GALLICANISM. The political dominance of the papacy during a period of the high Middle Ages was necessarily a temporary phenomenon. In central Europe the political fragmentation that followed Charlemagne's attempt at imperial restoration was not reversed by the efforts of successive German dynasties to establish hegemony and to extend their power beyond the Alps. But in western Europe, territories were consolidated that would ultimately become national states. Their growth in size and complexity, together with developments in secular education, favored the employment of laity rather than ecclesiastics in public office. As the opportunity to build larger state units increased, so did the state's determination to assert its power over agencies within its territory. On the international level this would limit the papacy's capacity to intervene in temporal conflicts; within states, it led to a tightening of lay control over the church's tangible assets.

These changes in the relations...