INNOCENT III.: THE PAPAL ZENITH
That Papal policy or ideal of which we have traced the development in
the minds of the greater Popes attains its fullest expansion during the
Pontificate of Innocent III. Historians usually assign the year 1300 as
the date of the culmination of the Papal system, but it had in reality
attained its full stature under Innocent III. It did indeed make its
last impressive display of world-power under Boniface VIII., but there
had been no material contribution to its frame since the death of
Innocent, and the thirteenth century had fostered the growth of the
influences which were destined to undo it. In the fourteenth century
came the demoralizing residence in Avignon and the Great Schism: in
the fifteenth century the renaissance of culture and development of
civic life, which enfeebled the Popes and strengthened their subjects,
were completed: in the sixteenth century Luther and Calvin smote the
colossus. Innocent III. is the last great maker of the Papacy.
The work of the eighteen Popes who occupied the throne between the
death of Gregory VII. and the election of Innocent might not ineptly
be described in a line: they sought, and failed, to wield the heavy
weapons of Hildebrand. In virtue of the falsified letters, canons,
charters, and chronicles which were now accepted throughout Europe,
they proclaimed that they had the disposal of earthly kingdoms no
less than of seats in heaven, and they thus brought on themselves
a century of strife in which only the stronger men could find much
time for strictly Pontifical duties. They were men of sober life and,
generally, high character, yet the very nature of their ideal involved
such struggles that the Papacy had to await a fortunate conjunction of
circumstances before the ideal could be realized. The conflict with
Henry IV. continued until, his two sons having been persuaded to rebel
against him and his second wife encouraged to besmirch his reputation,
before the assembled prelates of Christendom, with charges as foul as
they were feeble in evidence, he, in 1097, quitted Italy for ever. Then
Urban II., who was responsible for this gross travesty of spiritual
justice, cleared Rome by means of Norman swords and rallied Christendom
about him by a declaration of the First Crusade. But so tainted a
legacy of peace could not last. Henry V. proved more exacting than his
father, and another prolonged struggle absorbed the energy of the Popes
until the fifty years' war over investiture was settled by a compromise
at Worms in 1122.[237]
Bernard of Clairvaux, rather than the successive Popes, was the
spiritual master of Europe in the comparative peace after Worms.
During nearly the whole of the second half of the twelfth century the
Papacy was distracted by the incessant revolts of the Romans. The
streets, even the churches, of Rome were stained with blood, year after
year, and the Popes repeatedly fled. The rise of Frederic Barbarossa
complicated the struggle, and the Popes had little opportunity to
exercise the powers they had won, without thinking of any extension of
their claims. At last, in 1198, the Papacy once more fell to a man of
commanding personality and was lifted to the zenith of its power.
Lothario de'Conti di Segni was born about the year 1160. His father
was Count Trasimondo of Segni: his mother belonged to the noble
Roman family of the Scotti, which included several cardinals of the
anti-Imperialist school. After receiving an elementary education at
Rome, he was sent to Paris for theology, and to Bologna for law. The
scholastic movement was now stimulating Europe and creating great
schools; indeed Pope Alexander III. had, though not from cultural
motives, fostered the movement by favouring the activity of free
teachers. Profane letters were, however, still little cultivated.
Lothario took a degree in the liberal arts, but he was soon wholly
absorbed in theology and canon law; the correct and virile Latin of his
letters is very far from the classical models. Under the Pontificate of
his maternal uncle, Clement III., he returned to Rome a young man of
the most ascetic character and most finished ecclesiastical culture.
He was made a canon of St. Peter's, and, in his twenty-ninth year, a
cardinal of the Roman Church.
The Pontificate of Clement ended, apparently, the long struggle of
the Popes and the Romans. The Roman nobles were as turbulent as ever,
but one finds a more respectable element of dissension in the city
at this time. The democratic ideas of that brilliant and too little
appreciated thinker, Arnold of Brescia, had taken root in Rome, and
a Republic, with a Senate of fifty-six members, had been established
in the Capitol. Hadrian IV. had blighted this premature experiment
by an interdict in 1155, but the struggle continued and the Popes
lived little in the capital until the year 1188. Clement, a courtly
and diplomatic Roman, made peace with his countrymen, and damped the
democratic ardour by a shower of gold and of ecclesiastical favours.
The Papacy resumed the government of the city, and the nominal power
of the Senate was allowed to pass into the hands of one man, "the
Senator." Clement died in 1190, and, as his successor, Celestine III.,
was a member of the Orsini family, which was bitterly hostile to the
Scotti, there was no room in the Lateran for Lothario Conti. Nepotism
was now so far accepted in the Papal palace that we shall find Innocent
himself following the tradition. The leisure was fortunate in one
respect, as Lothario used it for the purpose of writing a book, _On
Contempt of the World_, which gives us a most interesting revelation
of his innermost thoughts at the time when he became Pope. The book
is a distillation of the extreme monastic views of the time; it is
full of fables, and it depicts man as the very vilest thing in a world
which was made solely for the disdain of the ascetic. It was from this
morbidly tinted sanctuary that Lothario Conti surveyed the life of his
time, which he was soon summoned to rule. In September, 1197, Henry
VI., who had duly incurred the imperial legacy of excommunication, died
and left his kingdom to his baby-boy Frederic: and on January 8, 1198,
Lothario Conti, in the prime of life and the most sombre stage of his
meditations, became Innocent III.
Although he occupied the Papal throne only eighteen years, we have more
than five thousand letters, or parts of letters, dispatched by him to
all parts of Christendom: more than five hundred of them were written
in the first year of his Pontificate. Their range stretches from
Ireland and Scandinavia to Cairo and Armenia. In that vast territory
nothing of importance happened in which he did not intervene; and
there was hardly a prince or baron whom he did not excommunicate, or
any leading country which he did not place under interdict. His ideal
was that of Gregory VII.: the Papal States of Europe--he wanted to add
nearer Asia--trembling under the Roman rod. Writing to the Emperor of
Constantinople he elaborated his famous conception of earthly empire as
the moon, shining faintly by light borrowed from the spiritual power.
