Part 8

§ 96.16. Even before his victory over the powerful Hohenstaufen, Alexander III. during his exile won a yet more brilliant success in England. King Henry II., A.D. 1154-1189, wished to establish again the supremacy of the state over church and clergy, and thought that he would have a pliant tool in carrying out his plans in =Thomas à Becket=, whom he made archbishop of Canterbury, in A.D. 1162. But as primate of the English church, Thomas proved a vigorous upholder of hierarchical principles. Instead of the accommodating courtier, the king found the archbishop immediately upon his consecration the bold asserter of the claims of the church. The jovial man of the world became at once the saintly ascetic. At a council at Tours in A.D. 1163, he returned into the pope’s own hand the pallium with which an English prince had invested him in name of the king, resigning also his archiepiscopal dignity, that he might receive these directly as a papal gift. Straightway began the conflict between the king and his former favourite. Henry summoned a diet at Clarendon, where he obtained the approval of the superior clergy for his anti-hierarchical propositions; Thomas also for a time withstood, promising at last, when urged on all sides, to assent to the constitutions, but refusing to sign the document when it was placed before him. The king now ordered a process of deposition to be executed against him, and Thomas then fled to France, where the pope was at that time residing. The pope released him from his promise, condemned the Constitutions of Clarendon, and threatened the king with anathema and interdict. At last, after protracted negotiations, in A.D. 1170 by means of a personal interview on the frontiers of Normandy, a reconciliation was effected; by which, however, neither the king nor the archbishop renounced their claims. Thomas now returned to England and threatened with excommunication all bishops who should agree to the Constitutions of Clarendon. Four knights seized upon an unguarded word of the king which he had uttered in passion, and murdered the archbishop at the altar in A.D. 1170. Alexander canonized the martyr to Hildebrandism, and the king was so sorely pressed by the pope, his own people and his rebellious sons, that he consented to do penance humbly at the tomb of his deadly sainted foe, and submitted to be scourged by the monks. Becket’s bones, for which a special chapel was reared at Canterbury, were visited by crowds of pilgrims until Henry VIII., when he had broken with Rome (§ 139, 4), formally arraigned the saint as a traitor, had his name struck out of the calendar and his ashes scattered to the winds.[278]--Thus by A.D. 1178 Alexander III. had risen to the summit of ecclesiastical power; but in Rome itself as well as in the Church States, he remained as powerless politically as before. Soon, therefore, after the great council he again quitted the city for a voluntary exile, and never saw it more. His three immediate successors, too, =Lucius III.= († A.D. 1185), =Urban III.= († A.D. 1187), and =Gregory VIII.= († A.D. 1187), were elected, consecrated and buried outside of Rome. =Clement III.= († A.D. 1191) was the first to enter the Lateran again in A.D. 1188, on the basis of a compromise which acknowledged the republican constitution under the papal superiority. Meanwhile Frederick I., without regarding the protest of the pope as liege lord of the Sicilian crown, had in A.D. 1186 consummated the fateful marriage of his son Henry with Constance, the posthumous daughter of king Roger, and aunt of his childless grandson William II. († A.D. 1194), and thus the heiress of the great Norman kingdom of Italy. From the crusade which he then undertook in A.D. 1189 Frederick never returned (§ 94, 3). His successor, =Henry VI.=, A.D. 1190-1197, compelled the new pope =Cœlestine III.=, A.D. 1191-1198, to crown him emperor in A.D. 1191, conquered the inheritance of his wife, pushed back the boundaries of the Church States to the very gates of Rome, and asserted his imperial rights even over the city of Rome itself. He pressed on to the realizing of the scheme for making the German crown together with the imperial dignity for ever hereditary in his house. The princes of the empire in A.D. 1196 elected his son Frederick II., when scarcely two years old, as king of the Romans. He then thought under the pretext of a crusade to conquer Greece, to which he had laid groundless claims of succession, but while upon the way his plans were overthrown by his sudden death at Messina.

