ABSTRACT
The major beneficiary of the growing sense of Christendom was the papacy, which used its position as the head of that body to translate long-standing claims into effective government. Indeed, the remarkable growth of papal power in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is unimaginable without the prior existence of a sense of Christendom which the popes cultivated but did not create. Developments in the eleventh century had catapulted the sleepy and mostly ceremonial papacy into the leadership of an interlocking set of growing, Europewide reform movements. When those reform movements were victorious, the popes had an immense reservoir of support and goodwill on which to draw.