The Papal theory had reached its culmination, and we may proceed at
once to attempt to compress the portentous activity of Innocent III.
into a few compartments.[238]
One naturally inquires first how this spiritual autocrat confronted
the democratic faction at Rome. At the outset he showed a little of
the accommodating temper which he always held in reserve behind his
profession of rigour. His attendants flung showers of coin on the
greedy people when he first passed between them, and, reluctantly,
and on the lowest known scale, he distributed the backsheesh with
which each incoming Pope had to win the smiles of every official in
the Palace and the city. There were murmurs, and they increased when
he proceeded to compel the Prefect (who was understood to represent
the Empire) and the Senator (who represented the Romans) to take
oaths of allegiance to himself. By this stroke he expelled the last
bit of reality out of the "free commune" of Rome, and cast off the
last trace of an imperial yoke. He abolished the Noble Guard and the
lay officials of the Palace: he deposed the judges appointed by the
Senator and appointed less corrupt men: he drove the money-changers
and merchants out of the Lateran courtyard, stamped on the parasites
who fed on foreign pilgrims, and drew up a strict tariff of fees for
the Papal services. He was by no means indifferent to money, as his
fighting policy demanded enormous sums. No Pope could be keener on
Peter's Pence, and no abbot or bishop dare approach him with a gift not
proportionate to his wealth. But it is almost superfluous to say that
he was a man of the most rigorous sentiment of justice, and, as long as
he lived, the more selfish kind of rapacity at Rome was repressed.
The nobles who led the democratic party, chiefly Giovanni Pierleone
and Giovanni Capocci, looked with concern on his tendency and, when
he put a Papal governor over the Maremma and the Sabina, instead of
the one appointed by the Senate, they pressed the Romans to see that
their privileges were being stolen. In 1200 Innocent extricated himself
from a difficult situation. Vitorchiano was threatened by Viterbo
and declared itself a Papal fief. As Viterbo also was part of the
patrimony, and the Romans hated it, Innocent was perplexed. The Romans
took the field in spite of him, and won; but, as he happened to be
saying mass at the time of the victory, it was ingeniously ascribed
to his prayers. In the following year, however, there was more serious
trouble. Two small provincial nobles took possession of some estates
on the Campagna, and, when Innocent ordered them to restore, they said
that they held them of the democratic leaders, Pierleone and Capocci.
There was an outcry, but Innocent sent his troops to lay waste the
properties of the two nobles in the grimmest mediæval manner, and, in
an eloquent speech at Rome, completely vanquished his critics. Then in
1202, during his customary summer absence, the feud of the Scotti and
the Orsini broke out with frightful violence, and in the following year
the antagonism to the Pope reached its height.
Innocent had, for his own protection, greatly enriched his brother
Ricardo, and Ricardo had purchased the mortgages on the estates of one
of the democrats, Oddo Poli. As far as we can see, Ricardo acted with
legal correctness, but Rome was soon aroused by the sight of Poli and
his friends coming naked to church, as a symbol of the "spoliation,"
and democratic rhetoric rose to white heat. There was a popular rising;
Ricardo's towering mansion was burned, and Innocent himself had to
fly to Ferentino (May, 1203). The Romans restored their Senate, and
swore to have no more of this Papal nepotism and despotism, but from
his retreat Innocent fostered the intestine quarrels of the victorious
people, and before long the city was in a state of murderous anarchy.
The two hundred mansions of its wealthier citizens were, and had been
for ages, real fortresses, and during the whole summer of 1203 their
castellated walls were lined with archers, and bands issued forth,
with all the engines of war, to assault and burn the fortress of some
neighbour. It still remains for some historian of the Papacy to
explain this chronic violence and vice in the centre of Christendom
during so many centuries. The trouble ended in the Pope resuming the
government of the city, and his rule was further disturbed only by one
of these popular revolts, in 1208.
We do not fully appreciate the strength of Innocent unless we realize
how, while his eyes wandered over the globe, Rome itself demanded so
much attention. But he was not merely concerned with its misconduct. He
organized the work of charity in the city and did something to promote
its commerce. He built a foundling hospital, trusting to reduce the
infanticide which he found so common at Rome, and was very generous
to the churches and the clergy. From his time the Popes began to use
more and more the Palace beside St. Peter's, which he enlarged and
fortified, and he spent large sums in adorning other churches and
enhancing the splendour of the worship. But these and the other Roman
reforms I have mentioned are the mere incidents of his domestic life,
so to say. His work was the ruling of the world, and assuredly we
must recognize a mind of high quality and prodigious energy when we
read the volumes of letters that poured from the Lateran during those
eighteen years, and imagine the vast crowds that came from every part
of the world to do homage, to ask counsel, and to report the minutest
circumstances of their abbeys or bishoprics or principalities.
Italy alone might have absorbed a weaker man during his earlier years.
Papal rule was acknowledged--in the manner we have seen--only in the
immediate neighbourhood of the city. Over the south and Sicily the
widow of Henry VI. ruled in the name of her child: in the north were
the leagues of free cities, and the isolated free cities, which had
won independence: and the whole country apart from these was falling
into the hands of the German generals whom Henry VI. had left there at
his death. Innocent, like all the Popes after Hadrian, believed in the
Donation of Constantine, to say nothing of the Donations of Pippin and
Charlemagne and Otto and Mathilda. Italy belonged almost entirely to
the Papacy, and must be recovered. Some historians hail Innocent as a
great apostle of the "Italia Una" ideal, and he sometimes presses on
particular towns "the interests of the whole of Italy." It is, however,
absurd to associate his feeling with the later ideal of Italian unity.
