EUROPE IN THE DAYS OF INNOCENT III. (1198–1216)[26]
Character and theories of Innocent III.—The Sicilian Succession and
the Minority of Frederick II.—The Subjection of Rome and the
Patrimony of St. Peter—Innocent and Germany—Rivalry of Philip of
Swabia and Otto of Brunswick—Innocent and Philip Augustus—The Pope
as Feudal Lord—Otto IV. and Frederick II.—The Crusades—Innocent’s
Religious Position—The Lateran Council.
[Sidenote: Election of Innocent III., 1198.]
After the great Emperors came the great Pope. Within four months of the
death of Henry VI., Celestine III. had been succeeded by Innocent III.,
under whom the visions of Gregory VII. and Alexander III. at last became
accomplished facts, the papal authority attained its highest point of
influence, and the Empire, raised to such heights by Frederick
Barbarossa and Henry VI., was reduced to a condition of dependence upon
it.
The new Pope had been Lothaire of Segni, a member of the noble Roman
house of Conti, who had studied law and theology at Paris and Bologna,
and had at an early age won for himself a many-sided reputation as a
jurist, a politician, and as a writer. The favour of his uncle, Clement
III., had made him Cardinal before he was thirty, but under Celestine
III. he kept in the background, disliked by the Pope, and himself
suspicious of the timid and temporising old man. But on Celestine’s
death on 8th January 1198, Lothaire, though still only thirty-seven
years of age, was at once hailed as his most fitting successor, as the
strong man who could win for the Church all the advantages that she
might hope to gain from the death of Henry VI. Nor did Innocent’s
Pontificate belie the promise of his early career.
[Sidenote: Character and theories of Innocent III.]
Innocent III. possessed a majestic and noble appearance, an unblemished
private character, popular manners, a disposition prone to sudden fits
of anger and melancholy, and a fierce and indomitable will. He brought
to his exalted position the clearly formulated theories of the canonist
as to the nature of the papal power, as well as the overweening
ambition, the high courage, the keen intelligence and the perseverance
and energy necessary to turn the theories of the schools into matters of
everyday practice. His enunciations of the Papal doctrine put claims
that Hildebrand himself had hardly ventured to advance in the clearest
and most definite light. The Pope was no mere successor of Peter, the
vicegerent of man. ‘The Roman pontiff,’ he wrote, ‘is the vicar, not of
man, but of God Himself.’ ‘The Lord gave Peter the rule not only of the
Universal Church but also the rule of the whole world.’ ‘The Lord Jesus
Christ has set up one ruler over all things as His universal vicar, and
as all things in heaven, earth and hell bow the knee to Christ, so
should all obey Christ’s vicar, that there be one flock and one
shepherd.’ ‘No king can reign rightly unless he devoutly serve Christ’s
vicar.’ ‘Princes have power in earth, priests have also power in heaven.
Princes reign over the body, priests over the soul. As much as the soul
is worthier than the body, so much worthier is the priesthood than the
monarchy.’ ‘The _Sacerdotium_ is the sun, the _Regnum_ the moon. Kings
rule over their respective kingdoms, but Peter rules over the whole
earth. The _Sacerdotium_ came by divine creation, the _Regnum_ by man’s
cunning.’ In these unrestricted claims to rule over Church and State
alike we seem to be back again in the anarchy of the eleventh century.
And it was not against the feeble feudal princes of the days of
Hildebrand that Innocent III. had to contend, but against strong
national kings, like Philip of France and John of England. It is
significant of the change of the times, that Innocent sees his chief
antagonist, not so much in the Empire as in the limited localised power
of the national kings. When Richard of England had yielded before Henry
VI., the national state gave way before the universal authority of the
lord of the world. But Innocent claimed that he alone was lord of the
world. The Empire was but a German or Italian kingdom, ruling over its
limited sphere. Only in the Papacy was the old Roman tradition of
universal monarchy rightly upheld.
Filled with these ambitions of universal monarchy, Innocent III.’s
survey took in both the smallest and the greatest of European affairs.
Primarily Innocent’s work was that of an ecclesiastical statesman, and
entrenched far upon the authority of the state. We shall see him
restoring the papal authority in Rome and in the Patrimony, building up
the machinery of papal absolutism, protecting the infant King of Sicily,
cherishing the municipal freedom of Italy, making and unmaking kings and
emperors at his will, forcing the fiercest of the Western sovereigns to
acknowledge his feudal supremacy, and the greatest of the Kings of
France to reform his private life at his commands, giving his orders to
the petty monarchs of Spain and Hungary, and promulgating the law of the
Church Universal before the assembled prelates of Christendom in the
Lateran Council. Nevertheless, the many-sided Pontiff had not less near
to his heart the spiritual and intellectual than the political direction
of the universe. He had the utmost zeal for the extension of the Kingdom
of Christ. The affair of the Crusade was, as we shall see, ever his most
pressing care, and it was his bitterest grief that all his efforts to
rouse the Christian world for the recovery of Jerusalem fell on deaf
ears. He was strenuous in upholding orthodoxy against the daring
heretics of Southern France. He was sympathetic and considerate to great
religious teachers, like Francis and Dominic, from whose work he had the
wisdom to anticipate the revival of the inner life of the Church. As
many-sided as strong, and successful as he was strong, Innocent III.
represents the culmination of the papal ideal of the Middle Ages, and
represents it worthily and adequately.
