text: Wrong.  The Roman Catholic Church was the overall leader in Europe at the time, using its Religious authority to sanction the Political (it forced Henry II, King of England to do penance for the death of Thomas Beckett in 1174).  The Church inherited what was left of the Western Roman Empire and reconstituted it as the Holy Roman Empire in 800 AD.  The Church used its influence to recover Christian sites in the Middle East from the Muslims who wrested it from the Eastern Roman Empire in 639 AD. That area had been in Roman / Christianized Roman hands since 37 BC.