The Age of Reason - D. J. Medley (free novels .txt) 📗

now King with his father in Germany and in Italy, must needs succeed to all the paternal honours. In vain Urban tried to raise up a party against the Emperor; and the sentence of excommunication, which at length he had determined to pronounce, was stopped only by the death of the Pope on October 20, 1187.

[Sidenote: Frederick's death.]

It was, however, chance and not the policy of the Emperor that averted the inevitable conflict. On July 5 the Christians of Palestine had suffered a crushing defeat at the battle of Hittim or Tiberias at the hand of Saladin, and on October 3 the Mohammedan conqueror entered Jerusalem. The quarrel was necessarily suspended, and a new crusade was preached with such success that in May, 1189, Frederick set out for Palestine, to be followed a year later by the Kings of France and England. But the Emperor never reached the Holy Land. He made his way by Constantinople and Iconium into Cilicia, and there not far from Tarsus he disappeared, apparently drowned while crossing or bathing in a river.

[Sidenote: The new contest.]

With the great Emperor's death the contest between Papacy and Empire enters on a new phase. It is typical of this phase that the one outstanding question between the two powers after the Peace of Venice was the question of Tuscany. For the quarrel was now almost entirely political, and was becoming more and more confined to Italian politics. The imperial attempt to subdue Italy to Germany had failed, and it remained for the Emperor to make it impossible for the Pope to live at Rome except as a dependant of the German King. With Tuscany, Lombardy, and Sicily under the imperial control, there was no room for papal action in Italy. In a contest of abstract principles the Emperor had entirely failed to subdue the Pope; and the interest and importance of the contest between Frederick and Alexander lay in the fact that each was the representative of an idea. This is no doubt the reason why Frederick's failure did not damage his prestige. But he had learnt that he could not set the abstract claims of the Empire against those of the Papacy. The former did not appeal to any one beyond the limits of Germany; whereas the latter could count on sympathy in every country of Western Europe. Frederick, therefore, made no more appeals to Europe. His disputes with the Papacy were now individual matters: they were contests of policy, not of principle, and he would not hesitate to turn circumstances to his advantage. Perhaps, fortunately for Frederick's reputation, he did nothing more than inaugurate this policy. But it was a policy which essentially suited the peculiar genius of his successor.

[Sidenote: Henry VI.]

As soon as Frederick had started for Palestine Henry was plunged in difficulties. Henry the Lion returned from banishment and raised a disturbance. A few months later William II of Sicily died, and Pope Clement III (1187-91) immediately invested with the kingdom Tancred, Count of Lecce, an illegitimate member of the Hauteville family, who had been elected by the party opposed to the German influence. On the top of these difficulties came the news of Frederick's death. There was thus a double reason for an expedition to Italy—Henry must assert his wife's claim to the throne of Sicily, and he must do this without quarrelling with the Pope, from whom he must obtain the imperial crown. His first expedition was only a formal success. Pope Celestine III (1191-8), who took office just after Henry entered Italy, dared not refuse to crown him emperor, nor could he prevent Henry from either courting the Roman Commune with success or prosecuting his claim to the Sicilian crown. But Henry failed before Naples: his army was decimated by the plague, and his wife fell into Tancred's hands.

[Sidenote: His success in Italy.]

This ill-success revived the Guelf opposition in Germany, whose most powerful supporter was Henry the Lion's brother-in-law, Richard of England. Richard on his way to Palestine had made an alliance with Tancred against the common Hohenstaufen enemy. But returning from crusade Richard fell into the hands of Leopold of Austria. Leopold was forced to hand him over to the Emperor, and the anti-Hohenstaufen alliance fell to pieces. For whatever reason, Henry kept the English King for more than a year, and turned a deaf ear to the papal remonstrances against his detention of a crusader. Fortified by the failure of the threatened combination against him, and by the money from Richard's ransom, Henry returned to Italy. Fortune favoured him at every turn. Since he left Italy Tancred and his eldest son had died, and Henry found no difficulty in getting hold of the youthful son of Tancred, who had been placed upon the throne under his mother's regency. Apulia and Sicily were overrun. The toils were closing round the Pope. Celestine had excommunicated all concerned in Richard's imprisonment until they should have restored his ransom. Thus by implication Henry was excommunicate. The money had been spent in subduing the papal fief of Sicily; while Henry further made his brother Philip Marquis of Tuscany, and planted his followers about in the lands of the Church. Yet Celestine did not dare to pronounce the fatal sentence against the Emperor directly.

[Sidenote: His imperial schemes.]

Henry meditated one more step which would have rendered the Pope powerless. Frederick, with the mere prospect of the Sicilian succession for his son, desired to make the imperial title hereditary; much more was Henry, the active sovereign of Sicily, anxious to accomplish this. The lay princes could have been bribed to consent by the recognition of hereditary succession to their fiefs. But the German ecclesiastics, with the Pope at their back, had no desire to increase the power of the Emperor, and the utmost that Henry could secure was the election as German King, and therefore King of the Romans, of his two-year-old son Frederick.

[Sidenote: His death.]