[Sidenote: Innocent III. and Italy.]
Even before Innocent had attained the Chair of Peter, the worst dangers
that had so long beset the successors of Alexander III. were over. After
the death of Henry VI. the Sicilian and the German crowns were
separated, and the strong anti-imperial reaction that burst out all over
Italy against the oppressive ministers of Henry VI. was allowed to run
its full course. The danger was now not so much of despotism as of
anarchy, and Innocent, like Hildebrand, knew how to turn confusion to
the advantage of the hierarchy.
[Sidenote: The Sicilian Succession and the minority of Frederick.]
No real effort was made to obtain for the little Frederick the crowns of
both Germany and Sicily. Constance, freed from her husband’s control,
sensibly changed her policy. Her keen sympathies with her father’s
inheritance had made her an unwilling spectator of the harshness and
cruelty of his German soldiers and ministers. While Philip of Swabia,
her brother-in-law, hurried to Germany to maintain, if he could, the
unity of the Hohenstaufen Empire, Constance was quite content to secure
her son’s succession in Naples and Sicily by renewing the homage due to
the Pope, by renouncing the ecclesiastical privileges which Urban II.
had once granted to Count Roger [see page 139], and promising a yearly
tribute. Having thus obtained the indispensable papal confirmation,
Constance ruled in Naples as a national queen in the name of the little
Frederick. She drove away the German bandits who had made the name of
her husband a terror to her subjects. Markwald of Anweiler left his
Apulian fiefs for Romagna. But the Pope joined with Constance in his
hostility to the Germans. Without Innocent III.’s strong and constant
support she could hardly have carried out her policy. Recognising in the
renewal of the old papal protection the best hopes for the independence
of Sicily, Constance, on her death in 1198, called on Innocent III. to
act as the guardian of her son. [Sidenote: Death of Constance, 1198.]
Innocent loyally took up her work, and struggled with all his might to
preserve the kingdom of Frederick against his many enemies. But the
contest was a long and a fierce one. No sooner was Constance dead than
the Germans came back to their prey. The fierce Markwald, driven from
Romagna by the papal triumph, claimed the regency and the custody of the
king. [Sidenote: Innocent’s guardianship and the expulsion of the
Germans.] The Saracens and Greeks of Sicily, still numerous and active,
joined the Germans. Walter, Bishop of Troja, chancellor of Sicily,
weaved deep plots against his master and his overlord. But the general
support of the Church gave Innocent a strong weapon. Roffrid, Abbot of
Monte Casino, a tried friend of Henry VI., declared for Innocent against
Markwald, who in revenge besieged the great monastery, until a summer
storm drove him baffled from its walls. But the purchased support of
Pisa gave Markwald the command of the sea, and Innocent had too many
schemes on foot and too little military power at his command to be able
to make easy headway against him. [Sidenote: Markwald and Walter of
Brienne.] At last Innocent had reluctant recourse to Count Walter of
Brienne, the French husband of Tancred’s daughter Albina, and now a
claimant for the hereditary fiefs of Tancred, Lecce and Taranto, from
which, despite Henry VI.’s promise, he had long been driven. For almost
the first time in Italian history, Frenchmen were thus called in to
drive out Germans. But it was then as afterwards a dangerous experiment.
Walter of Brienne and his small French following invaded Apulia, and
fought hard against Diepold of Acerra, another of King Henry’s Germans.
Meanwhile Markwald, now in open alliance with the Bishop of Troja, made
himself master of Sicily, and regent of the young king. His death in
1202 removed the most dangerous enemy of both Innocent and Frederick.
But the war dragged on for years in Apulia, especially after Diepold had
slain Walter of Brienne. The turbulent feudal barons of Apulia and
Sicily profited by this long reign of anarchy to establish themselves on
a permanent basis. At last Innocent sent his own brother, Richard, Count
of Segni, to root out the last of the Germans. So successful was he
that, in 1208, the Pope himself visited the kingdom of his ward, and
arranged for its future government by native lords, helped by his
brother, who now received a rich Apulian fief. It was Innocent’s glory
that he had secured for Frederick the whole Norman inheritance. It was
amidst such storms and troubles that the young Frederick grew up to
manhood.
[Sidenote: Innocent and the inheritance of Matilda.]