He cared for the unity of Italy only in the sense that the Pope was to
be its unique ruler. Those Germans--he scorns them--must be driven out.
Those free cities, always at war with each other, must be persuaded
that the Papal seal will be their best protection. Even that kingdom of
Naples and Sicily must somehow pass under Rome; in spite of the fact
that Innocent had solemnly accepted the guardianship of the young king.
It is commonly said that the German generals in Italy, like Markwald
of Anweiler, were ferocious adventurers eager only to carve little
principalities for themselves out of the helpless country. This is
the partisan version left us by Innocent's anonymous biographer. They
were, with German troops, guarding the Empire for the successor of
Henry VI.; they acknowledged Philip of Swabia; and Innocent was at a
later date "warned" by an influential group of German prelates and
nobles not to interfere with them. But Innocent had several advantages.
Henry VI. had treated Italy with barbarity, and numbers of cities
threw off the German yoke when he died; on the other hand, Markwald
and his colleagues were under standing sentence of excommunication
for occupying Papal fiefs like Tuscany. Innocent began by sending men
and money to the revolted cities, and inviting them to put themselves
under Rome's sacred banner. He travelled through central Italy in 1198,
and received the allegiance of many towns. Markwald, the chief enemy,
was driven to the south, and Innocent pressed the southerners to rise
against him.
Here the Pope had the familiar advantage of Papal policy--a woman on
the throne--and he made a use of it that cannot very well be defended.
Henry's Norman widow, Constance, was not unwilling to break her
connection with Germany, and she seems to have had little appreciation
of the political meaning of making Sicily a fief of the Roman See. She
was very ill and distracted, and no doubt felt that she was consulting
the interest of her son in putting him and the kingdom (of Sicily and
Naples) under Papal charge. She did indeed hesitate when Innocent
told her the price of his protection. Sicily was to sacrifice all the
privileges which William I. had wrung from the Papacy, to pay an annual
tribute to Rome, and to render feudal service whenever required.[239]
But Constance was forced to yield, and she died soon afterwards
(November 27, 1198), appointing Innocent the guardian of her son and
allotting him an annual fee of thirty thousand gold pieces.
Innocent accepted the guardianship of Frederic, and historians comment
severely on his next step. In spite of all his fiery letters to the
southern clergy and people--even to the Saracens[240]--inciting them to
resist the Germans, Markwald made considerable progress. Then there
came to Rome a certain French adventurer named Walter de Brienne, who
had married a daughter of Tancred of Sicily. Tancred had, on resigning
Sicily, retained Lecce and Tarentum, and Walter claimed these as his
wife's inheritance. Whether or no Innocent had actually promoted
the marriage and invited Walter to Italy[241] we cannot confidently
say, but it was assuredly dangerous to let such a man get a footing
in southern Italy; it was probable enough that he would eventually
claim the whole kingdom taken from Tancred. However Innocent blessed
and financed his enterprise, on the formal condition that he would
respect the rights of Frederic, and soon had a French troop waging more
effective war upon the Germans. The struggle ceased with the death of
Markwald in 1202, and of Walter in 1205, and Innocent then pressed a
design of marrying the young Frederic to Constanza of Aragon. For the
time Frederic's rights were respected, but there can be no doubt that
these early years spent amidst intrigue and treachery contributed to
the development of his anti-clerical spirit.
There was, in fact, a good deal of anti-clericalism growing in Italy.
The development of civic and communal life and the comparative
enlightenment which was spreading turned many critical eyes on the
Roman system. Heresy descended the Alps and found favour in the free
cities; even, at times, in Papal cities. I have described how Viterbo
was crushed by the Roman troops. Innocent intervened in its favour,
after its defeat, and he was then outraged to learn that Viterbo was,
like many other cities, appointing heretics (the Cathari) to high
places. He spent the summer of 1207 in Viterbo, and enforced very
stringent rules for the repression of heresy. These laws were extended
to all the Papal dominions, but we shall see the Pope's attitude
more clearly when we deal with the crusade against the Albigensians.
Innocent was not less emphatic in denouncing the incessant wars of
the rival cities, and his correspondence is largely occupied with his
endeavours to secure their feudal allegiance to Rome.
A graver problem, in the solution of which his character is often
obscured, was presented by the struggle of Ghibellines (or followers
of Philip of Swabia) and Guelphs (supporters of Otto of Brunswick)
for the imperial crown. Frederic, the son and heir of Henry, being
still a boy of tender years, his uncle Duke Philip of Swabia desired
to keep the crown securely in the Hohenstauffen family by wearing it
himself. Otto of Brunswick also made a fantastic claim to it, got
himself proclaimed Emperor at Cologne in 1198, and sought the support
of the Pope. Innocent undoubtedly favoured from the start the baseless
claim of Otto. The Papacy had come to regard the Hohenstauffens
almost as hereditary foes, and Philip actually lay under sentence of
excommunication for holding the territory bequeathed by Mathilda to the
Papacy; while Otto flattered the Pope by professions of loyalty and
docility. But Philip had the better prospect, if there was an appeal
to the sword, and Innocent refused for some years to commit himself.
He summoned Philip to surrender the Italian prisoners and the Papal
provinces taken by Henry, and sent the Bishop of Sutri to absolve him
if he complied. To his extreme annoyance the not very clear-headed
Bishop gave Philip an unconditional absolution--for which Innocent
promptly imprisoned the Bishop for life in a monastery--and thus
surrendered the Pope's chance of profiting by the situation.
