ABSTRACT
Leopold Ranke used to say that history is always the history of the relations and struggle between Church and State—a saying of profound truth, which it is worth while to clarify and make more specific. It was a merit of the Catholic Church that, to the best of its ability, it asserted this exigency against the crude and one-sided Machiavellianism, that is, against the theory that mere politics is a thing complete in itself, and that, by the unrelenting pressure of its opposition, it forced this theory to correct its exaggerations and distortions, to advance toward completeness and truth, always retaining that particular initial truth which was its own. Many times there have been attempts to oust the State with the help of the Church by reducing everything to an abstract morality; and at other times the State has tried to oust the Church by reducing everything to a function of the State or force or economic interest.