In central and northern Italy, Innocent III. was more speedily
successful than in the south. On Philip of Swabia’s return to Germany,
Tuscany and the domains of the Countess Matilda fell away from their
foreign lord, and invoked the protection of the Church. The Tuscan
cities formed themselves into a new league under papal protection. Only
Pisa, proud of her sea power, wealth, and trade, held aloof from the
combination. It seemed as if, after a century of delays, the Papacy was
going to enjoy the inheritance of Matilda, and Innocent eagerly set
himself to work to provide for its administration. In the north the Pope
maintained friendly relations with the rival communities of the Lombard
plain. But his most immediate and brilliant triumph was in establishing
his authority over Rome and the Patrimony of St. Peter. On his accession
he found his lands just throwing off the yoke of the German garrisons
that had kept them in subjection during Henry VI.’s lifetime. [Sidenote:
The subjection of Rome and of the Patrimony of St. Peter.] He saw within
the city power divided between the Præfectus Urbis, the delegate of the
Emperor, and the Summus Senator, the mouthpiece of the Roman commune.
Within a month the Prefect ceased to be an imperial officer, and became
the servant of the Papacy, bound to it by fealty oaths, and receiving
from it his office. Within a year the Senator also had become the papal
nominee, and the whole municipality controlled by the Pope. No less
complete was Innocent’s triumph over the nobility of the Campagna. He
drove Conrad of Urslingen back to Germany, and restored Spoleto to papal
rule. He chased Markwald from Romagna and the march of Ancona to Apulia,
and exercised sovereign rights even in the most remote regions that
acknowledged him as lord. If it was no very real sway that Innocent
wielded, it at least allowed the town leagues and the rustic nobility to
go on in their own way, and made it possible for Italy to work out its
own destinies. More powerful and more feared in Italy than any of his
predecessors, Innocent could contentedly watch the anti-imperial
reaction extending over the Alps, and desolating Germany by civil war.
[Sidenote: Innocent III. and Germany.]
Despite the precautions taken by Henry VI. , it was soon clear that the
German princes would not accept the hereditary rule of a child of three.
Philip of Swabia abandoned his Italian domains and hurried to Germany,
anxious to do his best for his nephew. But he soon perceived that
Frederick’s chances were hopeless, and that it was all that he could do
to prevent the undisputed election of a Guelf. He was favoured by the
absence of the two elder sons of Henry the Lion. Henry of Brunswick, the
eldest, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, was away on a Crusade, and was
loyal to the Hohenstaufen, since his happy marriage with Agnes. The next
son Otto, born at Argenton during his father’s first exile, had never
seen much of Germany. Brought up at his uncle Richard of Anjou’s court,
Otto had received many marks of Richard’s favour, and looked up to the
chivalrous, adventurous king as the ideal of a warrior prince. Richard
had made him Earl of Yorkshire, and had invested him in 1196 with the
county of Poitou, that he might learn war and statecraft in the same
rude school in which Richard had first acquainted himself with arms and
politics. Even now Otto was not more than seventeen years of age.
[Sidenote: Election of Philip of Swabia, March 1198.] Richard himself,
as the new vassal of the Empire for Arles and England, was duly summoned
to the electoral Diet, but his representatives impolitically urged the
claims of Count Henry, who was ruled ineligible on account of his
absence. Thus it was that when the German magnates at last met for the
election, on 8th March 1198, at Mühlhausen, their choice fell on Philip
of Swabia, who, mindful of the third century Emperor, Philip the
Arabian, took the title of Philip II.
[Sidenote: Counter-election of Otto of Brunswick, June 1198.]
Many of the magnates had absented themselves from the Diet at
Mühlhausen, and an irreconcilable band of partisans refused to be bound
by its decisions. Richard of England now worked actively for Otto, his
favourite nephew, and found support both in the old allies of the
Angevins in the lower Rhineland and the ancient supporters of the house
of Guelf. Germany was thus divided into two parties, who completely
ignored each other’s acts. Three months after the Diet of Mühlhausen,
another Diet met at Cologne and chose Otto of Brunswick as King of the
Romans. Three days afterwards the young prince was crowned at Aachen.
A ten years’ civil war between Philip II. and Otto IV. now devastated
the Germany that Barbarossa and Henry VI. had left so prosperous. The
majority of the princes remained firm to Philip, who also had the
support of the strong and homogeneous official class of _ministeriales_
that had been the best helpers of his father and brother. Nevertheless,
Otto had enough of a party to carry on the struggle. On his side was
Cologne, the great mart of lower Germany, so important from its close
trading relations in England, and now gradually shaking itself free of
its archbishops. The friendship of Canute of Denmark and the old Guelf
tradition combined to give him his earliest and greatest success in the
north. It was the interest of the baronage to prolong a struggle which
secured their own independence at the expense of the central authority.
Both parties looked for outside help. Otto, besides his Danish friends,
relied on his uncle Richard, and, after his death, on his uncle John.
Philip formed a league with his namesake Philip of France. But distant
princes could do but little to determine the result of the contest. It
was of more moment that both appealed to Innocent III., and that the
Pope willingly accepted the position of arbiter. ‘The settlement of this
matter,’ he declared, ‘belongs to the Apostolic See, mainly because it
was the Apostolic See that transferred the Empire from the East to the
West, and ultimately because the same See confers the imperial crown.’