The rivals appealed to the sword, and Innocent bitterly complained that
Philip did not ask his arbitration.[242] He alone, he declared to the
princes and prelates of Germany, was the judge of such high causes:
to which the princes and prelates replied, in very firm and dignified
language, that they would have no Papal interference in the secular
concerns of Germany.[243] As the war proceeded, Innocent made it clear
that he favoured Otto. He warned the German prelates not to choose
an Emperor on whom he could not bestow the crown, and in a letter to
the Eastern Emperor he afterwards boasted that he alone kept Philip
from the throne. But the war went in favour of Philip, and even when,
in 1200, both men sent representatives to Rome, Innocent would not
commit himself to more than an eloquent proof that priests were exalted
above kings.[244] At the beginning of the following year, however, he
declared openly for Otto. He sent Cardinal Pierleone to Germany with
the Bull _Interest Apostolicæ Sedis_, in which he drew up a violent
and unjust indictment of Philip and awarded the crown to the loyal
and virtuous Otto. The Bull is painfully casuistic, and would have
been better if it had stopped at the bold declaration that the Papacy
had created the Empire and could bestow it according to its pleasure.
While, for instance, it charges Philip with treachery to the interests
of his young nephew, it exonerates all others from the oath of fidelity
to Henry's son on the ground that an oath to an unbaptized infant was
invalid.[245] The imperial crown was, in plain terms, allotted in the
interests of the Church, in defiance of the wishes of the majority of
the German nation. Otto hastened to swear that he would defend the
Papal possessions (including Sicily), and was proclaimed by a Papal
Legate in Cologne cathedral on July 3, 1201.
Innocent now sent out a flood of letters on behalf of his candidate,
but the result was irritating. Philip of France roughly refused to
recognize Otto; and a letter signed by two German archbishops, ten
bishops, and other clerics and nobles, sternly rebuked the Pope for
his "audacity" in meddling with things which did not concern him.[246]
Innocent's Legates vainly scattered threats of excommunication in
Germany. Hardly a single prelate recognized Otto, and, after seven
years of the most brutal civil warfare, he was driven out of the
country. We are not impressed by the Pope's feverish protests that he
was not responsible for this desolation. In 1208, however, Philip, who
had been reconciled with Rome in the previous year, was assassinated,
and Otto, with Innocent's approval, mounted the throne. To the intense
indignation of the Pope, the new Emperor at once cast his oaths of
fidelity to the wind and told Innocent to confine himself to spiritual
matters. He annexed Tuscany and Spoleto, in spite of all the Pope's
entreaties and threats, and was about to march against Naples and
Apulia when Innocent launched against him a sentence of excommunication
and deposition. Otto was, for the time, an excellent ruler: he had
been educated in the English ideas of government. But he had refused
to be subservient to the clergy, and the German prelates now summoned
Frederic from Sicily. Innocent approved the election of Frederic as
easily as he had approved that of Philip and of Otto, but he did not
live to see how that Emperor in turn defied the Papacy and scorned its
political pretensions.[247]
Next in interest and importance were Innocent's relations with
England. With Richard the Lion-Heart the Pope maintained a friendly
correspondence, nor did he annoy the English prelates by any
inconvenient censure of the condition of the English Church. In 1199
John Lackland succeeded his brother, and Innocent was even more
indulgent to that barbarous and unscrupulous monarch. Into the death
of Prince Arthur he made no indiscreet inquiry; he confirmed the
dissolution of John's marriage, and, for his shameful theft of the love
of the betrothed of the Count de la Marche, imposed on him only the
light and useful penance of a general confession and the equipment of a
hundred knights for Palestinian service. During the war which followed
he made earnest efforts to mediate, though even these were at times
marred by his temporizing policy and his determination not to alienate
the kings. When the bishops of Normandy, after the capture of that
province by Philip, asked him how they were to adjust their allegiance,
he weakly replied that Philip seemed to rely on some claim which he
could not understand and they must judge for themselves.[248] At length
a famous quarrel about the archbishopric of Canterbury drew him into a
stern and triumphant conflict with John.
The Archbishop, a worldly-minded courtier of the familiar type, died in
1205, and the Canterbury monks, who claimed the right of nomination,
met hastily, by night, without awaiting the royal license to proceed to
an election, and nominated their sub-prior Reginald. They sent Reginald
at once to Rome, enjoining on him the strictest secrecy until he was
consecrated, but the monk made a parade of his high condition as soon
as he reached the continent and there was great indignation in England.
The Chapter, which disputed the arrogant claim of the monks, elected
the Bishop of Norwich, and many of the monks, alarmed at their action
or disgusted with their sub-prior, joined in the election. Sixteen
monks accompanied the second deputation to Rome, and they supported the
declaration of the Court and the Church that Reginald's election was
invalid. As, however, the Bishop of Norwich was one of the indulgent
prelates, Innocent casuistically annulled both elections and imposed
Stephen Langton on the English. John furiously protested that the Pope
had insulted his state and threatened to withdraw the English Church
from his jurisdiction; shrewdly reminding the Pope that he received
more money from England than from any other country.
John seems to have misunderstood the earlier complaisance of the Pope.
Innocent was not the man to yield to a threat of financial loss, and
he at once consecrated Langton and laid England under an interdict.
For some years the affrighted people saw the doors of their churches
closed against them and imagined the jaws of a mediæval hell gaping
wide for their souls. There was no Christian marriage for their sons
and daughters, no Christian burial for their aged; and only to dying
persons could the consoling sacrament be administered. In his fury
John drove priests and prelates out of his kingdom, but his cruel
and extortionate government had lost him the compensating strength
of the affection of his people. In 1211 he was forced to seek terms,
and a Papal Legate reached England. Between the arrogance of Legate
Pandolpho and the passion of the King the negotiation failed, and
John was deposed by the Pope. England, Rome repeated, had been a fief
of the Apostolic See since William the Conqueror; it was now open to
any Christian monarch to invade and possess it. This was a direct
invitation to Philip of France to renew those horrors of warfare
which Innocent had so eloquently denounced,[249] and, to the intense
mortification of the French King, John abjectly submitted (1213). He
even handed to the proud Legate a solemn declaration that England
and Ireland were fiefs of the Apostolic See, and that he would pay
a thousand marks a year for vassalage. The clergy were recalled and
compensated, the interdict was raised, and Legate Pandolpho stalked the
land with the insufferable air of a conqueror.