§ 96.17. =Innocent III., A.D. 1198-1216.=--After the death of Alexander III. the power and reputation of the Holy See had fallen into the lowest degradation. Then the cardinal deacon, Lothair Count of Segni in Anagni, succeeded in A.D. 1198 in his 37th year, under the name of Innocent III., and raised the papacy again to a height of power and glory never reached before. In point of intellect and power of will he was not a whit behind Gregory VII., while in culture (§ 102, 9), scholarship, subtlety and adroitness he far excelled him. His piety, too, his moral earnestness, his enthusiasm and devotion to the church and the theocratical interest of the chair of St. Peter, were at least as powerful and decidedly purer, deeper and more spiritual than Gregory’s. And in addition to all these great endowments he enjoyed an invariable good fortune which never forsook him. His first task was the restoration of the Church States and his political prestige in Rome. In both these directions he was favoured by the sudden death of Henry VI. and the internal disorders of the Capitoline government of that time. On the very day of his enthronement the imperial prefect tendered him the oath of fealty and the Capitol did homage to him as the superior. And also before the second year had passed the Church States in their fullest extent were restored by the expulsion of the greater and smaller feudal lords who had been settled there by Henry VI. Rome was indeed once more the scene of wild party conflicts which forced the pope in A.D. 1203 to fly to Anagni. He was able, however, to return in A.D. 1204 and to conclude a definite and decisive peace with the Commune in A.D. 1205, according to the terms of which the many-headed senate resigned, and a single senator or podestà nominated by the pope was entrusted with the executive authority. Meanwhile Innocent had been gaining brilliant successes beyond the limits of the States of the Church. These were won first of all in Sicily. The widow of Henry VI. had her son Frederick of four years old, after his father’s death, crowned king in Palermo. Unadvised and helpless, pressed upon all sides, she sought protection from Innocent, which he granted upon her renouncing the ecclesiastical privileges previously claimed by the king and making acknowledgment of the papal suzerainty. Dying in A.D. 1198, Constance transferred to him the guardianship of her son, and the pope justified the confidence placed in him by the excellent and liberal education which he secured for his ward, as well as by the zeal and success with which he restored rest and peace to the land. In Germany, Philip of Swabia, Frederick’s uncle, was appointed to carry on the government in the name of his Sicilian nephew during his minority. The condition of Germany, however, demanded the direct control of a firm and vigorous ruler. The princes, therefore, insisted upon a new election, for which Philip also now appeared as candidate. The votes were split between two rivals; the Ghibellines voting for Philip, A.D. 1198-1208, and the Guelph party for =Otto IV.= of Brunswick, A.D. 1198-1218. The party of the latter referred the decision to the pope. For three years he delayed giving judgment, then he decided in favour of the Guelph, who paid for the preference by granting all the demands of the pope, and calling himself king by the grace of God and the pope. The States of the Church were thus represented as including the Duchy of Spoleto, and in the election of bishops the church was freed from the influence of the state. By A.D. 1204, however, Philip’s power and repute had risen to such a pitch that even the pope found himself obliged to take into account the altered position of matters. A papal court of arbitration at Rome to which both claimants had agreed to submit, was on the point of giving its decision unequivocally in favour of the Hohenstaufen, when the murder of Philip by Otto of Wittelsbach, in A.D. 1208, rendered it void. Otto IV. was now acknowledged by all, and in A.D. 1209 he was crowned by the pope after new concessions had been made. But as Roman emperor he either would not or could not perform what he had promised before and at his coronation. He took to himself the possessions of Matilda as well as other parts of the States of the Church, and was not prevented from pursuing his victorious campaign in Southern Italy by the anathema which Innocent thundered against him in A.D. 1210. Then Innocent called to mind the old rights of his former pupil to the German crown, and insisted that they should be given effect to. In A.D. 1212, Frederick II., now in his eighteenth year, accepted the call, was received in Germany with open arms, and was crowned in A.D. 1215 at Aachen. Otto could not maintain his position against him, and so withdrew to his hereditary possessions, and died in A.D. 1218.

