Chapter III: The High Noon of the Papacy (2)

Restless and ambitious minds, like those of Adrian and Frederick Barbarossa, could not remain long at peace, when the power and privileges they possessed in their dependence upon each other were so ill defined. The first cause of dispute, after the pacification above related, was a letter which Adrian wrote to the emperor, accusing him of ingratitude for the benefits he had enjoyed through his ministration.

Adrian found it necessary to appease the anger which both Frederick and his subjects expressed at these instances of assumption, and tranquillity was for a brief space restored. But scarcely had the angry feelings generated in the late dispute subsided, when the pontiff again manifested his inclination to oppose the views of the emperor by refusing to confirm the archbishop of Ravenna, whom Frederick had elevated to that station, in his appointment. The fierceness with which the pontiff spoke and wrote on this occasion, threatened Christendom with a rupture as injurious to its peace as that between the unfortunate Henry and Gregory VII. But Frederick’s firmness was unshaken; and a barrier was thus erected against the attempts of the pope, which, intended only as a protection to particular rights, did, in reality, afford support to the universal principles of civil government. To Adrian’s threat that he would deprive him of his crown, he replied that he held his crown, not from him but from his own royal predecessors. “In the days of Constantine,” he asked, “had St. Silvester anything to do with the royal dignity? Yet this was the prince to whom the church was indebted for its peace and its liberty: and all that you enjoy as pope, whence comes it but from the emperors? Render unto God that which is God’s, and to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s. Our churches and our cities are shut against your cardinals; because they are not preachers but robbers, they are not peacemakers but plunderers; we see that instead of coming to preach the Gospel and promote peace, their whole desire and endeavour is to amass gold and silver. When we find that they are what the church would have them, we will refuse them nothing good for their support. It is horrible that pride, that monster so detestable, should be able to steal even into the chair of St. Peter.”[c]

ADRIAN’S FIRMNESS

[Sidenote: [1158 A.D.]]

Peace became more hopeless. As a last resource, six cardinals on the part of the pope, and six German bishops on that of the emperor, were appointed to frame a treaty. But the pope demanded the re-establishment of the compact made with his predecessor Eugenius. The imperial bishops reproached the pope with his own violation of that treaty by his alliance with the king of Sicily; the Germans unanimously rejected the demands of the pope: and now the emperor received with favour a deputation from the senate and people of Rome. These ambassadors of the republican party had watched; had been present at the rupture of the negotiations. The pope, with the embers of Arnold’s rebellions mouldering under his feet; with the emperor at the head of all Germany, the prelates as well as the princes; with no ally but the doubtful, often perfidious Norman, stood unshaken; betrayed no misgivings. He threatened the emperor with a public excommunication.

Did the bold sagacity of Adrian foresee the heroic resolution with which Milan and her confederate Lombard cities would many years afterwards, and after some dire reverses and long oppression, resist the power of Barbarossa? Did he calculate with prophetic foresight the strength of Lombard republican freedom? Did he anticipate the field of Legnano, when the whole force of the Teutonic empire was broken before the carroccio of Milan? Already was the secret treaty framed with Milan, Brescia, and Crema. These cities bound themselves not to make peace with the emperor without the consent of the pope and his Catholic successor. Adrian was preparing for the last act of defiance, the open declaration of war, the excommunication of the emperor, which he was pledged to pronounce after the signature of the treaty with the republics, when his death put an end to this strange conflict, where each antagonist was allied with a republican party in the heart of his adversary’s dominions. Adrian IV died at Anagni; his remains were brought to Rome, and interred with the highest honours, and with the general respect if not the grief of the city, in the church of St. Peter. Even the ambassadors of Frederick were present at the funeral. So ended the poor English scholar, at open war with perhaps the mightiest sovereign who had reigned in transalpine Europe since Charlemagne.[e]

TWO RIVAL POPES

[Sidenote: [1158-1164 A.D.]]

The death of Adrian saved the church from the danger which had threatened it during the government of that fierce and overbearing pontiff. But, while delivered from one set of evils, it was surrounded by others little less calculated to injure its interests. The cardinals, having assembled to elect a new pope, chose by a large majority of their body Rolando, a cardinal, and chancellor of the Roman church. Their vote, however, was opposed by Cardinal Octavian, who had expected to be nominated by his colleagues to the vacant dignity; and when Rolando, who assumed the name of Alexander III, was invested with the pontifical cope, he rudely and sacrilegiously pulled it from his shoulders, and, but for the interference of the persons present, would have put it on himself. As he was disappointed in this, he obtained, by signal, a cope of the same kind, which he suddenly threw over his shoulders, placing, in his haste, the hind part before. Loud laughter followed this mistake; but Octavian felt no shame at the mingled ridicule and rebuke with which he was assailed. Going forth from the assembly, which he awed into silence by a band of armed men, he exercised, under the name of Victor IV, the part of sovereign pontiff; and for some days kept Alexander in close confinement.

The emperor Frederick did not look with indifference on these occurrences. A division in the church was equivalent to a great increase in his own power; and he warmly espoused the cause of Octavian, chiefly, as it appears, because he was the head of a faction. He at last, however, summoned a council to consider the question between the rival popes. The council assembled at Pavia, and Octavian was declared pope by the fifty bishops, the numerous abbots, and other dignitaries, of whom the meeting was composed. But Alexander was supported by the whole of that powerful party which contended for the doctrine of papal supremacy; and despising the decree of deposition passed against him at Pavia, he excommunicated the emperor for the part he had taken, and absolved his subjects from their oath of allegiance. Victor, on the other hand, was recognised as lawful pope, not only in Germany, but in England and France; by the monarchs of which countries he was received at Couci on the Loire, with all the pomp and ceremony which had been demanded for his successors by the haughty Adrian.