In March 1201 Innocent issued his decision. ‘We pronounce,’ he declared,
‘Philip unworthy of Empire, and absolve all who have taken oaths of
fealty to him as king. Inasmuch as our dearest son in Christ, Otto, is
industrious, provident, discreet, strong and constant, himself devoted
to the Church and descended on each side from a devout stock, we by the
authority of St. Peter receive him as king, and will in due course
bestow upon him the imperial crown.’ The grateful Otto promised in
return to maintain all the possessions and privileges of the Roman
Church, including the inheritance of the Countess Matilda.
Philip of Swabia still held his own, and the extravagance of the papal
claim led to many of the bishops as well as the lay magnates of Germany
joining in a declaration that no former Pope had ever presumed to
interfere in an imperial election. But the swords of his German
followers were a stronger argument in favour of Philip’s claims than the
protests of his supporters against papal assumptions. As time went on,
the Hohenstaufen slowly got the better of the Guelfs. With the falling
away of the north, Otto’s cause became distinctly the losing one. In
1206 Otto was defeated outside the walls of Cologne, and the great
trading city was forced to transfer its obedience to his rival. In 1207
Philip became so strong that Innocent was constrained to reconsider his
position, and suggested to Otto the propriety of renouncing his claims.
But in June 1208 Philip was treacherously murdered at Bamberg by his
faithless vassal, Otto of Wittelsbach, to whom he had refused his
daughter’s hand. It was no political crime but a deed of private
vengeance. It secured, however, the position of Otto, for the
_ministeriales_ now transferred their allegiance to him, and there was
no Hohenstaufen candidate ready to oppose him. Otto, moreover, did not
scruple to undergo a fresh election which secured for him universal
recognition in Germany. By marrying Beatrice, Philip of Swabia’s
daughter, he sought to unite the rival houses, while he conciliated
Innocent by describing himself as king ‘by the grace of God and the
Pope.’ Next year he crossed the Alps to Italy, and bound himself by
oath, not only to allow the Papacy the privileges that he had already
granted, but to grant complete freedom of ecclesiastical elections, and
to support the Pope in his struggle against heresy. In October 1209 he
was crowned Emperor at Rome. After ten years of waiting, Innocent,
already master of Italy, had procured for his dependant both the German
Kingdom and the Roman Empire.
[Sidenote: Innocent III. and Philip Augustus.]
Despite his preoccupation with Italy and Germany, the early years of
Innocent’s pontificate saw him busily engaged in upholding the papal
authority and the moral order of the Church in every country in Europe.
No consideration of the immediate interests of the Roman see ever
prevented him from maintaining his principles even against powerful
sovereigns who could do much to help forward his general plans. The most
conspicuous instance of this was Innocent’s famous quarrel with Philip
Augustus of France, when to vindicate a simple principle of Christian
morals he did not hesitate to abandon the alliance of the ‘eldest son of
the Church’ at a time when the fortunes of the Papacy were everywhere
doubtful. Philip’s first wife, Isabella of Hainault, the mother of the
future Louis VIII., had died in 1190, just before her husband had
started on his Crusade. [Sidenote: Ingeborg of Denmark.] In 1193 Philip
negotiated a second marriage with Ingeborg, the sister of Canute VI.,
the powerful King of Denmark, hoping to obtain from his Danish
brother-in-law substantial help against England and the Empire. Philip
did not get the expected political advantages from the new connection,
and at once took a strong dislike to the lady. On the day after the
marriage Philip refused to have anything more to do with his bride.
Within three months, he persuaded a synod of complaisant French bishops
at Compiègne to pronounce the marriage void by reason of a remote
kinship that existed between the two parties. Ingeborg was young, timid,
friendless, helpless, and utterly ignorant of the French tongue, but
King Canute took up her cause, and, from her retreat in a French
convent, she appealed to Rome against the wickedness of the French king
and clergy. Celestine III. proved her friend, and finding protestations
of no avail, he finally quashed the sentence of the French bishops and
declared her the lawful wife of the French king. But Philip persisted in
his repudiation of Ingeborg, and Celestine contented himself with
remonstrances and warnings that were utterly disregarded. [Sidenote:
Agnes of Meran.] In 1196 Philip found a fresh wife in Agnes, a lady of
the powerful house of Andechs-Meran, whose authority was great in
Thuringia, and whose Alpine lordships soon developed into the county of
Tyrol. Innocent at once proved a stronger champion of Ingeborg than the
weak and aged Celestine. He forthwith warned Philip and the French
bishops that they had no right to put asunder those whom God had joined
together. ‘Recall your lawful wife,’ he wrote to Philip, ‘and then we
will hear all that you can righteously urge. If you do not do this, no
power shall move us to right or left, till justice be done.’ A papal
legate was now sent to France, threatening excommunication and
interdict, were Ingeborg not immediately reinstated in her place. For a
few months the Pope hesitated, moved no doubt by his Italian and German
troubles, and fearful lest his action against a Christian prince should
delay the hoped-for Crusade. But he gradually turned the leaders of the
French clergy from their support of Philip, and at last, in February
1200, an interdict was pronounced forbidding the public celebration of
the rites of the Church in the whole lands that owed obedience to the
King of France.