§ 96.18. King Philip Augustus II. of France, had in A.D. 1193 married the Danish princess Ingeborg, but divorced her in A.D. 1196, and married the beautiful Duchess Agnes of Meran. Innocent compelled him in A.D. 1200 to put her away by issuing against him an interdict, but it was only in A.D. 1213 that he again took back Ingeborg as his legitimate wife.--From far off Spain the young king Peter of Arragon went in A.D. 1204 to Rome, laid down his crown as a sacred gift upon the tomb of the chief of the apostles, and voluntarily undertook the payment of a yearly tribute to the Holy See. In the same year a crusading army, by founding a Latin empire in Constantinople, brought the schismatical East to the feet of the pope (§ 94, 4). In England, when the archbishopric of Canterbury became vacant, the chapter filled it by electing their own superior Reginald. This choice they had soon cause to rue. They therefore annulled their election, and at the wish of the usurping king John Lackland made choice of John, bishop of Norwich. Innocent refused to confirm their action, and persuaded certain members of the chapter staying in Rome to choose the cardinal priest Stephen Langton, whose election he immediately confirmed.[279] When the king refused to recognise this appointment, and on an interdict being threatened swore that he would drive all priests who should obey it out of the country, the pope issued it in A.D. 1208 against all England, excommunicated the king, and finally, in A.D. 1212, released all his subjects from their oath of allegiance and deposed the monarch, while he commissioned Philip Augustus of France to carry the sentence into effect. John, now as cringing and terrified as before he had been proud and despotic, humbled himself in the dust, and at Dover, in A.D. 1213, placed kingdom and crown at the feet of the papal legate Pandulf, and received it from his hands as a papal fief, undertaking to pay twice a year the tribute imposed. But in A.D. 1214 the English nobles extorted from their cowardly tyrant as a safeguard against lordly wilfulness and despotism the famous _Magna Charta_, against which the pope protested, threatening excommunication and promising legitimate redress of their grievances, though in consequence of confusion caused by the breaking out again of the civil wars he was unable to enforce his protest. And now his days were drawing to an end. At the famous =Fourth Lateran Council of A.D. 1215=, more than 1,500 prelates from all the countries of Christendom, along with the ambassadors of almost all Christian kings, princes and free cities, gave him homage as the representative of God on earth, as visible Head of the Church, and supreme lord and judge of all princes and peoples. A few months later he died.--As in Italy and Germany, in France and England, he had also in all other states of the Christian world, in Spain and Portugal, in Poland, Livonia and Sweden, in Constantinople and Bulgaria, shown himself capable of controlling political as well as ecclesiastical movements, arranging and smoothing down differences, organizing and putting into shape what was tending to disorder. Some conception of his activity may be formed from the 5,316 extant decretals of the eighteen years of his pontificate.

§ 96.19. =The Times of Frederick II. and his Successors, A.D. 1215-1268.=--=Frederick II.=,[280] A.D. 1215-1250, contrary to the Hohenstaufen custom, had not only agreed to the partition of Sicily from the empire in favour of his son Henry, but also renewed the agreements previously entered into with the pope by Otto IV. He even increased the papal possessions by ceding Ancona, and still further at his coronation at Aachen he showed his goodwill by undertaking a crusade. He also allowed this same Henry who became king of Sicily as a vassal of the pope, to be elected king of the Romans in A.D. 1220, and then began his journey to Rome to receive imperial coronation. The new pope =Honorius III.=, A.D. 1216-1227, formerly Frederick’s tutor and even still entertaining for him a fatherly affection, exacted from him a solemn renewal of his earlier promises. But instead of returning to Germany, Frederick started for Sicily in order to make it the basis of operations for the future carrying out of the ideas of his father and grandfather. The peace-loving pope constantly urged him to fulfil his promise of fitting out a crusade. But it was only after his successor =Gregory IX.=, A.D. 1227-1241, a high churchman of the stamp of Gregory VII. and Innocent III., urged the matter with greater determination, that Frederick actually embarked. He turned back, however, as soon as an epidemic broke out in the ships, but he did not himself escape the contagion, and died three days after. In A.D. 1227 the pope had in a senseless passion hurled an anathema against him, and, in an encyclical to all the bishops, painted the emperor’s ingratitude and breach of faith in the darkest colours. The emperor on his part, in a manifesto justifying himself addressed to the princes and people of Europe, had quite as unsparingly lashed the worldliness of the church, the corruption, presumption and self-seeking of the papacy, and then in A.D. 1228 he again undertook the postponed crusade (§ 94, 5). The pope’s curse followed “the pirate” to the very threshold of the Holy Sepulchre, and a papal crusading force made a raid upon Southern Italy. Frederick therefore hastened his return, landed in A.D. 1229 in Apulia, and entered into negotiations for peace, to which, however, the pope agreed only in A.D. 1230, when the emperor’s victoriously advancing troops threatened him with the loss of the States of the Church. In consequence of the pope’s continued difficulties with his Romans, who drove him three times out of the city, Frederick had frequent opportunities of showing himself serviceable to the pope by giving direct aid or mediating in his favour. Nevertheless he continually conspired with the rebellious Lombards, and in A.D. 1239 renewed the ban against the emperor. The pope who had hitherto only charged Frederick with a tendency to freethinking, as well as an inclination to favour the Saracens (§ 95, 1), and to maintain friendly intercourse with the Syrian sultans, now accused him of flippant infidelity. The emperor, it was said, had among other things declared that the birth of the Saviour by a virgin was a fable, and that Jesus, Moses and Mohammed were the three greatest impostors the world had ever seen,--a form of unbelief which spread very widely in consequence of the crusades. Manifestoes and counter-manifestoes sought to outdo one another in their violence. And while the wild hordes of the Mongols were overspreading unopposed the whole of Eastern Europe, the emperor’s troops were victoriously pressing forward to the gates of Rome, and his ships were preventing the meeting of the council summoned against him by catching the prelates who in spite of his prohibition were hastening to it. The pope died in A.D. 1241, and was followed in seventeen days by his successor Cœlestine IV.