[Sidenote: [1164-1198 A.D.]]

He died in the year 1164; but the schism was continued by the immediate election of Paschal III, who retained the semblance of authority about three years. Alexander, on the death of Victor, had ventured to return to Rome, which he did not dare to attempt during the life-time of that ecclesiastic. A pestilence, which swept off the flower of Frederick’s army, saved the pope from ruin; and the emperor, obliged as he was to make his escape into Germany as he best might, at length expressed his willingness to heal the schism which he had created in the church. Peace was accordingly restored, and Alexander returned.

On the death of Alexander, Ubaldo, bishop of Ostia, was elected without opposition, and assumed the name of Lucius III (1181-1185), and it has been noted, that at his election the cardinals first appropriated the right of choosing the supreme pontiff without the interference of the people, or of the other orders of the clergy. Popular indignation was loudly expressed. Obliged to seek safety by flight, he called upon the great European states to furnish him with supplies for the support of his rights against the disaffected citizens. His claims were allowed, and the riches of England and other countries were poured freely into his treasury. With these he made head against the insurgents; but such was the fierceness with which they resisted him, that they tore out the eyes of the clergy whom they met beyond the walls of the city; and obliged him to fix his residence at Verona, where he died in 1185. Urban III, Gregory VIII, and Clement III, passed their brief pontificates at a distance from Rome. The last-named pope, however, made peace with the senate and the people; and his successor, Celestine III, was enabled, by the strength of his position, to exercise the most important of his assumed privileges without interruption. Henry VI, who at one time received from his hands[98] the imperial crown, was at another punished by him with the ban of excommunication.[c] On his death he was succeeded by Innocent III.

INNOCENT III

[Sidenote: [1198 A.D.]]

Under Innocent III, the papal power rose to its utmost height.[99] The thirteenth century is nearly commensurate with this supremacy of the pope. Innocent III at its commencement calmly exercised as his right, and handed down strengthened and almost irresistible to his successors, that which, at its close, Boniface asserted with repulsive and ill-timed arrogance, endangered, undermined, and shook to its base.

The essential inherent supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal power, as of the soul over the body, as of eternity over time, as of Christ over Cæsar, as of God over man, was now an integral part of Christianity. Ideas obtain authority and dominion, not altogether from their intrinsic truth, but rather from their constant asseveration, especially when they fall in with the common hopes and fears, the wants and necessities of human nature. The mass of mankind have neither leisure nor ability to examine them; they fatigue, and so compel the world into their acceptance; more particularly if it is the duty, the passion, and the interest of one great associated body to perpetuate them, while it is neither the peculiar function, nor the manifest advantage of any large class or order to refute them.

The unity of the vast Christian republic was an imposing conception, which, even now that history has shown its hopeless impossibility, still infatuates lofty minds; its impossibility, since it demands for its head not merely that infallibility in doctrine so boldly claimed in later times, but absolute impeccability, in every one of its possessors; more than impeccability, an all-commanding, indefeasible, unquestionable majesty of virtue, holiness, and wisdom. Without this it is a baseless tyranny, a senseless usurpation. In those days it struck in with the whole feudal system, which was one of strict gradation and subordination; to the hierarchy of church and state was equally wanting the crown, the sovereign liege lord.

When this idea was first promulgated in all its naked sternness by Gregory VII, it had come into collision with other ideas rooted with almost equal depth in the mind of man, that especially of the illimitable Cæsarian power, which though transferred to a German emperor, was still a powerful tradition, and derived great weight from its descent from Charlemagne. The humiliation of the emperor was degradation; it brought contempt on the office, scarcely redeemed by the abilities, successes, or even virtues of new sovereigns; the humiliation of the pope was a noble suffering in the cause of God and truth, the depression of patient holiness under worldly violence. In every schism the pope who maintained the loftiest churchmanship had eventually gained the superiority which the imperialising popes had sunk into impotence, obscurity, ignominy.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CRUSADES ON PAPAL POWER

[Sidenote: [1198-1201 A.D.]]

The Crusades, as elsewhere described, had made the pope not merely the spiritual, but in some sort the military suzerain of Europe; he had the power of summoning all Christendom to his banner; the raising the cross, the standard of the pope, was throughout Europe a general and compulsory levy, the _Heerbann_ of all who bore arms, of all who could follow an army. That which was a noble act of devotion had become a duty; not to assume the cross was sin and impiety. The Crusades thus became a kind of forlorn hope upon which all the more dangerous and refractory of the temporal sovereigns might be employed, so as to waste their strength, if not lose their lives, by the accidents of the journey, or by the sword of the Mohammedan. If they resisted, the fearful excommunication hung over them, and was ratified by the fears and by the wavering allegiance of their subjects. If they obeyed and returned, as most of them did, with shame and defeat, they returned shorn of their power, lowered in the public estimation, and perhaps still pursued, on account of their ill success, with the inexorable interdict. It was thus by trammelling their adversaries with vows which they could not decline, and from which they could not extricate themselves; by thus consuming their wealth and resources on this wild and remote warfare, that the popes, who themselves decently eluded, or were prevented by age or alleged occupations from embarkation in these adventurous expeditions, broke and wasted away the power and influence of the emperors.

