Imperial power in Italy waned and the papacy's prestige declined.

His treatise Monarchia attempted to refute the papacy's claim that the spiritual sword had power over the temporal sword.

However, the massive debts incurred during his papacy greatly weakened his successors, who were unable to maintain the papacy's longstanding political and military influence in Europe.

The building was enormously expensive, consuming much of the papacy's income during its construction.

The papacy's most widely-known crisis, as well as its largest challenge to authority, came with the " Great Schism " in the late Middle Ages, dating from 1378-1417.

This damaged the papacy's reputation in northern Italy, Gaul, and elsewhere in Western Europe, and his successors over the next 50 years spent much effort undoing the damage.

( This section contains Matthew 16: 13 – 19, in which Simon, newly renamed Peter, ( πέτρος, petros, meaning " stone "), calls Jesus " the Christ, the son of the living God ", and Jesus states that on this " bedrock " ( πέτρα, petra ) he will build his church — the passage forms the foundation for the papacy's claim of authority ).

The legate, one of the papacy's most able diplomats, was in Livonia to mediate an internal church dispute between the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, and the territorial claims of the Catholic bishops of Livonia.

He trained with the architect-engineer Domenico Fontana and collaborated as a junior partner with Giacomo Della Porta, whom he succeeded as the papacy's chief architect, under the patronage of Pope Sixtus V. He became the chief Papal architect of Rome in 1602, and thus was constantly at work on lesser projects such as altars and church furnishings, and with on-going projects of other designers, especially at St Peter's and in completing Michelangelo's project at the Campidoglio with the Palazzo Nuovo dicreetly designed to mirror Michelangelo's masterful Palazzo dei Conservatori.

Elena Lourie ( 1975 ) suggested instead that it was Alfonso's attempt to neutralize the papacy's interest in a disputed succession — Aragon had been a fief of the Papacy since 1068 — and to fend off Urraca's son from her first marriage, Alfonso VII of Castile, for the Papacy would be bound to press the terms of such a pious testament.

In 1049, Leo IX became pope, at last a pope with the character to face the papacy's problems.

The papacy's complex relationship with secular states such as the Roman and Byzantine Empires are also objections.

Sixtus I is credited as having instituted several Roman Catholic liturgical and administrative traditions, but historians believe that these were attributed to him by later writers who were interested in bolstering the papacy's claims to ancient supremacy.

In addition, Henry had solidified his denial of the papacy's control of England by passing the Statute of Praemunire which forbade appeals to the Roman Curia from England.

At Florence, where the council of Ferrara had been transferred as a result of an outbreak of the plague, a union with the Eastern Orthodox Church was effected in July 1439, which, as the result of political necessities, proved but a temporary bolster to the papacy's prestige.

At his coronation, Desiderius promised to restore many lost papal towns to the Holy See, in return for the papacy's endorsement of his claim.

The chief minister of Henry VIII, the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer suggested removal of the Roman Catholic papacy's imperium in imperio ( Latin equivalent of state in the state ) by requesting that Parliament pass the Act in Restraint of Appeals ( 1533 ) specifying that England was an empire and that The Crown was imperial, and a year later the Act of Supremacy proclaiming the Imperial Crown Protector and Supreme Head of the Church of England.

By the late 1080s Dagobert had changed sides, becoming close to Countess Matilda of Tuscany, one of the papacy's staunchest supporters.

This marked the end of the Roman Renaissance, damaged the papacy's prestige and freed Charles V's hands to act against the Reformation in Germany and against the rebellious German princes allied with Luther.

The following year Gervase was enmeshed in the papacy's struggle with his patron Otto, who was excommunicated by Pope Innocent III.

As it had been the normal practice up until then to have it sent out to England by the papacy, Wighard's travel to Rome would indicate the papacy's approval of his election and ensure the validity of his consecration.

The faction grew in power, especially after Inês de Castro, daughter of an important nobleman and maid of the Crown Princess Constance, became the lover of her lady's husband: Peter, the heir of Portugal.

With money flowing into Olynthus from these exports, their power grew.

In addition Spencer though that as all intuitions grew they become evermore corrupted by the influence of power and money, eventually losing its “ original spirit, and sinks into a lifeless mechanism ”.

The emperor and his wife Cunigunde gave large temporal possessions to the new diocese, and it received many privileges out of which grew the secular power of the bishop.

Several Pentecostal and non-denominational Churches, which emphasize the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit, in turn grew out of the Methodist Church.

Chiang led China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, during which the Nationalist government's power severely weakened, but his prominence grew.

But they could never have delivered economic self-management, they would always have been slow to innovate as apathy and frustration took their inevitable toll, and they would always have been susceptible to growing inequities and inefficiencies as the effects of differential economic power grew.

The agricultural export interests, centered in the coastal region near Guayaquil, became closely associated with the Liberals, whose political power also grew steadily during the interval.

Moreover, to prolong their power the directors were driven to rely on the military, which desired war and grew less and less civic-minded.

After Heydrich's death in June 1942, and as the war progressed, Müller's power and the independence grew substantially.

Prussia, with its capital Berlin, grew in power.

Germany grew rapidly in industrial and economic power, matching Britain by 1900.

Germany's middle class, based in the cities, grew exponentially, although it never gained the political power it had in France, Britain or the United States.

In this period Shaka's power grew, defeating several powerful local rivals and creating a vast monolith that was the most powerful nation in its region.

During the period where all of the Congress leadership were in jail, the Muslim League under Jinnah grew in power.

Officially endorsed by the Catholic Church around 1129, the Order became a favored charity throughout Christendom, and grew rapidly in membership and power.

Her father grew angry as he wanted her to marry a person of power and wealth, not a healer.

Upon its emergence in the early 17th century, the highland kingdom of Imerina was initially a minor power relative to the larger coastal kingdoms and grew even weaker in the early 18th century when King Andriamasinavalona divided it among his four sons.

As societies grew more complex and encompassed different groups, a hierarchy of gods developed and as power in the society became more centralised, the concept of a single, universal God became more popular and desirable.

Colbert's policies were quite successful, and France's industrial output and economy grew considerably during this period, as France became the dominant European power.

As central governments grew in power, a return to the citizen and mercenary armies of the classical period also began, as central levies of the peasantry began to be the central recruiting tool.

As the power of cannons grew during the 16th and 17th century, medieval walls became obsolete as they were too thin to offer any realistic protection against prolonged bombardment.

As the image of her as a political interloper grew, she sought to explicitly deny that she was the power behind the throne.

The institutional power of the National Guard grew in most government owned enterprises, until eventually it controlled the national radio and telegraph networks, the postal and immigration services, health services, the internal revenue service, and the national railroads.

As computer power grew, it became possible to host the PS system in the computer rather than the printer.