Seed: “Urban II used the First Crusade to become a diplomatic leader of lay monarchs; they looked to him, not the emperor. He also built up the Church’s administrative machine; under him there emerged the curia, a Roman bureaucracy corresponding to the household administrations of the English and French kings.”

Query: What benefit was this to the Pope?


It gave the popes more wiggle room to play politics, spreading the invisible fist of the Vatican when it was known only as The Church. The advent of the curia also opened up room for corruption. A pope that was a political adept, with the authorities of judicial practice and control of a bunch of landowners who owed their landownerness to him needed only to have the will and desire to build a papal monarchy.

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