The Crusades, too, had now made the western world tributary to the popedom; the vast subventions raised for the Holy Land were to a certain extent at the disposal of the pope. The taxation of the clergy on his authority could not be refused for such an object; a tenth of all the exorbitant wealth of the hierarchy passed through his hands. An immense financial system grew up; papal collectors were in every land, papal bankers in every capital to transmit these subsidies.

But after all none of these accessory and, in some degree, fortuitous aids, could have raised the papal authority to its commanding height,[100] had it not possessed more sublime and more lawful claims to the reverence of mankind. It was still an assertion of eternal principles of justice, righteousness, and humanity. However it might trample on all justice, sacrifice righteousness to its own interests, plunge Europe in desolating wars, perpetuate strife in states, set sons in arms against their fathers, fathers against sons, it was still proclaiming a higher ultimate end. The papal language, the language of the clergy, was still ostentatiously, profoundly religious; it professed, even if itself did not always respect, even though it tampered with, the awful sense of retribution before an all-knowing, all-righteous God. In his highest pride, the pope was still the servant of the servants of God; in all his cruelty he boasted of his kindness to the transgressor; every contumacious emperor was a disobedient son; the excommunication was the voice of a parent, who affected at least reluctance to chastise.

If this great idea was ever to be realised of a Christian republic with a pope at its head--and that a pope of a high Christian character (in some respects, in all perhaps but one, in tolerance and gentleness almost impossible in his days, and the want of which, far from impairing, confirmed his strength)--none could bring more lofty, more various qualifications for its accomplishment, none could fall on more favourable times than Innocent III. Innocent was Giovanni Lothario Conti, an Italian of noble birth, but not of a family inextricably involved in the petty quarrels and interests of the princedoms of Romagna. He was of the Conti,[101] who derived their name in some remote time from their dignity. The elevation of his uncle to the pontificate as Clement III paved the way to his rapid rise. He was elevated in his twenty-ninth year to the cardinalate under the title vacated by his uncle.

Celestine on his death-bed had endeavoured to nominate his successor; he had offered to resign the papacy if the cardinals would elect John of Colonna. But, even if consistent with right and with usage, the words of dying sovereigns rarely take effect. Of twenty-eight cardinals, five only were absent; of the rest the unanimous vote fell on the youngest of their body, on the cardinal (Giovanni) Lothario. Lothario was only thirty-seven years old, almost an unprecedented age for a pope.[102] The cardinals who proclaimed him saluted him by the name of Innocent, in testimony of his blameless life. In his inauguration sermon broke forth the character of the man; the unmeasured assertion of his dignity, protestations of humility which have a sound of pride. “Ye see what manner of servant that is whom the Lord hath set over his people; no other than the vicegerent of Christ, the successor of Peter. He stands in the midst between God and man; below God, above man; less than God, more than man. He judges all, is judged by none, for it is written, ‘I will judge.’ But he whom the pre-eminence of dignity exalts is lowered by his office of a servant, that so humility may be exalted, and pride abased; for God is against the high-minded, and to the lowly he shows mercy; and he who exalteth himself shall be abased. Every valley shall be lifted up, every hill and mountain laid low!”

The letters in which he announced his election to the king of France, and to the other realms of Christendom, blend a decent but exaggerated humility with the consciousness of power; Innocent’s confidence in himself transpires through his confidence in the divine protection.

The state of Christendom might have tempted a less ambitious prelate to extend and consolidate his supremacy. Wherever Innocent cast his eyes over Christendom and beyond the limits of Christendom, appeared disorder, contested thrones, sovereigns oppressing their subjects, subjects in arms against their sovereigns, the ruin of the Christian cause. In Italy the crown of Naples on the brows of an infant; the fairest provinces under the galling yoke of fierce German adventurers; the Lombard republics, Guelf or Ghibelline, at war within their walls, at war or in implacable animosity against each other; the empire, distracted by rival claimants for the throne, one vast scene of battle, intrigue, almost of anarchy; the tyrannical and dissolute Philip Augustus king of France, before long the tyrannical and feeble John of England.

The Byzantine Empire is tottering to its fall; the kingdom of Jerusalem confined almost to the city of Acre. Every realm seems to demand, or at least to invite, the interposition, the mediation, of the head of Christendom; in every land one party at least, or one portion of society, would welcome his interference in the last resort for refuge or for protection.

Nor did Innocent shrink from that which might have crushed a less energetic spirit to despair; from the Jordan to the Atlantic, from the Mediterranean to beyond the Baltic, his influence is felt and confessed; his vast correspondence shows at once the inexhaustible activity of his mind; he is involved simultaneously or successively in the vital interests of every kingdom in the western world.[e]

THE AUTOCRACY OF INNOCENT III

In order to secure Sicily for her son, the empress Constantia, pressed hard by parties, was obliged to accept the papal investment under the new conditions prescribed by the pontiff. After Constantia’s death (the 27th of November, 1198) Innocent ruled over all Sicily in the character of guardian. Still further the disputed imperial election, by which Germany was divided between Philip, duke of Swabia, and Otto, duke of Saxony, encouraged the pope to a larger extension of his power. Immediately after his accession, Innocent had already taken the oath of fealty to the imperial _præfectus urbis_; now he dislodged the vassals of the empire from the territory of Matilda, and established in Tuscany a civic league.

[Sidenote: [1201-1216 A.D.]]

