Ascendancy of the Church
One of the means by which the Pope defeated the Emperor in this struggle, and it was perhaps his strongest weapon, was by excommunicating him. Frederick had engaged to go on Crusade, the fifth Crusade, but ill-health had prevented his taking an active part in it, and the Pope gave this as the reason of his excommunication. Excommunication meant that he was denied all part in the services and sacraments of the Church in this life, and was told that his soul would be lost in the world to come. It released his subjects from any necessity of obeying his commands. It put him, moreover, much in the position of an "outlawed" man, which meant that he was not under the protection of the laws of the land, so that any man could be held blameless who lifted a hand to attack him. It was a terrible power, and it was used very terribly by the Church at this time and for many centuries afterwards.
And then this Frederick, this man excommunicated by the Church, undertook the direction of the sixth Crusade. It was an extraordinary position. A Crusade was a war for the Cross, for the Church; and here was one who had been placed quite outside the fold of the Church taking the leadership in this war. But the truth is that these later Crusades were not really aimed against the infidel and the Moslem for religious reasons nearly so much as for political motives. Frederick actually did persuade, without fighting, the Turkish Sultan of Egypt to give him the sovereignty of Jerusalem.
While he thus brought back the Holy Places into the Christian Church, what he claimed to be his own territories in Europe were being invaded by the Pope's forces—a kind of "Crusade" was waged against him who was leading a most successful Crusade in the recognised sense of the term!
He returned to Europe to struggle awhile against the spiritual power; but it was too strong for him. He died in 1250. For another score or so of years Pope and Emperor, Italy and Germany, fought intermittently, with such weapons as each had, but before the beginning of the fourteenth century the Church's spiritual ascendancy prevailed over all the Western world, and Rome had been established in her papal possessions.
During much of that fourteenth century, however, conditions in Rome became so disturbed that the Popes removed to Avignon in France. They removed thither in 1305 and four years later we find the Emperor acknowledged as King of the Romans. It was not for another seventy years that a Pope dared or cared to live in Rome, and even when the Papal Court did return there were for many years two Popes, one, appointed by the Italian cardinals, in Rome, another, elected by the French, in Avignon.
Yet even in the midst of these distractions and schisms, when the actual life of the Head of the Church was sometimes in danger, we still see the Church's power steadily increasing—for one reason, because, in the tumult of the times, it was the one force which knew its own purpose and pursued that purpose in all places and at all times unchangeably. By the end of the fourteenth century it stands at last supreme in its own city and country—in Rome itself. Rome as a republic exists no longer: it has become the Papal State.