User:Ledhead1788/Sandbox
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In western Europe Middle Ages, the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor were the universal powers. Both were struggling for the so-called Dominium mundi (world dominium, an ideological concept with implications as earthly as transcendental in a spiritual dimension) and both mantained with the rest of the political agents a pretended superiority, whose effective plasmation in reality was very diverse, because factors as: territorial dispersion, low level of technic and productive development in feudal mode of production, and social and political tendency of feudalism to decentralization of power. Nevertheless, the universal powers survived in modern times, but its inoperancy in international relations was evident since second half of XVII century. The Liberal Revolution, with napoleonic wars and national unifications (German and Italian) means the effective end of Empire and territorial confination of Papacy to Vatican, but with capacity of influence in contemporary world.