General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT.—The authority of the Popes was at its height during the thirteenth century. The beginning of this period of papal splendor is marked by the accession to the pontifical throne of Innocent III. (1198-1216), the greatest of the Popes after Gregory VII. Under him was very nearly made good the papal claim that all earthly sovereigns were merely vassals of the Roman Pontiff. Almost all the kings and princes of Europe swore fealty to him as their overlord. "Rome was once more the mistress of the world."

POPE INNOCENT III. AND PHILIP AUGUSTUS OF FRANCE.—One of Innocent's most signal triumphs in his contest with the kings of Europe was gained over Philip Augustus (1180-1223) of France. That king having put away his wife, Innocent commanded him to take her back, and forced him to submission by means of an interdict. "This submission of such a prince," says Hallam, "not feebly superstitious like his predecessor Robert, nor vexed with seditions, like the Emperor Henry IV., but brave, firm, and victorious, is perhaps the proudest trophy in the scutcheon of Rome."

POPE INNOCENT III. AND KING JOHN OF ENGLAND.—Innocent's quarrel with King John (1199-1216) of England will afford another illustration of the power of the Popes. The See of Canterbury falling vacant, John ordered the monks who had the right of election to give the place to a favorite of his. They obeyed; but the Pope immediately declared the election void, and caused the vacancy to be filled with one of his own friends, Stephen Langton. John declared that the Pope's archbishop should never enter England as primate, and proceeded to confiscate the estates of the See. Innocent III. now laid all England under an interdict, excommunicated John, and incited the French king, Philip Augustus, to undertake a crusade against the contumacious rebel.

The outcome of the matter was that John, like the German Emperor before him, was compelled to yield to the power of the Church. He gave back the lands he had confiscated, acknowledged Langton to be the rightful primate of England, and even went so far as to give England to the Pope as a perpetual fief. In token of his vassalage he agreed to pay to the Papal See the annual sum of 1000 marks. This tribute money was actually paid, though with very great irregularity, until the seventeenth year of the reign of Edward I. (1289).

THE MENDICANTS, OR BEGGING FRIARS.—The authority of the immediate successors of Innocent III. was powerfully supported by the monastic orders of the Dominicans and Franciscans, established early in the thirteenth century. They were named after their respective founders, St. Dominic (1170-1221) and St. Francis (1182-1226). The principles on which these fraternities were established were very different from those which had shaped all previous monastic institutions. Until now the monk had sought cloistral solitude in order to escape from the world, and through penance and prayer and contemplation to work out his own salvation. In the new orders, the monk was to give himself wholly to the work of securing the salvation of others.

Again, the orders were also as orders to renounce all earthly possessions, and, "espousing Poverty as a bride," to rely entirely for support upon the alms of the pious. Hitherto, while the individual members of a monastic order must affect extreme poverty, the house or fraternity might possess any amount of communal wealth.

The new fraternities grew and spread with marvellous rapidity, and in less than a generation they quite overshadowed all of the old monastic orders of the Church. The Popes conferred many and special privileges upon them, and they in turn became the staunchest friends and supporters of the Roman See. They were to the Papacy of the thirteenth century what the later order of the Jesuits was to the Roman Church of the seventeenth (see p. 528).

REMOVAL OF THE PAPAL SEAT TO AVIGNON (1309).—Having now noticed some of the most prominent circumstances and incidents that marked the gradual advance of the bishops of Rome to almost universal political and ecclesiastical sovereignty, we shall next direct attention to some of the chief events that marked the decline of their temporal power, and prepared the way for the rejection, at a later date, by a large part of Christendom, of their spiritual authority.

One of the severest blows given both the temporal and the spiritual authority of the Popes was the removal, in 1309, through the influence of the French king, Philip the Fair, of the papal chair from Rome to Avignon, in Provence, near the frontier of France. Here it remained for a space of about seventy years, an era known in Church history as the Babylonian Captivity. While it was established here, all the Popes were French, and of course all their policies were shaped and controlled by the French kings. "In that city," says Stille, "the Papacy ceased, in the eyes of a very large part of Christendom, to possess that sacred cosmopolitan character which no doubt had had much to do with the veneration and respect with which the Catholic authority had been regarded."

THE GREAT SCHISM (1378).—The discontent awakened among the Italians by the situation of the papal court at length led to an open rupture between them and the French party. In 1378 the opposing factions each elected a Pope, and thus there were two heads of the Church, one at Avignon and the other at Rome.