[Sidenote: The Interdict over France, 1200–1201.]
Philip Augustus held out fiercely for a time, declaring that he would
rather lose half his lands than be separated from Agnes. Meanwhile he
used pressure on his bishops to make them disregard the interdict, and
vigorously intrigued with the Cardinals, seeking to build up a French
party in the papal curia. Innocent so far showed complacency that the
legate he sent to France was the king’s kinsman, Octavian,
Cardinal-bishop of Ostia, who was anxious to make Philip’s humiliation
as light as possible. His labours were eased by the partial submission
of Philip, who in September visited Ingeborg, and promised to take her
again as his wife, and so gave an excuse to end the interdict. Philip
still claimed that his marriage should be dissolved; though here again
he suddenly abandoned a suit which he probably saw was hopeless.
[Sidenote: Partial submission of Philip, 1201.] The death of Agnes of
Meran in July 1201 made a complete reconciliation less difficult. Next
year the Pope legitimated the children of Agnes and Philip, on the
ground that the sentence of divorce, pronounced by the French bishops,
gave the king reasonable grounds for entering in good faith on his union
with her. Ingeborg was still refused the rights of a queen, and
constantly besought the Pope to have pity on her forlorn condition. The
Pope was now forced to content himself with remonstrances. Philip
declared that a baleful charm separated him from Ingeborg, and again
begged the Pope to divorce him from a union, based on sorcery and
witchcraft. The growing need of the French alliance now somewhat
slackened the early zeal of Innocent for the cause of the queen. But no
real cordiality was possible as long as the strained relations of
Ingeborg and Philip continued. [Sidenote: Restitution of Ingeborg,
1213.] At last in 1213, in the very crisis of his fortunes, Philip
completed his tardy reconciliation with his wife, after they had been
separated for twenty years. Henceforth Philip was the most active ally
of the Papacy.
[Sidenote: The feudal overlordship of the Papacy over Portugal, Aragon,
and England.]
While thus dealing with Philip of France, Innocent enjoyed easier
triumphs over the lesser kings of Europe. It was his ambition to break
through the traditional limits that separated the Church from the State,
and to bind as many as he could of the kings of Europe to the Papacy by
ties of political vassalage. The time-honoured feudal superiority of the
Popes over the Norman kingdom of Sicily had been the first precedent for
this most unecclesiastical of all papal aggressions. Already others of
the smaller kingdoms of Europe, conspicuous among which was Portugal,
had followed the example of the Normans in becoming vassals of the Holy
See. Under Innocent at least three states supplemented ecclesiastical by
political dependence on the Papacy. Sancho, King of Portugal, who had
striven to repudiate the former submission of Affonso I., was in the end
forced to accept the papal suzerainty. Peter, King of Aragon, went in
1204 to Rome and was solemnly crowned king by Innocent. Afterwards Peter
deposited his crown on the high altar of St. Peter’s and condescended to
receive the investiture of his kingdom from the Pope, holding it as a
perpetual fief of the Holy See, and promising tribute to Innocent and
his successors. In 1213 a greater monarch than the struggling Christian
kings of the Iberian peninsula was forced, after a long struggle, to
make an even more abject submission. The long strife of Innocent with
John of Anjou, about the disputed election to the see of Canterbury, was
fought with the same weapons which the Pope had already employed against
the King of France. But John held out longer. Interdict was followed by
excommunication and threatened deposition. At last the English king
surrendered his crown to the papal agent Pandulf, and, like Peter of
Aragon, received it back as a vassal of the Papacy, bound by an annual
tribute. Nor were these the only kings that sought the support of the
great Pope. The schismatic princes of the East vied in ardour with the
Catholic princes of the West in their quest of Innocent’s favour. King
Leo of Armenia begged for his protection. [Sidenote: Innocent and the
lesser monarchs of Europe.] The Bulgarian Prince John besought the Pope
to grant him a royal crown. Innocent posed as a mediator in Hungary
between the two brothers, Emeric and Andrew, who were struggling for the
crown. Canute of Denmark, zealous for his sister’s honour, was his
humble suppliant. Poland was equally obedient. The Duke of Bohemia
accepted the papal reproof for allying himself with Philip of Swabia.