Henry's projects stretched out beyond the lands under his rule. The death of Saladin encouraged the idea of a new crusade. Henry as crusader might propitiate the Pope. But such an expedition once started might have been diverted, as indeed happened a few years later, for an attack upon Constantinople, which should lead to the union of both empires under the ambitious Hohenstaufen. Pretexts were not wanting. Henry collected a number of German crusaders upon the coast of Italy, and many of these had actually sailed for Palestine when everything was changed by Henry's sudden death on September 28, 1197. He had reigned eight years, and was only thirty-two years of age. Despite his youthful age and his short reign he had raised the imperial power to a height which it had scarcely ever touched before and which it was never to reach again. Endowed with ability at least equal to his father's, his very selfishness and ruthlessness gave him a success denied to his predecessor. All Henry's acts were associated with his own aggrandisement, and the result shows that the Papacy no less than the Empire was dependent for its influence chiefly upon the personality of the holder of the office. Henry had to deal at Rome with Popes of inferior capacity. Had Innocent III been elected a few years earlier, the tragedy of Anagni—the maltreatment of Boniface VIII by the emissaries of the King of France—might have been anticipated by a century.

CHAPTER IX INNOCENT III

[Sidenote: The new Pope.]

Celestine III died less than four months after the Emperor Henry VI, and the centre of interest immediately shifted from the Empire to the Papacy. For, in their desire to shut out the Roman clergy and people from any share in the election, the Cardinals made haste to find a successor. As it happened, the object of their choice was also the favourite of the Roman people. Lothair of Segni was the youngest of the Cardinals, being only thirty-seven years of age. He was sprung from a German family which had settled in the tenth century in the Campagna. He had studied in Paris and Bologna, and had been made Cardinal by his uncle, Clement III. Celestine was of the rival family of Orsini, and during his reign the young Cardinal remained in retirement and consoled himself by writing a book on the Despite of the World. Thus he was young, noble, wealthy, and distinguished. He showed his power of self-control at once by doing nothing to shorten the canonical time before his consecration as priest and bishop; while the magnificence of the coronation ceremonies typified the view which he took of the office and position.

[Sidenote: The condition of Europe.]

The work of Innocent III was European in importance, and he found his opportunity in the disturbed condition of the time. The rivalry of Ghibelline and Guelf in Germany and Italy, and the rivalry of the houses of Capet and Plantagenet in France, forbade any concerted action on the part of Christendom, whether against pagans on the eastern frontier of Germany or against Mohammedans in Spain or Syria. Hungary and Poland were both in a state of ferment; in Spain the Almohades from Morocco were making serious advances. Saladin's death might seem to offer a peculiarly favourable chance of recovering for Christendom what had been so recently lost. But the Empire was divided; England and France neutralised each other, the Eastern Empire was weakened by the success of an usurper, the knightly orders were quarrelling with each other. And this state of disunion was not the most dangerous feature of the moment. The moral condition of Europe was seldom worse. Philip of France had repudiated his Danish wife, Ingebiorg, apparently for no more valid reason than that he liked some one better; Alfonso of Castile took his own half-sister to wife. Oriental manners, imported from Palestine or learnt from commercial intercourse in the Mediterranean, seemed to be invading the furthest regions of the West. Perhaps to the same influence may be attributed the spread of religious heresies. Much of this was provoked by direct antagonism to a powerful and corrupt Church; but the actual form assumed by the positive beliefs of those who organised themselves apart from the Catholic Church were largely Oriental in character.

Everything combined to encourage Innocent's interference, and it may be pointed out at once that his success was largely due to the selfish ambitions and desires of the lay princes, which enabled him to pose as the undoubted representative of moral force organised in the Church. In all his most important acts he was the mouthpiece of popular opinion. Thus his contest with Philip of France in favour of the repudiated Ingebiorg commanded the sympathy of every right-thinking person in Europe; his desire for the separation of Italy and Germany under different rulers was popular in Italy; while to attempt an union of the Churches of East and West, to crush out heresy in the south of France and elsewhere, to promote a new crusade in the East, were all regarded as duties falling strictly within the papal sphere.

[His claim for the Papacy.]

The importance of this great activity lies in the fact that it was based upon the most advanced theories of papal power. It was the controversy over lay investiture which first caused the defenders of the Church to formulate their views of the sphere of ecclesiastical influence as against the influence of the secular authority. But the extreme claims put forward for the Papacy as the head of the Church, by Gregory VII and his followers, had provoked the counter definitions of the jurists of Bologna on behalf of the imperial power. But the claim of universal dominion by the Emperor was contradicted by facts, and never rose above the dignity of an academic thesis; whereas in the century which elapsed from the days of Gregory VII to those of Innocent III the papal power was becoming an increasing reality in the Church. It is indeed a little difficult to see wherein it was possible for any successor of Gregory VII to make an advance upon the claims put forward by that Pope. Gregory in fond of pointing out that the power of binding and loosing given to St. Peter was absolutely comprehensive, including all persons and secular as well as spiritual matters. Innocent tells the Patriarch of Constantinople that the Lord left to Peter not only the whole Church, but the whole world to govern. To the Karolingian age it was the Emperor who was the Vicar of God. The Church reformers, while attacking this title, do not seem to have claimed in words for the Pope a higher title than Vicar of St. Peter. Innocent, however, more than once asserts that he is the representative "not of mere man, but of very God." In fact, such development as is to be found in the papal office during the twelfth century consists merely in making rather more explicit positions which have already been asserted.