In England the barons refuse to desert John when under the interdict of the pope; when the pope becomes the king’s ally, resenting the cession of the realm, they withdraw their allegiance. Even in Stephen Langton, who owes his promotion to the pope, the Englishman prevails over the ecclesiastic; the Great Charter is extorted from the king when under the express protection of the holy see, and maintained resolutely against the papal sentence of abrogation; and in the Great Charter is laid the first stone of the religious as well as the civil liberties of the land.
Venice, in the crusade, deludes, defies, baffles the pope. The crusaders become her army, besiege, fight, conquer for her interests. In vain the pope protests, threatens, anathematises; Venice calmly proceeds in the subjugation of Zara. To the astonishment, the indignation of the pope, the crusaders’ banners wave not over Jerusalem, but over Constantinople. But for her own wisdom, Venice might have given an emperor to the capital of the East; she secures the patriarchate almost in defiance of the pope; only when she has entirely gained her ends does she submit to the petty and unregarded vengeance of the pope.
Even in the Albigensian war the success was indeed complete; heresy was crushed, but by means of which Innocent disapproved in his heart. He had let loose a terrible force, which he could neither arrest nor control. The pope can do everything but show mercy or moderation. He could not shake off, the papacy has never shaken off, the burden of its complicity in the remorseless carnage perpetrated by the crusaders in Languedoc, in the crimes and cruelties of Simon de Montfort. A dark and ineffaceable stain of fraud and dissimulation too has gathered around the fame of Innocent himself.[103] Heresy was quenched in blood; but the earth sooner or later gives out the terrible cry of blood for vengeance against murderers and oppressors.
The great religious event of this pontificate, the foundation of the Mendicant orders, that which perhaps perpetuated, or at least immeasurably strengthened, the papal power for two centuries, was extorted from the reluctant pope. Both St. Dominic and St. Francis were coldly received, almost contemptuously repelled. It was not till either his own more mature deliberation or wiser counsel, which took the form of divine admonition, prevented this fatal error and prophetically revealed the secret of their strength and of their irresistible influence throughout Christendom, that Innocent awoke to wisdom. He then bequeathed these two great standing armies to the papacy; armies maintained without cost, sworn, more than sworn, bound by the unbroken chains of their own zeal and devotion to unquestioning, unhesitating service throughout Christendom, speaking all languages. They were colonies of religious militia, natives of every land, yet under foreign control and guidance. Their whole power, importance, perhaps possessions rested on their fidelity to the see of Rome, that fidelity guaranteed by the charter of their existence. Well might they appear so great as they are seen by the eye of Dante, like the cherubim and seraphim in paradise.[e]
FREDERICK II AT WAR WITH THE PAPACY
[1216-1244 A.D.]
Honorius III, previously called Cencio Savelli, who succeeded Innocent, 1216, and governed the Roman church more than ten years, did not perform so many deeds worthy of being recorded; yet he was very careful that the Romish power should receive no diminution. Pursuing this course, he had a grievous falling out with the emperor Frederick II, a magnanimous prince, whom he himself had crowned at Rome in the year 1220. Frederick, imitating his grandfather, laboured to establish and enlarge the authority of the emperors in Italy, to depress the minor states and republics of Lombardy, and to diminish the immense wealth and power of the pontiffs and the bishops; and to accomplish these objects, he continually deferred the crusade, which he had promised with an oath. Honorius, on the other hand, continually urged Frederick to enter on his expedition to Palestine; yet he secretly encouraged, animated, and supported the cities and republics that resisted the emperor, and raised various impediments to the latter’s increasing power. Still, this hostility did not, at present, break out in open war.
But under Gregory IX—whose former name was Ugolino, and who was elevated from the bishopric of Ostia to the pontificate, 1227, an old man, but still bold and resolute—the fire, which had been long burning in secret, burst into a flame.[104] In the year 1227 the pontiff excommunicated the emperor, who still deferred his expedition to Palestine; but without proceeding in due form of ecclesiastical law, and without regarding the emperor’s excuse of ill health. In the year 1228 the emperor sailed with his fleet to Palestine; but instead of waging war as he was bound to do, he made a truce with Saladin on recovering Jerusalem. While he was absent the pontiff raised war against him in Apulia, and endeavoured to excite all Europe to oppose him. Therefore Frederick hastened back, in the year 1229, and after vanquishing his enemies, made his peace with the pontiff in the year 1230. But this peace could not be durable, as Frederick would not submit to the control of the pontiff. Therefore, as the emperor continued to press heavily on the republics of Lombardy, which were friendly to the pontiff, and transferred Sardinia, which the pontiff claimed as part of the patrimony of the church, to his son Enzio; and wished to withdraw Rome itself from the power of the pontiff; and did other things very offensive to Gregory—the pontiff, in the year 1239, again laid him under anathemas; and accused him to all the sovereigns of Europe of many crimes and enormities, and particularly of speaking contemptuously of the Christian religion.
The emperor, on the other hand, avenged the injuries that he received, both by written publications and by his military operations in Italy, in which he was for the most part successful; and thus he defended his reputation, and also brought the pontiff into perplexity and difficulty. To rescue himself, in some measure, in the year 1240 Gregory summoned a general council to meet at Rome, intending to hurl the emperor from his throne by the united suffrages of the assembled fathers. But Frederick, in the year 1241, captured the Genoese fleet, which was carrying a great part of the fathers to the council at Rome, and seizing as well their treasures as themselves, he cast them into prison. Broken down by these calamities, and by others of no less magnitude, Gregory shortly after sank into the grave.
The successor of Gregory, Goffredo Castiglione of Milan, who assumed the name of Celestine IV, died before his consecration; and after a long interregnum, in the year 1243, Senibaldi, a Genoese, descended from the counts Fieschi, succeeded under the pontifical name of Innocent IV, a man inferior to none of his predecessors in arrogance and insolence of temper. Between him and Frederick there were at first negotiations for peace; but the terms insisted on by the pontiff were deemed too harsh by the emperor. Hence Innocent, feeling himself unsafe in any part of Italy, in 1244 removed from Genoa to Lyons in France; and the next year assembled a council there, in the presence of which, but without its approbation (whatever the Roman writers may affirm to the contrary), he declared Frederick unworthy of the imperial throne.