Despite his vigour and his authority, Innocent’s constant interference
with the internal concerns of every country in Europe did not pass
unchallenged. Even the kings who invoked his intercession were
constantly in conflict with him. Beside his great quarrels in Germany,
France, and England, Innocent had many minor wars to wage against the
princes of Europe. For five years the kingdom of Leon lay under
interdict because its king Alfonso had married his cousin, Berengaria of
Castile, in the hope of securing the peace between the two realms. It
was only after the lady had borne five children to Alfonso that she
voluntarily terminated the obnoxious union, and Innocent found it
prudent, as in France, to legitimise the offspring of a marriage which
he had denounced as incestuous. Not one of the princes of the Peninsula
was spared. Sancho of Navarre incurred interdict by reason of his
suspected dealings with the Saracens, while the marriage of his sister
with Peter of Aragon, the vassal of the Pope, involved both kings in a
contest with Innocent. Not only did the monarchs of Europe resent, so
far as they were able, the Pope’s haughty policy. For the first time the
peoples of their realms began to make common cause with them against the
political aggressions of the Papacy. [Sidenote: The Papacy and the
people. Dangers of Innocent’s policy.] The nobles of Aragon protested
against King Peter’s submission to the Papacy, declared that his
surrender of their kingdom was invalid, and prevented the payment of the
promised tribute. When John of England procured his Roman overlord’s
condemnation of Magna Carta, the support of Rome was of no avail to
prevent his indignant subjects combining to drive him from the throne,
and did not even hinder Louis of France, the son of the papalist Philip
II., from accepting their invitation to become English king in his
stead. It was only by a repudiation of this policy, and by an acceptance
of the Great Charter, that the Papacy could secure the English throne
for John’s young son, Henry III., and thus continue for a time its
precarious overlordship over England. For the moment Innocent’s iron
policy crushed opposition, but in adding the new hostility of the
national kings and the rising nations of Europe to the old hostility of
the declining Empire, Innocent was entering into a perilous course of
conduct, which, within a century, was to prove fatal to one of the
strongest of his successors. The more political the papal authority
became, the more difficult it was to uphold its prestige as the source
of law, of morality, of religion. Innocent himself did not lose sight of
the higher ideal because he strove so firmly after more earthly aims.
His successors were not always so able or so high-minded. And it was as
the protectors of the people, not as the enemies of their political
rights, that the great Popes of the eleventh and twelfth centuries had
obtained their wonderful ascendency over the best minds of Europe.
The coronation of Otto IV. did not end Innocent’s troubles with the
Empire. It was soon followed by an open breach between the Pope and his
nominee, from which ultimately developed something like a general
European war, between a league of partisans of the Pope and a league of
partisans of Otto. It was inevitable that Otto, as a crowned Emperor,
should look upon the papal power in a way very different from that in
which he had regarded it, when a faction leader struggling for the
crown. [Sidenote: Quarrel of Innocent with Otto IV., 1210.] Then the
support of the Pope was indispensable. Now the autocracy of the Pope was
to be feared. The Hohenstaufen _ministeriales_, who now surrounded the
Guelfic Emperor, raised his ideals and modified his policy. Henry of
Kalden, the old minister of Henry VI., was now his closest confidant,
and, under his direction, it soon became Otto’s ambition to continue the
policy of the Hohenstaufen. The great object of Henry VI. had been the
union of Sicily with the Empire. To the alarm and disgust of Innocent,
his ancient dependant now strove to continue Henry VI.’s policy by
driving out Henry VI.’s son from his Sicilian inheritance. Otto now
established relations with Diepold and the other German adventurers, who
still defied Frederick II. and the Pope in Apulia. He soon claimed the
inheritance of Matilda as well as the Sicilian monarchy. In August 1210
he occupied Matilda’s Tuscan lands, and in November invaded Apulia, and
prepared to despatch a Pisan fleet against Sicily. Innocent was moved to
terrible wrath. On hearing of the capture of Capua, and the revolt of
Salerno and Naples, he excommunicated the Emperor and freed his subjects
from their oaths of fealty to him. But, despite the threats of the
Church, Otto conquered most of Apulia and was equally successful in
reviving the imperial authority in northern Italy.
[Sidenote: Election of Frederick II., 1212.]
Innocent saw the power that he had built up so carefully in Italy
crumbling rapidly away. In his despair he turned to France and Germany
for help against the audacious Guelf. Philip Augustus, though still in
bad odour at Rome through his persistent hostility to Ingeborg, was now
an indispensable ally. He actively threw himself into the Pope’s policy,
and French and Papal agents combined to stir up disaffection against
Otto in Germany. The haughty manners and the love of the young king for
Englishmen and Saxons had already excited disaffection. It was believed
that Otto wished to set up a centralised despotism of court officials,
levying huge taxes, on the model of the Angevin administrative system of
his grandfather and uncles. The bishops now took the lead in organising
a general defection from the absent Emperor. In September 1211 a
gathering of disaffected magnates, among whom were the newly made King
Ottocar of Bohemia and the Dukes of Austria and Bavaria, assembled at
Nürnberg. They treated the papal sentence as the deposition of Otto, and
pledged themselves to elect as their new king Frederick of Sicily, the
sometime ward of the Pope. It was not altogether good news to the Pope
that the German nobles had, in choosing the son of Henry VI., renewed
the union of Germany and Sicily. But Innocent felt that the need of
setting up an effective opposition to Otto was so pressing that he put
out of sight the general in favour of the immediate interests of the
Roman see. He accepted Frederick as Emperor, only stipulating that he
should renew his homage for the Sicilian crown, and consequently
renounce an inalienable union between Sicily and the Empire. Frederick
now left Sicily, repeated his submission to Innocent at Rome, and
crossed the Alps for Germany.