After he had thus consolidated his power in Italy, he commenced an energetic interference in German politics; for he forthwith claimed the right to decide on a disputed imperial election. He must naturally have been inclined rather to the Guelf than to the Hohenstaufen candidate, so maintaining his pretensions he actually decided (1201) in favour of Otto IV. However, he was resisted with great energy by Philip’s party, and the flame of discord only burned so much the brighter in Germany. As Philip continued to gain more decisive advantages over his enemy, Innocent began negotiations with him, which seemed fraught with danger to Otto. Meanwhile Philip was murdered by Otto of Wittelsbach in Bamberg (1208). Otto IV was then universally recognised as emperor, and after he had satisfied the pope’s demands in all points he was crowned by him. But so soon as Otto had reached this goal of his wishes, he began again to vindicate the imperial rights in Italy, and to overthrow the pope’s new creations, without suffering himself to be turned from his path by the sentence of excommunication and dethronement which the deluded Innocent pronounced against him in November, 1210. Now he himself encouraged the canvass of the only surviving Hohenstaufen. Frederick appeared in Germany in 1212, and, upheld as he was by the pope and the king of France, he quickly won most of all ranks to his side. On the 25th of July, 1215, he received the German king’s crown at Aachen, and Otto down to his death (1218) had to content himself with his ancestral territories in Brunswick.

UNIVERSAL SWAY OF THE POPE

On every side, the thunder of Rome broke over the heads of princes. A certain Swero is excommunicated for usurping the crown of Norway. A legate, in passing through Hungary, is detained by the king: Innocent writes in tolerably mild terms to this potentate, but fails not to intimate that he might be compelled to prevent his son’s accession to the throne. The king of Leon had married his cousin, a princess of Castile. Innocent subjects the kingdom to an interdict. When the clergy of Leon petition him to remove it, because when they ceased to perform their functions the laity paid no tithes and listened to heretical teachers when orthodox mouths were mute, he consented that divine service with closed doors, but not the rites of burial, might be performed. The king at length gave way, and sent back his wife.

But a more illustrious victory of the same kind was obtained over Philip Augustus, who, having repudiated Ingeborg of Denmark, had contracted another marriage. The conduct of the king, though not without the usual excuse of those times, nearness of blood, was justly condemned; and Innocent did not hesitate to visit his sins upon the people by a general interdict. This, after a short demur from some bishops, was enforced throughout France; the dead lay unburied, and the living were cut off from the offices of religion, till Philip, thus subdued, took back his divorced wife. The submission of such a prince, not feebly superstitious, like his predecessor Robert, nor vexed with seditions, like the emperor Henry IV, but brave, firm, and victorious, is perhaps the proudest trophy on the scutcheon of Rome.

Compared with this, the subsequent triumph of Innocent over the pusillanimous John seems cheaply gained, though the surrender of a powerful kingdom into the vassalage of the pope may strike us as a proof of stupendous baseness on one side and audacity on the other.

A disputed election furnished Innocent with an opportunity of thrusting forward the cardinal Stephen Langton into the archbishopric of Canterbury against the king’s will. When John resisted with anger, the pope laid England under an interdict, in 1208, and afterwards excommunicated the king; the latter sought by reckless cruelty to avenge himself on the clergy, and by severe oppression to make sure of his vassals. At last Innocent deposed him from his kingdom, and handed it over to the king of France. But while he was arming himself for the conquest, John, unable to trust his vassals, yielded in all points, and even received his kingdom in fee from the pope under circumstances of the greatest humiliation. Now was England yielded up to the discretion of an arbitrary pope and a contemptible king; this united the prelates and the barons to wrest Magna Charta from the king in 1215. In vain the pope with spiritual and the king with temporal weapons strove to effect its repeal; John’s death, however, in 1216, quickly put an end to internal discord.

Still greater prospects seemed to open themselves before the pope in Constantinople. Although the enthusiasm for crusades was already much diminished, nevertheless Innocent had succeeded, by unwearied efforts, in collecting a new army at Venice in 1202. The crafty doge, Enrico Dandolo, notwithstanding all papal admonitions, had first made use of the army for the reconquest of Zara (Jadera); it was then induced by the magnificent promises of a Greek prince, Alexius, to undertake an expedition against Constantinople; and when the reinstated emperor Isaac Angelus was unable to fulfil these promises, Constantinople was conquered, and a Latin empire established there, by the exaltation of Baldwin, count of Flanders, to the throne. Thus the church of Constantinople seemed now to be brought into subjection to the Roman see. However, even now, no one doubted the precariousness of this acquisition. For the new empire already contained the germ of dissolution; on the other hand it completely foiled the powerful enterprise in behalf of Palestine.

In the latter year of his life Innocent devoted especial attention to the Holy Land: King Frederick took the cross even at his coronation; and at the Lateran council of the year 1215, one of the most brilliant which had ever been held, the accomplishment of another crusade was one of the chief ends in view. The enthusiasm for the Holy Land was indeed by no means extinct; but in Germany the continuance of the twofold reign of Frederick and Otto led to many unfavourable opinions of the Roman see, which necessarily obstructed its readiness to undertake a fresh crusade.[k]

MILMAN’S ESTIMATE OF INNOCENT III

[Sidenote: [1198-1216 A.D.]]

In the full vigour of his manhood died Innocent III, 1216. He, of all the popes, had advanced the most exorbitant pretensions, and those pretensions had been received by an age most disposed to accept them with humble deference. The high and blameless, in some respects wise and gentle, character of Innocent might seem to approach more nearly than any one of the whole succession of Roman bishops to the ideal height of a supreme pontiff; in him, if ever, might appear to be realised the churchman’s highest conception of the vicar of Christ.

