The Makers of Modern Rome, in Four Books

by Mrs. Oliphant

Having come to this conclusion, Innocent took his stand with all the power and influence he possessed upon Otho's side—a support which probably kept that prince afloat and made the long struggle possible, but was quite inadequate to set him effectually on the throne, or injure his rival in any serious way. In this partisan warfare, excommunication was the readiest of weapons; but excommunications, as we have already said, were very ineffectual in the greater number of cases; for Germany especially was full of great prelates as great as the princes, in most cases of as high race and as much territorial power, and they by no means always agreed with the Pope, and made no pretence of obeying him; and how was the people to find out that they lay under anathema when they saw the offices of the Church carried on with all the splendour of the highest ritual, its services unbroken, however the Pope might thunder behind? Some of these prelates—such as Leopold of Mainz, appointed by the Emperor, to whom Innocent refused his sanction, electing on his own part another archbishop, Siegfried, in his stead, who was not for many years permitted even to enter the diocese of which he was the titular head—maintained with Rome a struggle as obstinate as any secular prince. They were as powerful as the princes among whom they sat and reigned, and elected emperors. Most of the German bishops, we are told, were on Philip's side notwithstanding the decision of the Pope against him. In such circumstances the anathema was little more than a farce. The Archbishop of Mainz was excommunicated as much as the emperor, but being all the same in full possession of his see and its privileges, naturally acted as though nothing had happened, and found plenty of clergy to support him, who carried on the services of the Church as usual and administered the sacraments to Philip as much as if he had been in the full sunshine of Papal favour.

Such a chance had surely never been foreseen when the expedient of excommunication was first thought of, for it is apt to turn every claim of authority into foolishness—threats which cannot be carried out being by their nature the most derogatory things possible to the person from whom they proceed. The great prelates of Germany were in their way as important as the Pope, their position was more steadily powerful than his, they had vassals and armies to defend them, and a strong and settled seat, from which it was as difficult, or indeed even dangerous, to displace them as to overthrow a throne. And what could the Pontiff do when they disobeyed and defied him? Nothing but excommunicate, excommunicate, for which they cared not a straw—or depose, which was equally unimportant, when, as happened in the case of Mainz, the burghers of the cathedral city vowed that the substituted bishop should never enter their gates.

Thus the ten years' struggle produced nothing but humiliation for Innocent. The Pope did not relax in his determined opposition, nor cease to threaten penalties which he could not inflict until nearly the end of the struggle; and then when the logic of events began, it would appear, to have a little effect upon his mind, and he extended with reluctance a sort of feeble olive-branch towards the all-victorious Philip—a larger fate came in, and changed everything with the sweeping fulness of irresistible power. It is not said anywhere, so far as we know, that the overtures of Innocent brought the Emperor ill-luck; but it would certainly have been so said had such an accident occurred under Pio Nono, for example, who, it is well known, had the evil eye. For no sooner had Innocent taken this step than Philip's life came to a disastrous end. The Count Palatine of Wittelsbach, a great potentate of Germany, who had some personal grievance to avenge, demanded a private audience and murdered him in his temporary dwelling, in the moment of his highest prosperity. Thus in the twinkling of an eye everything was changed. The House of Hohenstaufen went down in a moment without an attempt made to prop it up. And Otho, who was at hand, already a crowned king, and demanding no further trouble, at once took the vacant place. This occurred in the year 1208—ten years after the beginning of the struggle. But in this extraordinary and sudden transformation of affairs Innocent counted for nothing; he had not done it nor even contributed to the doing of it: though he had kept the air thunderous with anathemas, and the roads dusty with the coming and going of his legates for all these unhappy years.