Otto had already abandoned Italy to meet the threatened danger in the
north. Misfortunes soon showered thick upon him. His Hohenstaufen wife,
Beatrice, died, and her loss lessened his hold on southern Germany. When
Frederick appeared, Swabia and Bavaria were already ready to welcome the
heir of the mighty southern line, and aid him against the audacious
Saxon. The spiritual magnates flocked to the side of the friend and
pupil of the Pope. In December 1212 followed Frederick’s formal election
and his coronation at Mainz by the Archbishop Siegfried. Early in 1213
Henry of Kalden first appeared at his court. Henceforward the important
class of the ‘ministeriales’ was divided. While some remained true to
Otto, others gradually went back to the personal representative of
Hohenstaufen.
[Sidenote: The papal and imperial leagues, 1213.]
Otto was now thrown back on Saxony and the lower Rhineland. He again
took up his quarters with the faithful citizens of Cologne, whence he
appealed for help to his uncle, John of England, still under the papal
ban. With English help he united the princes of the Netherlands in a
party of opposition to the Pope and the Hohenstaufen. Frederick answered
by a closer and more effective league with France. Even before his
coronation he had met Louis, the son of Philip Augustus, at Vaucouleurs.
All Europe seemed arming at the bidding of the Pope and Emperor.
John of England now hastily reconciled himself to Innocent, at the price
of the independence of his kingdom. He thus became in a better position
to aid his excommunicated nephew, and revenge the loss of Normandy and
Anjou on Philip Augustus. His plan was now a twofold one. He himself
summoned the barons of England to follow him in an attempt to recover
his ancient lands on the Loire. Meanwhile, Otto and the Netherlandish
lords were encouraged, by substantial English help, to carry out a
combined attack on France from the north. The opposition of the English
barons reduced to comparative insignificance the expedition to Poitou,
but a very considerable army gathered together under Otto, and took up
its position in the neighbourhood of Tournai. Among the French King’s
vassals, Ferrand, Count of Flanders, long hostile to his overlord
Philip, and the Count of Boulogne, fought strenuously on Otto’s side;
while, of the imperial vassals, the Count of Holland and the Duke of
Brabant [Lower Lorraine] were among Otto’s most active supporters. A
considerable English contingent came also, headed by Otto’s bastard
uncle, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury. Philip himself commanded
the chivalry of France, leaving his son Louis to fight against John in
Poitou. On 27th July the decisive battle was fought at Bouvines, a few
miles south-west of Tournai. [Sidenote: Battle of Bouvines, 1214.] The
army of France and the Church gained an overwhelming victory over the
league which had incurred the papal ban, and Otto’s fortunes were
utterly shattered. He soon lost all his hold over the Rhineland, and was
forced to retreat to the ancient domains of his house in Saxony. His
remaining friends made their peace with Philip and Frederick. The
defection of the Wittelsbachers lost his last hold in the south of
Germany, and the desertion of Valdemar of Denmark deprived him of a
strong friend in the north. John withdrew from continental politics to
be beaten more decisively by his barons than he had been beaten in
Poitou or at Bouvines. By the summer of 1215, Aachen and Cologne had
opened their gates to Frederick, who repeated his coronation in the old
chapel of Charlemagne. Before Otto’s death in 1218 his power was
confined to Brunswick and the region of the Harz. [Sidenote: The fall of
the Guelfs and the triumph of Innocent.] His brother Henry delivered up
the imperial insignia to the conqueror, and received a confirmation of
his hereditary estates. In 1235 the establishment of the Duchy of
Brunswick-Lüneburg, in favour of the Guelfic house, secured for it a
permanent position among the territorial powers of northern Germany. The
higher aspirations of the descendants of Henry the Lion perished for
ever on the fatal field of Bouvines.
Frederick II. was now undisputed King of the Romans, and Innocent III.
had won another great triumph. By the Golden Bull of Eger (July 1213)
Frederick had already renewed the concessions made by Otto to the
Church, and promised obedience to the Holy See. In 1216 he pledged
himself to separate Sicily from the Empire, and establish his son Henry
there as king, under the supremacy of the Church. But like his other
triumphs, Innocent’s victory over the Empire was purchased at no small
cost. For the first time, a German national irritation at the
aggressions of the Papacy began to be distinctly felt. It found an
adequate expression in the indignant verses of Walter von der
Vogelweide, protesting against the priests who strove to upset the
rights of the laity, and denouncing the greed and pride of the
foreigners who profited by the humiliation of Germany.
[Sidenote: Innocent III. and the Crusades.]