If, however, this conflict gives an honourable prominence to the
sterner qualities of Innocent, its sequel no less illustrates the
weakness which seemed inseparable from the Papal policy, even when it
was embodied in a lofty character. Pandolpho behaved so wantonly in
resettling the clergy that he presently fell foul of the high-minded
Langton: John behaved with a ferocity which drove nobles and commoners
to the step of rebellion. Yet Innocent maintained his mischievous
Legate against Langton, and laid a Papal malediction on the just
aspirations of the people. He rebuked the barons for their "nefarious
presumption" in taking arms against a vassal of the Roman See; he
denounced Magna Charta as a devil-inspired document, and forbade "his
vassal" to accede to its unjust demands. He excommunicated the barons
when they refused to lay down their arms, and suspended Langton when
that prelate refused, on the ground that it was dictated by false
representations, to promulgate his sentence. When the barons offered
the crown to Louis, son of Philip of France, he issued an anathema
against Louis; and in 1216 he issued a sentence of excommunication
against Philip himself for encouraging his son. He died before his
sombre use of his spiritual weapons, in a carnal cause, was completed.
He had, within ten years, raised Papal power in England to its supreme
height and then dealt it a blow from which it would never recover. It
is futile to plead that he was ill informed on the situation. He knew
John, and he knew Langton; he ought to have known Pandolpho. In point
of fact, there is no reason to think that he was radically misinformed.
His whole action is plainly inspired by the interest, as he conceived
it, of the Papacy.[250]
I must dismiss very briefly his relations with other Christian
countries. Philip of France had, like John of England, discarded his
wife and married a woman he loved. But the Papal microscope refused,
in his case, to discover the remote affinity which, Philip said, made
his first marriage void, and an interdict was laid on his kingdom. The
terrified priests and people tore Philip from the arms of Agnes de
Meran, the mother of three of his children, and forced him to submit.
Only under the later pressure of his conflicts with Otto and John did
Innocent discover that there was sufficient _prima facie_ evidence
to spend several years in negotiation about a divorce, and, by an
extraordinary use of his high powers, he declared the children of Agnes
legitimate.
In Spain and Portugal, Innocent found irregular marriages almost as
numerous as regular, and his interventions show the same unedifying
mixture of priestly rigour and political compromise. Sacerdotal
legislation had by this time surrounded marriage with a portentous
series of obstacles--forbidden degrees of spiritual and carnal
affinity--which sacerdotal power alone could remove, yet the isolated
princes of the Peninsula were compelled to marry constantly into each
other's families and did not always ask the costly blessing of the
Papacy. That this legislation did not improve the sex-morals of Europe,
which were at least no better than they had been in pagan times, is
well known. Spain was particularly lax, having contracted the gaiety of
neighbouring Provence, and her kings may have felt that where unwedded
love was so genially tolerated, these academic restraints on wedded
love might be disregarded.
Innocent placed the kingdoms of Leon and Castile under an interdict
because the King of Leon had married his cousin, Berengaria of Castile,
and, when the court of Leon ignored his censures, he predicted that
there would be a horrible issue of the unhallowed union. Its first
fruit was St. Ferdinand; but Berengaria nervously retired after a
few years and left the King to bear his excommunication with Spanish
dignity. The King of Castile soon obtained the removal of the
interdict, on the ground that it favoured the growth of heresy, but
he was then threatened with excommunication because he permitted the
Jews to become rich while the Church was poor. Pedro of Aragon was more
fortunate. In the course of a journey to Rome he married the wife of
the Count de Comminges, and the Pope at once accepted her assurance
that the Count had two wives living when he married her, and blessed
the union. Pedro, it should be added, swore fealty and an annual
subsidy of two hundred gold pieces to the Pope. The King of Navarre
incurred an interdict for allying himself with the Moors. All that one
can seriously put to the credit of Innocent is that he greatly aided
the unification of Spain by spurring its kings to a common crusade
against the Moors; if we may assume that the crusade favoured the
progress of civilization in the country. Sancho of Portugal also felt,
and disdained, the touch of the Papal whip. When Innocent complained of
his oppression of the clergy, he threatened--in a letter which Innocent
describes as the most insolent ever written to a Pope--to strip his
corrupt priests of all their wealth. Innocent at once temporized, but a
dangerous illness and fit of repentance soon put Sancho and the kingdom
of Portugal at his feet. At his death Sancho left the kingdom wholly
subject to Rome and the clergy, though it was not many years before the
quarrels of his children again drew upon it the spiritual blight of an
interdict.
It would be tedious to describe in detail all the similar interventions
of the Pope in other countries. He refused to let Marie of Brabant
marry the Emperor Otto, and refused to dissolve the marriage of the
King of Bohemia; indeed, he sternly rebuked the King of Bohemia for
receiving his crown at the hands of Philip of Swabia. In Hungary he
scolded Prince Endre for rebelling against his brother, and he raised
Bulgaria to the rank of a kingdom, on condition that it recognized
Roman supremacy. He claimed, in a word, to be the king of kings, the
temporal as well as religious master of Europe. But we shall more
clearly appreciate the qualities of his character and shades of his
standard of action if we examine more fully his connection with the
Fourth Crusade and the crusade against heresy.