Gregory VII and Boniface VIII, the first and the last of the aggressive popes, and the aged Gregory IX, had no doubt more rugged warfare to encounter, fiercer and more unscrupulous enemies to subdue. But in all these there was a personal sternness, a contemptuous haughtiness; theirs was a worldly majesty. The pride of Innocent was calmer, more self-possessed; his dignity was less disturbed by degrading collisions with rude adversaries; he died on his unshaken throne, in the plenitude of his seemingly unquestioned power. Yet if we pause and contemplate, as we cannot but pause and contemplate, the issue of this highest, in a certain sense noblest and most religious contest for the papal ascendency over the world of man, there is an inevitable conviction of the unreality of that papal power. With all the grandeur of his views, with all the persevering energy of his measures, throughout Innocent’s reign, everywhere we behold failure, everywhere immediate discomfiture, or transitory success which paved the way for future disaster. The higher the throne of the pope the more manifestly were its foundations undermined, unsound, unenduring.

Even Rome does not always maintain her peaceful subservience. Her obedience is interrupted, precarious; that of transient awe, not of deep attachment, or rooted reverence. In the empire it is impossible not to burden the memory of Innocent with the miseries of the long civil war. Otto without the aid of the pope could not have maintained the contest for a year; with all the pope’s aid he had sunk into contempt, almost insignificance; he was about to be abandoned, if not actually abandoned, by the pope himself. The casual blow of the assassin alone prevented the complete triumph of Philip. Already he had extorted his absolution; Innocent was compelled to yield, and could not yield without loss of dignity. The triumph of Otto leads to as fierce, and more perilous resistance to the papal power than could have been expected from the haughtiness of the Hohenstaufen. The pope has an irresistible enemy in Italy itself. Innocent is compelled to abandon the great object of the papal policy, the breaking the line of succession in the house of Swabia, and to assist in the elevation of a Swabian emperor. He must yield to the union of the crown of Sicily with that of Germany, and so bequeath to his successors the obstinate and perilous strife with Frederick II.

In France, Philip Augustus is forced to seem, yet only seem, to submit; the miseries of his unhappy wife are but aggravated by the papal protection. The death of Agnes of Méran, rather than Innocent’s authority, heals the strife. The sons of the proscribed concubine succeed to the throne of France.

In England the barons refuse to desert John when under the interdict of the pope; when the pope becomes the king’s ally, resenting the cession of the realm, they withdraw their allegiance. Even in Stephen Langton, who owes his promotion to the pope, the Englishman prevails over the ecclesiastic; the Great Charter is extorted from the king when under the express protection of the holy see, and maintained resolutely against the papal sentence of abrogation; and in the Great Charter is laid the first stone of the religious as well as the civil liberties of the land.

Venice, in the crusade, deludes, defies, baffles the pope. The crusaders become her army, besiege, fight, conquer for her interests. In vain the pope protests, threatens, anathematises; Venice calmly proceeds in the subjugation of Zara. To the astonishment, the indignation of the pope, the crusaders’ banners wave not over Jerusalem, but over Constantinople. But for her own wisdom, Venice might have given an emperor to the capital of the East; she secures the patriarchate almost in defiance of the pope; only when she has entirely gained her ends does she submit to the petty and unregarded vengeance of the pope.

Even in the Albigensian war the success was indeed complete; heresy was crushed, but by means of which Innocent disapproved in his heart. He had let loose a terrible force, which he could neither arrest nor control. The pope can do everything but show mercy or moderation. He could not shake off, the papacy has never shaken off, the burden of its complicity in the remorseless carnage perpetrated by the crusaders in Languedoc, in the crimes and cruelties of Simon de Montfort. A dark and ineffaceable stain of fraud and dissimulation too has gathered around the fame of Innocent himself.[103] Heresy was quenched in blood; but the earth sooner or later gives out the terrible cry of blood for vengeance against murderers and oppressors.

The great religious event of this pontificate, the foundation of the Mendicant orders, that which perhaps perpetuated, or at least immeasurably strengthened, the papal power for two centuries, was extorted from the reluctant pope. Both St. Dominic and St. Francis were coldly received, almost contemptuously repelled. It was not till either his own more mature deliberation or wiser counsel, which took the form of divine admonition, prevented this fatal error and prophetically revealed the secret of their strength and of their irresistible influence throughout Christendom, that Innocent awoke to wisdom. He then bequeathed these two great standing armies to the papacy; armies maintained without cost, sworn, more than sworn, bound by the unbroken chains of their own zeal and devotion to unquestioning, unhesitating service throughout Christendom, speaking all languages. They were colonies of religious militia, natives of every land, yet under foreign control and guidance. Their whole power, importance, perhaps possessions rested on their fidelity to the see of Rome, that fidelity guaranteed by the charter of their existence. Well might they appear so great as they are seen by the eye of Dante, like the cherubim and seraphim in paradise.[e]

FREDERICK II AT WAR WITH THE PAPACY

[Sidenote: [1216-1244 A.D.]]

Honorius III, previously called Cencio Savelli, who succeeded Innocent, 1216, and governed the Roman church more than ten years, did not perform so many deeds worthy of being recorded; yet he was very careful that the Romish power should receive no diminution. Pursuing this course, he had a grievous falling out with the emperor Frederick II, a magnanimous prince, whom he himself had crowned at Rome in the year 1220. Frederick, imitating his grandfather, laboured to establish and enlarge the authority of the emperors in Italy, to depress the minor states and republics of Lombardy, and to diminish the immense wealth and power of the pontiffs and the bishops; and to accomplish these objects, he continually deferred the crusade, which he had promised with an oath. Honorius, on the other hand, continually urged Frederick to enter on his expedition to Palestine; yet he secretly encouraged, animated, and supported the cities and republics that resisted the emperor, and raised various impediments to the latter’s increasing power. Still, this hostility did not, at present, break out in open war.