Amidst all the distractions of Western politics, Innocent III. ardently
strove to revive the crusading spirit. He never succeeded in raising all
Europe, as several of his predecessors had done. But after great
efforts, the eloquent preaching of Fulk of Neuilly stirred up a fair
amount of enthusiasm for the crusading cause, and, in 1204, a
considerable crusading army, mainly French, mustered at Venice. It was
the bitterest disappointment of Innocent’s life that the Fourth Crusade
[see chapter xv.] never reached Palestine, but was diverted to the
conquest of the Greek Empire. Yet the establishment of a Catholic Latin
Empire at Constantinople, at the expense of the Greek schismatics, was
no small triumph. Not disheartened by his first failure, Innocent still
urged upon Europe the need of the holy war. If no expedition against the
Saracens of Syria marked the result of his efforts, his pontificate saw
the extension of the crusading movement to other lands. Innocent
preached the Crusade against the Moors of Spain, and rejoiced in the
news of the momentous victory of the Christians at Navas de Tolosa [see
chapter xx.]. He saw the beginnings of a fresh Crusade against the
obstinate heathen on the eastern shores of the Baltic. But all these
Crusades were against pagans and infidels. [Sidenote: Extension of the
crusading idea.] Innocent made a much greater new departure when he
proclaimed the first Crusade directed against a Christian land. The
Albigensian Crusade, which can more profitably be described when we deal
with the development of the French monarchy [see chapter xvii.],
succeeded in destroying the most dangerous and widespread popular heresy
that Christianity had witnessed since the fall of the Roman Empire, and
Innocent rejoiced that his times saw the Church purged of its worst
blemish. But in extending the benefits of a Crusade to Christians
fighting against Christians, he handed on a precedent which was soon
fatally abused by his successors. In crushing out the young national
life of southern France the Papacy again set a people against itself.
The denunciations of the German Minnesinger were re-echoed in the
complaints of the last of the Troubadours. Rome had ceased to do harm to
Turks and Saracens, but had stirred up Christians to war against
fellow-Christians. God and His Saints abandon the greedy, the
strife-loving, the unjust, worldly Church. The picture is darkly
coloured by a partisan, but in every triumph of Innocent there lay the
shadow of future trouble.
[Sidenote: Innocent III.’s religious position.]
Crusades, even against heretics and infidels, are the work of earthly
force rather than of spiritual influence. It was to build up the great
outward corporation of the Church that all these labours of Innocent
mainly tended. Even his additions to the Canon Law, his reforms of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, dealt with the external rather than the
internal life of the Church. The criticism of James of Vitry, that the
Roman Curia was so busy in secular affairs that it hardly turned a
thought to spiritual things, is clearly applicable to much of Innocent’s
activity. But the many-sided Pope did not ignore the religious wants of
the Church. His Crusade against heresy was no mere war against enemies
of the wealth and power of the Church. The new tendencies that were to
transform the spiritual life of the thirteenth century were not strange
to him. He favoured the early work of Dominic: he had personal dealings
with Francis, and showed his sympathy with the early work of the poor
man of Assisi [see chapter xviii.]. But it is as the conqueror and
organiser rather than the priest or prophet that Innocent made his mark
in the Church. It is significant that, with all his greatness, he never
attained the honours of sanctity.
[Sidenote: The Fourth General Lateran Council, 1215.]
Towards the end of his life, Innocent held a General Council in the
basilica of St. John Lateran. A vast gathering of bishops, heads of
orders, and secular dignitaries gave brilliancy to the gathering and
enhanced the glory of the Pontiff. Enthroned over more than four hundred
bishops, the Pope proudly declared the law to the world. ‘Two things we
have specially to heart,’ wrote Innocent, in summoning the assembly,
‘the deliverance of the Holy Land and the reform of the Church
Universal.’ In its vast collection of seventy canons, the Lateran
Council strove hard to carry out the Pope’s programme. It condemned the
dying heresies of the Albigeois and the Cathari, and prescribed the
methods and punishments of the unrepentant heretic. It strove to
rekindle zeal for the Crusade. It drew up a drastic scheme for reforming
the internal life and discipline of the Church. It strove to elevate the
morals and the learning of the clergy, to check their worldliness and
covetousness, and to restrain them from abusing the authority of the
Church through excess of zeal or more corrupt motives. It invited
bishops to set up free schools to teach poor scholars grammar and
theology. It forbade trial by battle and trial by ordeal. It subjected
the existing monastic orders to stricter superintendence, and forbade
the establishment of new monastic rules. It forbade superstitious
practices and the worship of spurious or unauthorised relics. The whole
series of canons sought to regulate and ameliorate the influence of the
Church on society. If many of the abuses aimed at were too deeply rooted
to be overthrown by mere legislation, the attempt speaks well for the
character and intelligence of Pope and Council. All mediæval lawmaking,
civil and ecclesiastical alike, was but the promulgation of an ideal,
rather than the issuing of precepts meant to be literally executed. But
no more serious attempt at rooting out inveterate evils was ever made in
the Middle Ages than in this Council.
The formal enunciation of this lofty programme of reform brought
Innocent’s pontificate to a glorious end. The Pontiff devoted what
little remained of his life to hurrying on the preparations for the
projected Crusade, which was to set out in 1217. [Sidenote: Death of
Innocent III., 16th July 1216.] But in the summer of 1216 Innocent died
at Perugia, when only fifty-six years old. If not the greatest, he was
the most powerful of all the Popes. For nearly twenty years the whole
history of Europe groups itself round his doings.