Tripoli, Antioch, and a few small Palestinian towns were all that
remained of the European conquests from the Saracen, and Innocent's
constant correspondence with the Christian prelates who lingered in the
East made him eager, from the beginning of his Pontificate, to inspire
Europe to make one more grand attempt to rescue the holy places. For
several years he sought, by letters and Legates, to fire the Christian
princes, to divert the swords of France and England to the breast of
the Mohammedan, and to melt the cold calculations of Venice. But the
memory of the last colossal failure--of all the blood and treasure
that had been expended on the stubborn task--was too fresh in Europe.
In vain he promised, to all who took the cross, a sure entry into
Paradise, and hinted not obscurely at the damnation which awaited
those who refused. Thin bands of zealots responded to the call, and a
larger multitude were induced to take the cross by Innocent's princely
declaration that the earthly debts of all who joined the Crusade would
be cancelled, and the Jews would be forced to forswear their legitimate
interest. The knights of Europe, to his fiery indignation, still wasted
their spears on each other, or continued the more pleasant pastimes of
the chase and the tournament. Innocent, in a flood of eloquent letters,
taxed the clergy, confiscated the funds of erratic monks, and forbade
the lay nobles to wear costly furs or eat costly dinners or indulge in
tournaments. There were murmurs that the Christians of the East needed
no aid, since they were on excellent terms with the Saracens, as the
Pope was painfully aware; and that the only sure effect of Crusades
was to increase the power and the wealth of the Papacy which organized
them. Even the clergy and the monks refused the subsidies he demanded,
and he was compelled to sanction a practice which would in time prove
the most terrible and destructive abuse of the mediæval Papacy: the
penance imposed on confessing sinners was to take the form of a
money-contribution. To this day the indulgences which are sold in Spain
trace their origin to the Crusades, as the printed _bula_ declares.
At length, in the year 1200, Baldwin of Flanders and a few bishops and
nobles formed the nucleus of a Crusade, and the astute Venetians were
invited to provide for the transport of an army. In the spring of 1202
the streams of soldiers and priests converged upon Venice, and an army
of 23,000 assembled for the fourth assault on the Saracens. But the
Pope's joy was soon overcast, and the Crusade proved to be the second
most lamentable occurrence of his Pontificate.
When the army assembled near Venice, it was discovered that neither
the soldiers nor the Pope had money enough to pay their passage to
the East. Venice had by that time fully developed its hard commercial
spirit, and its famous blind Doge proposed to remit the debt if
the Crusaders would, on their way, retake Zara (in Dalmatia) from
the Hungarians for the Venetians. Innocent made the most violent
opposition, but the Venetians, disdaining his threats, compelled the
impoverished soldiers to consent, and on October 8th they set sail,
under threat of excommunication, to begin their Crusade by the shedding
of Christian blood. They took Zara, and incurred excommunication; but
Innocent could not reconcile himself to the complete failure of his
grand plan. He withdrew the censures they had so flagrantly defied, and
admitted, or stated, that they had acted under "a sort of necessity."
They were to make some vague "satisfaction" for their misdeed, and
push on, with clean souls, to the East. The Venetians alone were
not relieved of the censure, but, though knights of a more tender
conscience were painfully perplexed to find themselves in the same
galleys with excommunicated men, the Venetians showed no concern. They
had another check in reserve for the Pope.
Before they left Italy, Alexis Comnenus had arrived from Constantinople
to ask their aid in restoring his father to the throne he had just
lost, and they were disposed to assist him. One could not, of course,
expect the Pope to show the same concern for the blood of schismatics
as for the blood of the Hungarians, yet his consent to this fatal and
lamentable enterprise is a stain on his record. The sordid squabble of
the Comneni family did not deserve the sacrifice of a single knight,
and the part of Isaac Comnenus was espoused by the Crusaders and the
Pope only because the young Alexis promised money and provisions to the
troops and the subjection of the Greek Church to the Lateran. The issue
is well known. The Crusaders took Constantinople, sacked the city, and
desecrated the churches with a brutality that must have shocked the
Saracens; and they then settled down to divide its territory between
themselves and the Venetians. The letters which Innocent sent, as
the successive news arrived, are painful reading. He must blame their
excesses, he says at first, but, after all, these outrages had been
merited by the sins of the Greeks; let the Crusaders inform him that
the submission of the Greek Church has been secured. At last they send
him, for his confirmation, a treaty from which he learns that they
have arranged all the affairs, spiritual as well as secular, of the
new Empire without consulting him, and he writes more warmly. To the
outrage they have committed he is still almost insensible; it is their
audacity in ruling the new Church--in permitting the hated Venetians to
select a Patriarch--which excites his anger.
The last phase of the enterprise caused him grave distress. Instead of
proceeding to the East, the Latins set up an Empire and several petty
princedoms, and the Greeks disdainfully watched their quarrels and
awaited their own opportunity. Monks and priests were summoned from
France, but the people were secretly wedded to their old religion and
the new Church was a hollow sham. For years Innocent had to maintain
a fretful correspondence, settling quarrels about jurisdiction
and property, and scolding his Crusaders for their oppression and
spoliation of the clergy. But it is needless to recount all the details
of that historic failure. The weariness of Innocent may be appreciated
from the fact that in 1213 he naïvely wrote to the Khalipha himself,
beseeching him "in all humility" to restore to the Christians the land
which they had not the courage or the interest to win by the sword.
The crusade against the Albigensians was more successful, and even
more lamentable, and I need do no more here than elucidate Innocent's
relation to that monstrous crime. The degradation of morals and of
religious practice, the corruption of the clergy, and the stupendous
claims of the Papacy, had already provoked in Europe the beginnings
of protest. A somewhat modified form of Christianity's old rival,
Manichæism, had lingered in the East and had in time mingled with the
austere Christianity of the Pauline Epistles. From the Eastern Empire
it had spread to Bulgaria, and from there, in the thirteenth century,
it passed rapidly over Europe, assimilating all the anti-clerical and
anti-ritualist feeling which the corruption of the time inspired. In
one or other form it obtained considerable strength in Switzerland,
Piedmont, and the south of France, and it was fast gathering recruits
in Italy and Spain. The light-living princes of Languedoc had little
inclination to persecute; nor would they think that, if one might
sing ribald contempt of the ecclesiastical system in the tavern and
the monastery, this disdain was less respectable in the mouths of a
generally sincere and upright body of fanatics.