But under Gregory IX--whose former name was Ugolino, and who was elevated from the bishopric of Ostia to the pontificate, 1227, an old man, but still bold and resolute--the fire, which had been long burning in secret, burst into a flame.[104] In the year 1227 the pontiff excommunicated the emperor, who still deferred his expedition to Palestine; but without proceeding in due form of ecclesiastical law, and without regarding the emperor’s excuse of ill health. In the year 1228 the emperor sailed with his fleet to Palestine; but instead of waging war as he was bound to do, he made a truce with Saladin on recovering Jerusalem. While he was absent the pontiff raised war against him in Apulia, and endeavoured to excite all Europe to oppose him. Therefore Frederick hastened back, in the year 1229, and after vanquishing his enemies, made his peace with the pontiff in the year 1230. But this peace could not be durable, as Frederick would not submit to the control of the pontiff. Therefore, as the emperor continued to press heavily on the republics of Lombardy, which were friendly to the pontiff, and transferred Sardinia, which the pontiff claimed as part of the patrimony of the church, to his son Enzio; and wished to withdraw Rome itself from the power of the pontiff; and did other things very offensive to Gregory--the pontiff, in the year 1239, again laid him under anathemas; and accused him to all the sovereigns of Europe of many crimes and enormities, and particularly of speaking contemptuously of the Christian religion.

The emperor, on the other hand, avenged the injuries that he received, both by written publications and by his military operations in Italy, in which he was for the most part successful; and thus he defended his reputation, and also brought the pontiff into perplexity and difficulty. To rescue himself, in some measure, in the year 1240 Gregory summoned a general council to meet at Rome, intending to hurl the emperor from his throne by the united suffrages of the assembled fathers. But Frederick, in the year 1241, captured the Genoese fleet, which was carrying a great part of the fathers to the council at Rome, and seizing as well their treasures as themselves, he cast them into prison. Broken down by these calamities, and by others of no less magnitude, Gregory shortly after sank into the grave.

The successor of Gregory, Goffredo Castiglione of Milan, who assumed the name of Celestine IV, died before his consecration; and after a long interregnum, in the year 1243, Senibaldi, a Genoese, descended from the counts Fieschi, succeeded under the pontifical name of Innocent IV, a man inferior to none of his predecessors in arrogance and insolence of temper. Between him and Frederick there were at first negotiations for peace; but the terms insisted on by the pontiff were deemed too harsh by the emperor. Hence Innocent, feeling himself unsafe in any part of Italy, in 1244 removed from Genoa to Lyons in France; and the next year assembled a council there, in the presence of which, but without its approbation (whatever the Roman writers may affirm to the contrary), he declared Frederick unworthy of the imperial throne.

[Sidenote: [1244-1274 A.D.]]

This most unrighteous decision of the pontiff had such influence upon the German princes, who were infected with the superstition of the times, that they elected first Henry, landgraf of Thuringia, and on his death William, count of Holland, to the imperial throne. Frederick continued the war vigorously and courageously in Italy, and with various successes, until a dysentery terminated his life in Apulia, on the 13th of December, 1250. On the death of his foe, Innocent returned to Italy in the year 1251. From this time especially (though their origin was much earlier) the two noted factions of Guelfs and Ghibellines, of which the former sided with the pontiffs and the latter with the emperors, most unhappily rent asunder and devastated all Italy.

Alexander IV, whose name as count of Segni and bishop of Ostia was Rinaldo, became pontiff on the death of Innocent (1254) and reigned six years and six months. Excepting some efforts to put down a grandson of Frederick II, called Conradin, and to quiet the perpetual commotions of Italy, he busied himself more in regulating the internal affairs of the church than in national concerns. The mendicant friars, Dominicans and Franciscans, are under especial obligations to him. Urban IV, before his election to the pontificate in 1261, was James, patriarch of Jerusalem, a man born of obscure parentage at Troyes. He distinguished himself more by instituting the festival of the Body of Christ than by any other achievement. He indeed formed many projects: but he executed few of them, being prevented by death, in the year 1264, after a short reign of three years. Not much longer was the reign of Clement IV, a Frenchman and bishop of Sabina, under the name of Guido Fulcodi (Guy Foulques), who was created pontiff in the year 1265. Yet he is better known on several accounts, but especially for conferring the kingdom of Naples on Charles of Anjou, brother to Louis IX, the king of France. Charles is well known to have beheaded Conradin, the only surviving grandson of Frederick II, after conquering him in battle, and this, if not by the counsel, at least with the consent of the pontiff.[105]

On the death of Clement IV[106] there were vehement contests among the cardinals, respecting the election of a new pontiff; which continued till the third year, when, at last, 1271, Teobaldo of Piacenza, archdeacon of Liège, was chosen, and assumed the name of Gregory X. He had been called from Palestine, where he had resided; and having witnessed the depressed state of the Christians in the Holy Land, nothing more engaged his thoughts than sending them succour.

COUNCIL AT LYONS

[Sidenote: [1274-1294 A.D.]]