Otho, however, did not at first forget the devotion which the Pope had shown him in his evil days, when triumph so unexpected and accidental (as it seemed) came to him. After taking full possession of the position which now there was no one to contest with him, he made a triumphal progress across the Alps, and was crowned Emperor at Rome, the last and crowning dignity which Philip had never been able to attain: where he behaved himself with much show of affection and humility to Innocent, whose stirrup he held like the most devoted son of the Church as he professed to be. There was much swearing of oaths at the same time. Otho vowed to preserve all the rights of the Church, and, with reservations, to restore the Tuscan fiefs of Matilda, and all the presents with which from time to time the former Emperors had endowed the Holy See, to the Pope's undisturbed possession. Rome was a scene of the utmost display and splendour during this imperial visit. Otho had come at the head of his army, and lay encamped at the foot of Monte Mario, where now the little group of pines stand up against the sky in the west, dark against the setting sun. It was October when all the summer glow and heat is mellowed by autumnal airs, and the white tents shone outside the city gates with every kind of splendid cognisance of princes and noble houses, and magnificence of mediæval luxury. The ancient St. Peter's, near the camp, was then planted, we are told, in the midst of a great number of convents, churches, and chapels, "Like a majestic mother surrounded by beautiful daughters"—though there was no Vatican as yet to add to its greatness: but the line of the walls on the opposite side of the river and the ancient splendour of Rome, more square and massive in its lingering classicism than the mediæval towns to which the German forces were more accustomed, shone in the mid-day sun: while towards the left the great round of St. Angelo dominated the bridge and the river, and all the crowds which poured forth towards the great church and shrine of the Apostles. There was, however, one shadow in this brilliant picture, and that was the fact that Rome within her gates lay not much unlike a couching lion, half terrified, half excited by the army outside, and not sure that the abhorred Tedeschi might not at any moment steal a march upon her, and show underneath those splendid velvet gloves, all heavy with embroideries of gold, the claws of that northern wolf which Italy had so often felt at her very heart. It is a curious sign of this state of agitated feeling that Otho published in Rome before his coronation a solemn engagement in his own name and that of his army that no harm should be done to the city, to the Pope and Cardinals, or to the people and their property, while he remained there. He had strong guards of honour at all the adjacent gates as a precautionary measure while the great ceremonies of his consecration went on.

It was not the present St. Peter's, it need not be said, which, hung with splendid tapestries and lit with innumerable candles, glistening with precious marbles and gilding, and decorated with all the splendour of the church in silver and gold, received this great German potentate for that final act which was to make his authority sacred, and establish him beyond all question Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a dignity which only the Pope could complete, which was nothing, bringing no additional dominion with it, yet of the utmost importance in the estimation of the world. It cannot but have been that a sense of elation, perhaps chequered with doubt, but certainly sanctioned by many noble feelings—convictions that God had favoured his side in the long run, and that a better age was about to begin—must have been in Innocent's mind as he went through the various ceremonies of the imposing ritual, and received the vows of the monarch and placed the imperial crown on his head. We are not told, however, whether there was any alarm in the air as the two gorgeous processions conjoined, sweeping forth from the gates of St. Peter's, and across the bridge and by all the crowded ways, to the other side of the city, to the Lateran palace, where the great banquet was held. Otho with his crown on his head held the stirrup of the Pope at the great steps of St. Peter's as Innocent mounted; and the two greatest potentates of earth, the head of the secular and the head of the spiritual, dividing, with the most confusing elasticity of boundary between them, the sway of the world, rode alone together, followed by all that was most magnificent in Germany and Italy, the great princes, the great prelates vying with each other in pomp and splendour. The air was full of the ringing of bells and the chanting of the priests; and as they went along through the dark masses of the people on every side, the officers of Otho scattered largesse through all the crowded streets, and everything was festivity and general joy.

But when the great people disappeared into the papal palace, and the banquet was spread, the German men-at-arms began to swagger about the streets as if they were masters of all they surveyed. There is no difference of opinion as to the brutality and insolence of the German soldiers in those days, and the Romans were excited and in no humour to accept any insult at such a moment. How they came to blows at last was never discovered, but after the great spectacle was over, most probably when night was coming on, and the excitement of the day had risen to irritability and ready passion, a fray arose in the streets no one knowing how. The strangers had the worst of it, Muratori says. "Many of the Teutons were killed," says one of the older chronicles, "and eleven hundred horses;" which would seem to imply that the dregs of the procession had been vapouring about Rome on their charges, riding the inhabitants down. Nor was it only men-at-arms: for a number of Otho's more distinguished followers were killed in the streets. How long it was before it came to the ears of the Emperor we are not informed, nor whether the banquet was interrupted. Probably Otho had returned to his tent (Muratori says he did so at once, leaving out all mention of any banquet) before the "calda baruffa" broke out: but at all events it was a startling change of scene. The Emperor struck his tents next morning, and departed from the neighbourhood of Rome in great rage and indignation:—and this, so far as Pope Innocent was concerned, was the last good that was ever heard of Otho. He broke all his vows one by one, took back the Tuscan States, seized the duchy of Spoleto and every city he passed on his way, and defied the Pope, to whom he had been so servile, having now got all from him that Innocent could give.