In the first year of his Pontificate Innocent sent two Cistercian
monks, Guy and Renier, to convert the heretics and incite the civil
and religious authorities to enforce the law. Of corporal persecution
he assuredly did not dream at that time, and indeed his letters made
it clear that he preferred persuasion to coercion of any kind. The
monks failed either to convert the heretics or to induce the bishops
and princes of the south of France to persecute (by confiscation and
exile), and they were replaced by the more vigorous monk-legates,
Pierre de Castelnau and Raoul, to whom the resolute Abbot Arnold of
Citeaux was afterwards added. Their powers set aside all ordinary
episcopal jurisdiction, and, in pursuance of their policy of displacing
lax and reluctant prelates, they put the fanatical Foulques of
Marseilles in the bishopric of Toulouse. For eight years these
energetic apostles worked almost in vain among the heretics. Apparently
at the suggestion of St. Dominic, who was just entering the history of
Europe, the Pope directed them to raise a corps of Cistercian monks who
should live and preach on the model of the coming mendicant friars,
but even this device made little impression on the heretics or the
light-living Catholics. Arnold and Foulques, in particular, became
desperate, and the lamentable policy of persecution began to grow in
their minds and that of the Pope.
The principle of persecution had, as we saw, been established in the
Lateran centuries before, and the only thing that restrained Innocent
from applying it, in its bloodless form, was the refusal of the secular
rulers to co-operate. Raymond of Toulouse was too healthily Epicurean
to favour either the sombre creed of the heretics or the more sombre
creed of the persecutor. Apologetic writers speak with horror of the
number of his wives and fair friends, but we do not find that his
conduct in this regard, or the similar conduct of other princes and
prelates, attracted the attention of the Pope. When, however, he
slighted a sentence of excommunication and still refused to persecute
his excellent but unorthodox subjects, he received a withering
letter.[251] "Who does he think he is?" the Pope asks scornfully,
to disobey one before whom the greatest monarchs of the earth bow.
Let him cease to "feed on corpses like a vulture"--to break a lance
with his neighbours--and obey the Legates, or the Pope will invite a
more powerful prince to displace him. As early as November 17, 1207,
Innocent bade the King of France, the Duke of Burgundy, and other
nobles, prepare for an expedition to Toulouse; and the privileges of
Crusaders were promised to all who joined it.
Raymond was more moved by the political threat than by the spiritual
censures, but there was sullen anger amongst his followers, and on
January 15, 1208, the Legate Pierre de Castelnau was assassinated.
There is not a tittle of evidence to incriminate Raymond, and it is in
the highest degree improbable that he would thus open the gates to his
greedy neighbours, but Innocent chose to believe that he had directed
the murder. Without trial, he declared that Raymond had forfeited the
allegiance of his subjects, and his dominions might be seized by any
Christian prince. He spurred Philip of France--who must have been
flattered to find himself now described as "exalted amongst all others
by God"--to the attack.[252] He addressed a fiery summons to "all
the nobles and people of France" to "avenge this terrible insult to
God."[253] Philip wanted Toulouse, but he overreached himself in making
terms and he dreaded England. There were, however, plenty of nobles
willing to lead their men to the plunder of prosperous Provence, and
the clergy had become seriously alarmed at the spread of the heresy in
France. A vast army, joyous at the rich prospect of loot, converged
upon the southern State. Innocent III. knew better than we know the
forces he had set in motion. The end sanctified the means.
The next phase was pitiful: the issue is one of the most horrible pages
of mediæval history. Raymond sent representatives to Rome to offer
submission, and the Pope and his Legates were embarrassed and behaved
abominably. When Raymond justly complained of the bitterness of Arnold
of Citeaux, the Pope sent a peaceful notary from the Lateran; giving
the man secret instructions to take no step without the directions
of Arnold, who was to be in the background, and writing to Arnold
that this Legate Milo is to be only "the bait to conceal the hook of
thy sagacity." Arnold, meanwhile, went to organize the crusade, for
they intended to impose on Raymond terms which seemed impossible. The
helpless Raymond licked the dust: he was stripped and scourged, he had
to surrender seven of his chief castles as hostages, and he was forced
to promise to lead the troops against his own subjects. Innocent sank
deeper into his awful policy. In an amazing letter to his Legates[254]
he reminded them of the words of Paul (II. Corinthians, xii., 16);
"Being crafty, I caught you with guile." They were to affect to regard
the repentance of Raymond as sincere, and, "deceiving him by prudent
dissimulation, pass to the extirpation of the other heretics." In
other words, they were to crush Raymond's chief nobles and then, if
he winced, crush him. Raymond did not wince, yet the army, with Abbot
Arnold as Captain General, moved southward to that historic butchery of
the Albigensians.
The modern plea that Innocent could not arrest the avalanche is as
wanton as the idea that he was moved by "social considerations." A
sentence of excommunication, promulgated by Arnold of Citeaux, would
have reduced the army to impotent proportions. Innocent would not
disappoint Arnold and Foulques, and those who had responded to his
summons; and he felt more sure of success this way. After the first two
months of butchery and seizure of cities, he sent his blessing to the
ambitious de Montfort. He was, however, superior to his Legates. The
ferocious Arnold made every effort to goad Raymond to rebellion, and at
last excommunicated him again on the plea that he had not fulfilled his
promises. Innocent tried--rather tamely--to restrain Arnold, refused to
confiscate Raymond's castles (as Arnold demanded) until he had a just
trial, and received him courteously at Rome. At last, utterly revolted
by the baseness of the Legates, Raymond winced. He was denounced to
Rome, was confronted with terms which no man with a spark of honour
could accept, and, when he refused, was excommunicated: the Pope
confirming the sentence. Raymond's dominions were transferred to "the
Blessed Peter," and de Montfort was to levy an annual tax--on which
Innocent is painfully insistent--for the Papacy.