Accordingly, as soon as he was consecrated, he appointed a council to be held at Lyons in France, and attended it in person in the month of May, 1274. The principal subjects discussed were the re-establishment of the Christian dominion in the East, and the reunion of the Greek and Latin churches. This has commonly been reckoned the fourteenth general council, and is particularly noticeable for the new regulations it established for the election of Roman pontiffs, and the celebrated provision which is still in force requiring the cardinal electors to be shut up in conclave. Neither did the pontiff, though of a milder disposition than many others, hesitate to repeat and inculcate that odious maxim of Gregory VII, that the pontiff is supreme lord of the world, and especially of the Roman Empire. For in the year 1271 he sent a menacing letter to the princes of Germany, admonishing them to elect an emperor, and without regarding the wishes or the claims of Alfonso, king of Castile; otherwise he would appoint a head of the empire himself. Accordingly, the princes assembled, and elected Rudolf I, of the house of Habsburg.

Gregory X died in the year 1276, and his three immediate successors were all chosen and died in the same year. Innocent V, previously Pietro di Tarantaisia, was a Dominican monk, and bishop of Ostia. Adrian V was a Genoese, named Ottoboni, and cardinal of St. Adrian. John XXI, previously Pedro, bishop of Tusculum, was a native of Portugal. The next pontiff, who came to the chair in 1277, reigned longer. He was Giovanni Gaetano, of the family of Ursini, a Roman, and cardinal of St. Nicholas, who assumed the title of Nicholas III. He greatly enlarged what is called the patrimony of St. Peter; and, as his actions show, had formed other great projects, which he would undoubtedly have accomplished, as he was a man of energy and enterprise, had he not prematurely died in the year 1280.

His successor, Martin IV, elected by the cardinals in 1281, was a French nobleman, Simon de Brion, a man of equal boldness and energy of character with Nicholas. For he excommunicated Michael Palæologus, the Greek emperor, because he had violated the compact of union with the Latins, which was settled at the Council of Lyons. Pedro of Aragon he deprived of his kingdoms and of all his property, because he had seized upon Sicily; and he bestowed them gratuitously on Charles, son to the king of France. He was projecting many other things, consonant with the views of the pontiffs, when he was suddenly overtaken by death in 1285. His plans were prosecuted by his successor, Giacomo Savelli, who was elected in 1285 and took the name of Honorius IV. But a distressing disease in his joints, of which he died in 1287, prevented him from attempting anything further. Nicholas IV, previously Girolamo d’Ascoli, bishop of Palestrina, who attained to the pontifical chair in 1288, and died in 1292, was able to attend to the affairs both of the church and of the nations with more diligence and care. Hence he is represented in history sometimes as the arbiter in the disputes of sovereign princes, sometimes as the strenuous asserter of the rights and prerogatives of the church, and again as the assiduous promoter of missionary labours among the Tatars and other nations of the East. But nothing lay nearer his heart than the restoration of the dominion of the Christians in Palestine, where their cause was nearly ruined. In this he laboured strenuously indeed, but in vain; for death intercepted all his projects.

After his death the church was without a head till the third year, the cardinals disagreeing exceedingly among themselves. At length, on the 5th of July, 1294, they unanimously chose an aged man, greatly venerated for his sanctity--Pietro, surnamed di Murrhone, from a mountain in which he led a solitary and very austere life; he assumed the pontifical name of Celestine V. But as the austerity of his life tacitly censured the corrupt morals of the Romish court, and especially of the cardinals, and as he showed very plainly that he was more solicitous to advance the holiness of the church than its worldly grandeur, he was soon considered as unworthy of the office which he had reluctantly assumed. Hence some of the cardinals, and especially Benedict Cajetan, persuaded him very easily to abdicate the chair, in the fourth month of his pontificate. He died, 1296, in the castle of Fumone, where his successor detained him a captive, lest he should make some disturbance. But afterwards Clement V enrolled him in the calendar of the saints. To him the sect of Benedictine monks who were called, after him, Celestines, owed its origin; a sect still existing in Italy and France, though now nearly extinct, and differing from the other Benedictines by their more rigid rules of life.

ACCESSION OF BONIFACE VIII

[Sidenote: [1294-1301 A.D.]]

He was succeeded in 1294 by Benedict, Cardinal Cajetan, by whose persuasions he had been chiefly led to resign the pontificate, and who now assumed the name of Boniface VIII. This was a man formed to produce disturbance both in church and state, and eager for confirming and enlarging the power of the pontiffs, to the highest degree of rashness. From his first entrance on the office he arrogated to himself sovereign power over all things sacred and secular; overawed kings and states by his fulminations; decided important controversies at his will; enlarged the code of canon law by new accessions, namely, by the sixth book of _Decretals_; made war, among others, particularly on the noble family of Colonna, which had opposed his election--in a word, he seemed to be another Gregory VII at the head of the church. At the close of the century, he established the year of jubilee, which is still solemnised at Rome.

That the governors of the church, as well of highest rank as of inferior, were addicted to all those vices which are the most unbecoming to men in their stations, is testified most abundantly. As for the Greek and oriental clergy, many of whom lived under oppressive governments, we shall say nothing; although their faults are sufficiently manifest. But of the faults of the Latins silence would be the less proper, in proportion to the certainty that from this source the whole community was involved in the greatest calamities. All the honest and good men of that age ardently wished for a reformation of the church, both in its head and in its members, as they themselves expressed it. But to so desirable an event there were still many obstacles. First, the power of the pontiffs was so confirmed by its long continuance that it seemed to be immovably established. In the next place, extravagant superstition held the minds of the majority of the people in abject slavery. And lastly, the ignorance and barbarism of the times quickly extinguished the sparks of truth that appeared from time to time. Yet the dominion of the Roman pontiffs, impregnable and durable as it seemed to be, was gradually undermined and weakened in this century, partly by the rash insolence of the pontiffs themselves and partly by the occurrence of certain unexpected events.