The plea by which Otho defended himself for his seizure of the States of Tuscany was worthy of that scholastic age. He had vowed, he said, it was true, to preserve St. Peter's patrimony and all the ecclesiastical possessions: but he had vowed at the same time to preserve and to recover all imperial rights and possessions, and it was in discharge of this obligation that he robbed the Pope. Thus ended Innocent's long and faithful support of Otho; he had pledged the faith of heaven for his success, which was assured only by accident and crime; but no sooner had that success been secured, than the Emperor deserted and betrayed the Pope who had so firmly stood by him. It is said that Innocent redoubled from that moment his care of the young Frederic, the King of Sicily, the head of the Hohenstaufen house and party, and prepared him to revenge Otho's broken oaths by a downfall as complete as his elevation had been; but this is an assumption which has no more proof than any other uncharitable judgment of motives unrevealed. At all events it is very apparent that in this long conflict, which occupied so much of his life, the Pope played no powerful or triumphant part.

In France the action of Innocent was more successful. The story of Philip Augustus and his wives, which is full of romantic incidents, is better known to the general reader than the tragedy of the Emperors. Philip Augustus had married a wife, a Danish princess, who did not please him. Her story, in its first chapter at least, is like that of Anne of Cleves, the fortunate princess who had the good luck not to please Henry VIII. (or perhaps still more completely resembles a comparatively recent catastrophe in our own royal house, the relations of George IV. and his unlucky wife). But the French king did not treat Ingelburga with the same politeness which Henry Tudor exhibited, neither had she the discretion to hold her tongue like the lady of Flanders. The complaints of the injured queen filled the world, and she made a direct appeal to the Pope, who was not slow to reply. When Philip procured a divorce from his wife from the complacent bishops of his own kingdom on one of those absurd allegations of too close relationship (it might be that of third or fourth cousin), which were of so much use to discontented husbands of sufficient rank, and married the beautiful Agnes of Meran, with whom he was in love, Innocent at once interfered. He began by commands, by entreaties, by attempts at settling the question by legal measures, commissioning his legates to hold a solemn inquiry into the matter, examining into Ingelburga's complaints, and using every endeavour to bring the king back to a sense of his duty. There could be no doubt on which side justice lay, and the legates were not, as in the case of Henry and Catherine, on the side of the monarch. It was the rejected queen who had the Pope's protection and not her powerful husband.

Philip Augustus, however, was summoned in vain to obey. The litigation and the appeals went on for a long time, and several years elapsed before Innocent, after much preparation and many warnings, determined not merely as on former occasions to excommunicate the offender, but to pronounce an interdict upon the kingdom. Perhaps Innocent had learned the lesson which had been taught him on such a great scale, that excommunication was not a fortunate weapon, and that only the perfect subordination of the higher clergy could make it successful at all. The interdict was a much greater and more dreadful thing; it was dependent not upon the obedience of a great prelate, but upon every priest who had taken the sacred vows. Had he excommunicated the king as on former occasions, no doubt there would always have been some lawless bishop in France who would have enabled his sovereign to laugh at the Pope and his sentence. But an interdict could not thus be evaded, the mass of the clergy being obedient to the Pope whatever important individual exceptions there might be. The interdict was proclaimed accordingly with all the accessories of ritualistic solemnity. After a Council which had lasted seven days, and which was attended by a great number of the clergy, the bells of the cathedral—it was that of Dijon—began to toll as for a dying man: and all the great bishops with their trains, and the legate at their head, went solemnly from their council chamber to the church. It was midnight, and the long procession went through the streets and into the great cathedral by the wavering and gloomy light of torches. For the last time divine service was celebrated, and the canons sang the Kyrie Eleison amid the silence, faintly broken by sobs and sounds of weeping, of the immense crowds who had followed them. The images of Christ and the saints were covered with crape, the relics of the saints, worshipped in those days with such strange devotion, were solemnly taken away out of the shrines and consecrated places to vaults and crypts underground where they were deposited until better times; the remains of the consecrated bread which had sustained the miracle of transubstantiation were burned upon the altar. All these details of the awful act of cutting off France from the community of the faithful were performed before a trembling and dismayed crowd, which looked on with a sense of the seriousness of the proceedings which was overwhelming.

"Then the legate, dressed in a violet stole, as on the day of the passion of our Lord, advanced to the altar steps, and in the name of Jesus Christ pronounced the interdict upon all the realm of France. Sobs and groans echoed through the great aisles of the cathedral; it was as if the day of judgment had come."