to the Papacy, and was destined, once more to blaze up into bright flames, and this time in the spiritual domain.  As she grew more and more worldly, the Church had lost much of her influence on men’s minds.  On the other hand, a refining movement had grown up in humanism, which, supported by the spirit of antiquity, could not fail from its very nature to become antagonistic to the Church.  It found enthusiastic response in Germany, and was joined by everyone whose thoughts and hopes were centred in freedom.  Ulrich von Hutten’s battle-cry, “I have dared the deed,” rang loud through the districts of Germany.

Humanism was thus in a sense the precursor of the Reformation, which conceived in the innermost heart of the German people, shook Europe to her foundations.  Once more it was the German people which, as formerly in the struggle between the Arian Goths and the Orthodox Church, shed it’s heart’s blood in a religious war for spiritual liberty, and now for national independence also.  No struggle more pregnant with consequences for the development of humanity had been fought out since the Persian wars.  In this cause the German people nearly disappeared, and lost all political importance.  Large sections of the Empire were abandoned to foreign States.  Germany became a desert.  But this time the Church did not remain victorious as she did against the Arian Goths and the Staufers.  It is true she was not laid prostrate; she still remained a mighty force, and drew new strength from the struggle itself.  Politically the Catholic States, under Spanish leadership, won an undisputed supremacy.  But, on the other hand, the right to spiritual freedom was established.  This most important element of civilization was retained for humanity in the reformed Churches, and has become ever since the palladium of all progress, though even after the Peace of Westphalia protracted struggles were required to assert religious freedom.