PHILIP THE FAIR OVERPOWERS THE PAPACY

[Sidenote: [1301-1305 A.D.]]

The commencement of this important change must be referred to the contest between Boniface VIII, who governed the Latin church at the beginning of this century, and Philip the Fair, king of France. This high-minded sovereign first taught the Europeans what the emperors had in vain attempted--that the Roman bishops could be vanquished, and be laid under restraint. In a very haughty letter addressed to Philip, Boniface maintained that all kings and persons whatever, and the king of France as well as others, by divine command, owed perfect obedience to the Roman pontiff, and this not merely in religious matters, but likewise in secular and human affairs. The king replied with extreme bitterness. The pontiff repeated his former assertions with greater arrogance, and published the celebrated bull called _Unam sanctam_; in which he asserted that Jesus Christ had granted a twofold power or sword to his church, a spiritual and a temporal; that the whole human race was subjected to the pontiff; and that all who dissented from this doctrine were heretics, and could not expect to be saved. The king, on the contrary, in an assembly of his nobles, in 1303, through the famous lawyer, Guillaume de Nogaret, publicly accused the pontiff of heresy, simony, dishonesty, and other enormities; and urged the calling of a general council to depose from his office a pontiff so very wicked. The pontiff, in return, excommunicated the king and all his adherents the same year.

Soon after receiving this sentence, Philip again, in an assembly of the states of his kingdom, entered a formal complaint against the pontiff, by men of the highest reputation and influence; and appealed to the decision of a future general council of the church. He then despatched Guillaume de Nogaret, with some others, into Italy, to rouse the people to insurrection, and to bring the pontiff prisoner to Lyons, where he wished the council to be held. Nogaret, who was a resolute and energetic man, having drawn over to his interest the Colonna family, which was at variance with the pontiff, raised a small force, suddenly attacked Boniface, who was living securely at Anagni, made him prisoner, wounded him, and, among other severe indignities, struck him on the head with his iron gauntlet. The people of Anagni, indeed, rescued the pontiff from the hands of his furious enemy; but he died shortly after, at Rome, in the month of October, from rage and anguish of mind.

Benedict XI, previously Nicolo of Trevigio, the successor of Boniface, profiting by his example, restored the king of France and his kingdom to their former honours and privileges, without even being solicited; but he was unwilling to absolve from his crime Nogaret, who had so grievously offended against the pontifical dignity. This daring man, therefore, prosecuted strenuously the suit commenced against Boniface in the Romish court; and, in the name of the king, demanded that a mark of infamy should be set upon the deceased pontiff.

Benedict XI died in the year 1304; and Philip, by his secret machinations, caused Bertrand d’Agoust, a Frenchman, and archbishop of Bordeaux, to be created pontiff at Rome, on the 5th of June, 1305. For the contest of the king against the pontiffs was not yet wholly settled, Nogaret not being absolved, and it might easily break out again. Besides, the king thirsted for revenge, and designed to extort from the court of Rome a condemnation of Boniface; he also meditated the destruction of the Templars, and other matters of great importance which he could hardly expect from an Italian pontiff. He therefore wished to have a French pontiff, whom he could control according to his pleasure, and who would be in a degree dependent on him. The new pontiff, who took the name of Clement V, remained in France, as the king wished, and transferred the pontifical court to Avignon, where it continued for seventy years. This period the Italians call the Babylonian Captivity.[n]

HALLAM ON THE CLIMAX OF PAPAL POWER

[Sidenote: [1198-1305 A.D.]]

The noonday of papal dominion extends from the pontificate of Innocent III inclusively to that of Boniface VIII; or, in other words, through the thirteenth century. Rome inspired during this age all the terror of her ancient name. She was once more the mistress of the world, and kings were her vassals. In her long contention with the house of Swabia, she finally triumphed. After his deposition by the Council of Lyons, the affairs of Frederick II went rapidly into decay. With every allowance for the enmity of the Lombards and the jealousies of Germany, it must be confessed, that his proscription by Innocent IV and Alexander IV was the main cause of the ruin of his family.

This general supremacy effected by the Roman church over mankind in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, derived material support from the promulgation of the canon law. By means of her new jurisprudence Rome acquired in every country a powerful body of advocates who, though many of them were laymen, would, with the usual bigotry of lawyers, defend every pretension or abuse, to which their received standard of authority gave sanction.

Next to the canon law, we should reckon the institution of the mendicant orders among those circumstances which principally contributed to the aggrandisement of Rome. By the acquisition, and in some respects the enjoyment, or at least ostentation of immense riches, the ancient monastic orders had forfeited much of the public esteem. No means appeared so efficacious to counteract this effect as the institution of religious societies, strictly debarred from the insidious temptations of wealth. These new preachers were received with astonishing approbation by the laity, whose religious zeal usually depends a good deal upon their opinion of sincerity and disinterestedness in their pastors. And the progress of the Dominican and Franciscan friars in the thirteenth century bears a remarkable analogy to that of the English Methodists. Aware of the powerful support they might receive in turn, the pontiffs of the thirteenth century accumulated benefits upon the disciples of Francis and Dominic. They were exempted from episcopal authority; they were permitted to preach or hear confessions without leave of the ordinary, to accept of legacies, and to inter in their churches. It was naturally to be expected that the objects of such extensive favours would repay their benefactors by a more than usual obsequiousness and alacrity in their service. Accordingly, the Dominicans and Franciscans vied with each other in magnifying the papal supremacy.