Two years butchery of men, women, and children had not yet broken the
spirit of the Albigensians, and at the beginning of 1213, the Legates
and Simon were dismayed to hear from Innocent that the crusade was
over, and the troops had better proceed against the Saracens; that
Raymond had not yet been legally convicted of heresy and murder, and
had not therefore forfeited his fief; that, in any case, Raymond's
sons, rather than Simon de Montfort, were his natural successors. Two
Bulls (January 17 and 18, 1213) and four letters in quick succession
apprised the miserable group that Innocent--largely owing to the
intervention of Pedro of Aragon--at length appreciated their misconduct
or had the courage to consult his better feelings. Unhappily, his
courage did not last long. They stormed Rome with their remonstrances,
and Innocent yielded. As, moreover, the King of Aragon failed in
his attempt to reduce them by arms, the cause of Raymond was utterly
lost and his territory was made over to Rome. To the end Innocent
wavered between his more humane feeling and the policy he had so
long countenanced. He refused to confirm the appointment of Simon as
sovereign (under Rome) of the whole territory, and when Arnold (who was
now Archbishop of Narbonne) quarrelled with Simon over the title of
Duke of Narbonne, he supported Arnold. At the Lateran Council, which
was to decide the issue, he made a plea for leniency to Raymond and
justice to his heirs, but he yielded to the truculent priests, and the
unhappy prince was cast aside with an annual pension of four hundred
marks. Innocent did not live to see the arrogant Arnold excommunicate
de Montfort, and the two Raymonds return and win back much of their
estate.
_Causa causæ est causa causati_, the schoolmen used to say. The Pope
who maintained Arnold of Citeaux, Foulques of Marseilles, and Simon de
Montfort in their positions when their characters were fully revealed,
and the whole of Europe knew the atrocities they committed, bears the
guilt of the massacre of the Albigensians.
The fourth Lateran Council was his last work, and one of the most
important Councils of the Middle Ages. He summoned all the bishops,
abbots, and priors of Christendom to come, on November 1, 1215, to
discuss the reform of the Church, the suppression of heresy, and the
recovery of Palestine. A vast audience listened to his opening sermon
on November 11th, and for nineteen days they framed laws against
heretics, Jews, and schismatics: vainly thundered against the vice,
sensuality, and rapacity of the clergy: reduced the forbidden degrees
of kindred (in marriage) to four--since there were only four humours in
the body: imposed on all Christians a duty of confessing at least once
a year: and fixed the next Crusade for June 1, 1216. But Innocent, if
he marked with pride the contrast of that gorgeous assemblage to the
little group of Christians who had met in an inn in the Transtiberina
a thousand years earlier, cannot have been content. Not a single
Greek had responded to his summons: grave murmurs at his hard policy
and despotic action arose in the Council itself: half the prelates,
at least, were unfit to impose reforming measures on their priests:
and the ghastly mockery of his last Crusade gave little hope for the
future. He did not even appreciate the new forces for good which were
rising. He had coldly received, if not actually discouraged, Dominic
and Francis. His ideal was power: of love he knew nothing. He flung
himself ardently into the preparation for the new war on the Saracens,
and died, on June 16, 1216, with the call to arms on his lips. He
sacrificed himself nobly in the interest of his high ideal, and was one
of the greatest makers of the Papacy, but he sacrificed also much that
men inalienably prize, and he began the unmaking of the Papacy.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 237: The clergy were to be free to elect their bishop,
though in Germany the election had to take place in the presence of
the Emperor or his representatives; this was a virtual retention of
the imperial veto. Investiture with ring and crozier was replaced by a
touch with the royal sceptre.]
[Footnote 238: Fortunately, his work is little complicated by dispute,
since his letters are so abundant. There is a contemporary life or
panegyric (_Gesta Innocentii Tertii_), but it must be read with
caution. Of modern biographies the great work of Achille Luchaire (6
vols., 1904-8) has superseded all others; though, as it scarcely ever
indicates its authorities, the less discriminating work of Hurter
is still useful. In English there is a good, but rather affected,
sketch by C.H.C. Pirie-Gordon, _Innocent the Great_ (1907). Milman is
particularly good on Innocent III.]
[Footnote 239: _Ep._, i., 410.]
[Footnote 240: ii., 226.]
[Footnote 241: This is affirmed in the contemporary _Chronique d'Ernoul
et de Bernard le Trésorier_, ch. xxx.]
[Footnote 242: _Ep._, ii., in the Register, "On the Affairs of the
Empire": Migne, col. ccxvi.]
[Footnote 243: _Ep._, xiv.]
[Footnote 244: Xviii.]
[Footnote 245: The _Deliberatio_, or essential part of the Bull, is
given in Migne's "Register of Imperial Concerns," no. xxix. See also
the decretal _Venerabilem Fratrem_, no. lxii.]
[Footnote 246: Lxi.]
[Footnote 247: See R. Schwemer, _Innocenz III. und die Deutsche Kirche
während des Thronstreites von 1198-1208_ (1882), and E. Englemann,
_Phillip von Schwaben und Innocenz III._ (1896).]
[Footnote 248: _Ep._, viii., 7.]
[Footnote 249: _Ep._, vi., 163.]
[Footnote 250: See E. Gütschow, _Innocenz III. und England_ (1904).]
[Footnote 251: X., 69.]
[Footnote 252: Xi., 28.]
[Footnote 253: Xi., 29.]
[Footnote 254: Xi., 232.]