§ 96.20. For almost two years the papal chair remained vacant. Then this position was won by =Innocent IV.=, A.D. 1243-1254, who as cardinal had been friendly to the emperor, but as pope was a most bitter enemy to him and to his house. The negotiations about the removal of the ban were broken off, and Innocent escaped to France, where at the =First Lyonese or 13th Œcumenical Council of A.D. 1245=, attended by scarcely any but Frenchmen and Spaniards, he renewed the excommunication of the emperor, and declared him as a blasphemer and robber of the church deprived of his throne. Once again with the most abject humility Frederick sued for reconciliation with the church. The pope, however, wished not for reconciliation, but the destruction of the whole “viper brood” of the Hohenstaufens. But the rival king, Henry Raspe of Thuringia, set up by the papal party in Germany, and William of Holland, who was put forward after his death in A.D. 1247, could not maintain their position against Frederick’s son, Conrad IV., who as early as A.D. 1235 had been elected in place of his rebel brother Henry as king of the Romans. Even in Italy the fortune of war favoured at first the imperial arms. At the siege of Parma, which was disloyal, the tide began to turn. The sorely pressed citizens made a sally in A.D. 1248, while Frederick was away at a hunt, and roused to courage by despair, put his army to flight. His brave son, Enzio, king of Sardinia and governor of Northern Italy, fell in A.D. 1249 into the hands of the Bolognese, and was subjected to a life-long imprisonment. Frederick himself in A.D. 1250 closed his active life in the south in the arms of his son Manfred. The pope then returned to Italy, in order to take possession of the Sicilian kingdom, which he claimed as a papal fief. But in A.D. 1251 =Conrad IV.=, summoned by Manfred, hasted thither from Germany, subdued Apulia, conquered Naples, and was resolved to lay hands on the person of the pope himself, who had also excommunicated him, when his career was stopped by death in A.D. 1254, in his twenty-sixth year. On behalf of Conrad’s two-year-old son, Conradin, who had been born in Germany after his father’s departure, Manfred undertook the regency in Southern Italy, but found himself obliged to acknowledge the pope’s suzerainty. Nevertheless the pope was determined to have him also overthrown. Manfred, however, escaped in time to the Saracenic colony of Luceria, and with its help utterly defeated the papal troops sent out against him. Five days after Innocent IV. died, =Alexander IV.=, A.D. 1254-1261, although without his predecessor’s ability, sought still to continue his work. He could not, however, either by ban or by war prevent Manfred, who on the report of Conradin’s death had had himself crowned, from extending the power and prestige of his kingdom farther and farther into the north. =Urban IV.=, A.D. 1261-1264, a Frenchman by birth, son of a shoemaker of Troyes, took up with all his heart the heritage of hate against the Hohenstaufens, and in A.D. 1263 invited Charles of Anjou, the youngest brother of Louis IX. of France, to win by conquest the Sicilian crown. While the prince was preparing for the campaign Urban died. His successor, =Clement IV.=, A.D. 1265-1268, also a Frenchman, could not but carry out what his predecessor had begun. Charles, whom the Romans without the knowledge of the pope had elected their senator, proceeded in A.D. 1265 into Italy, took the vassal oath of fealty, and was crowned as Charles I., A.D. 1265-1285, king of the two Sicilies. Treachery opened up his way into Naples. Manfred fell in A.D. 1266 in the battle of Benevento; and Conradin, whom the Ghibellines had called in as a deliverer of Italy, after the disastrous battle of Tagliacozzo in A.D. 1268, died on the scaffold in his sixteenth year.