ABSTRACT
The combination of the two factors, the political and the intellectual, helped to produce modern Western legal systems, of which the first was the new system of canon law of the Roman Catholic Church. The clergy of Western Christendom — bishops, priests, and monks — were, as a rule, much more under the authority of emperors, kings, and leading feudal lords than of popes. Bishops were important members of the feudal hierarchy. Marriage of priests, which was very widespread, brought them into important kinship ties with local rulers. Emperors and kings invested bishops not only with their civil and feudal authority but also with their ecclesiastical authority. The papal party encouraged scholars to develop a science of law which would provide a working basis for carrying out these major policies. The separation, concurrence, and interaction of the spiritual and secular jurisdictions were a principal source of the Western legal tradition.
