| #### 4. INNOCENT III AND THE CATHOLIC PRINCES |

| #### #### The crusade against the Albigenses, the beginnings of the Order of Preachers, and the approval of the Friars Minor were for Innocent III so many means of countering newly arisen dangers to the future of Catholic unity. But older than any of these, was the danger, chronic since the time of Justinian, of the Church's dependence upon the Catholic State. The pope, above all, must not be politically subject to the emperor, and he must be able to control his own subjects, the powerful barons of the Campagna especially and the turbulent bourgeois of the towns. A series of monastic popes had begun the good work of liberating religion from the control of the lay lord, and, in doing so, they had brought to birth the Canon Law. One of the greatest of the canonists of this pioneer generation had next become pope himself. In a long reign of twenty-two years, filled very largely with resistance to a new assault on his spiritual independence, he had added enormously to the bulk of that law, had developed the field of the Roman Church's habitual action, and had, indirectly, definitely created the role of the canonist-pope. Such was the effect of Alexander III. In Innocent III that role was played in all its fullness. The consequences were literally, for once, epoch-making that, within seventeen years of Alexander's death, another superb canonist, fifty to sixty years younger -- younger by the age of two generations of thought in a time when legal thought was developing rapidly came to rule the Church, and that he ruled it for eighteen years. #### Innocent III came to his post possessed of the whole theory of law, not merely learned in a collection of laws only half understood as Law. The corpus of legal deductions from the old truth of the Roman See's supremacy in the Church, which were the result of the application of that supremacy to the hundred happenings of everyday life, Innocent proceeded to apply 011 a greater scale than ever, thereby giving to it an even richer development than Alexander III, and setting an ideal, not only of constructive jurisprudence but of practical policy, which his successors have never lost. The new universal initiative which, with St. Leo IX, the Roman See had assumed, it could never, after Innocent III, abdicate nor safely neglect, nor could any other see ever, henceforward, be more than a dependent local power. #### The pope is God's vicar -- a phrase Innocent constantly uses, where his predecessors had said Vicar of Peter. His power in the Church is therefore absolute, his jurisdiction throughout the Church immediate, and explicitly declared to be such. Bishops are his representatives; and innumerable are the cases where, setting aside the elect of the chapter, Innocent appoints the man of his choice. Direct communication between bishops and the pope becomes much more frequent. All translations, resignations and, a fortiori, depositions are matter for the pope's exclusive decision, for a bishop is married to his church and jurisdiction in questions of the vinculum of marriage is the pope's exclusive prerogative. The pope has the right to examine and to exact an account of all episcopal administration; and it is a right which Innocent exercises continuously, setting aside here, very often, the right of the metropolitan. Especially after the Latin conquest of Constantinople (1203) does this tendency grow; and the pope, apparently, planned to Latinise the whole Church. Another consequence of the new juridical centralisation was the pope's enunciation, and in the most practical way, of his right to appoint any cleric to any office in any church throughout the world. They are not mere recommendations which begin to descend from Rome on the different patrons of benefices, but commands to appoint this person or the other. It says much for the way in which Innocent judged his age, and for the correspondence between its needs and his policies, that the bishops, although they resisted strenuously enough his efforts to coerce their political action, in these matters of spiritual government gave him absolute obedience, More than ever, from all over the world, on all manner of questions, bishops wrote to Rome for direction, for advice and for solutions. Innocent III's practice, the eighteen years' administration of a ruler, skilled in law and ruling with the deliberate design of developing his jurisdiction, completed the work of Alexander III, and crowned the Roman revival inaugurated in the lifetime of St. Gregory VII. What Damasus, Siricius, Leo the Great and Gelasius had begun, and the barbaric catastrophe had interrupted, these popes achieved; it only remained for Gregory IX to set it all down in the Decretals, and for their successors virtuously to use the splendid instrument. #### But the theory of the papal power as that of God's vicar, did not end with the Canon Law and the government of the spirituality. As vicar on earth of the King of Kings, the pope, it began to be held by the canonists, must share in God's universal power over mankind. If the Priest and the King are, both of them, set by God to rule the world, they are by no means equal parties in that task. The King is the servant appointed to carry out the instructions of the Priest. The Priest has the duty of supervising the King, of correcting him, and, where necessary, even of punishing him. #### The State was on the way to become an organ of religion. Its rights, its very existence as a natural reality, antecedent in time to the Church, were, for these new theorists of the Canon Law, entirely lost to sight. All this was a striking reversal of what had obtained three centuries earlier under Charlemagne, when the State, with the consent of the bishops, in practice governed the Church. Christendom, the City of God upon earth, is one thing. It can therefore have but a single head -- had it more than one, a later pope [ ] will declare, it would be a monstrosity. As to who that head shall be there cannot, in Christendom. be any doubt. It must be God's vicar, the Roman Pontiff. It, for convenience, the pope had entrusted to the State one of the two swords committed to him by God, the pope remained, none the less. master of both. It is not from God directly that the kings receive their authority, but from God through His vicar, the pope. So much has the theory developed since the days of Gregory VII, thanks to a century of the new scientific ecclesiastical jurisprudence stimulated by the attempts of Barbarossa and Henry VI to regain their old control. These emperors had claimed an absolutism in which they would dominate the papacy and the Church. The canonists retorted by this theory of another absolutism where the popes would dominate the princes and their temporal authority. The one effectual answer to these developments of the canonists no one as yet was able to state -- the theory of the State as an autonomous natural society. But in these very years when the canonists triumphed, another school of working jurists was preparing whose sole inspiration was the Roman Law, and the end of the thirteenth century would see the canonists' first defeat at its hands. #### The field open to the pontifical intervention was now, therefore, limitless. Not only the private life of the kings -- questions of marriage, for instance -- came into it, but questions of taxation also, questions of coinage, questions of the succession. In all of these, somewhere, a point of morals was involved and the pope, thereby, was given a ground to intervene. Innocent III certainly believed himself authorised to exercise as pope -- apart altogether from what rights he might have as feudal suzerain [ ] -- a direct authority in these and in purely political questions too. It was the building of this theory into every act of Innocent's enormously busy reign, rather, even, than the most important of those acts, which gave to that reign its immense significance in the history of the next three hundred years. Canon Law had more than emancipated itself from the tutelage of Theology. How far could Theology now defend it, in the reaction already slowly preparing,. in the coming fight with the new civilian lawyers? #### In marriage questions Innocent III intervened in Portugal to annul the marriage of the heir to the throne with a too-near relation; and he quashed the marriage of the King of Leon for a like reason, excommunicating the king until he separated from the cousin he had taken to wife. Still more resounding was the pope's strong action in regard to a much more important supporter of the papacy, Philip II of France. Five years before Innocent was elected, the King of France had repudiated his wife, Ingeborg of Denmark, and had taken in her place Agnes of Meran. Celestine III had admonished him, all to no purpose, but the new pope immediately warned him that unless he dismissed Agnes the kingdom would be placed under an interdict. Philip 11 persisted and in December, 1199, the papal sentence was carried out. Nine months later Philip submitted so far as to put away Agnes, and the interdict was lifted. For years the effort to persuade him to take back the queen continued, but not until 1213 was the pope finally successful. #### With the English king, John, the pope had an even longer struggle, but in the end here, too, he was victorious. The question at issue was the succession to the primatial see of Canterbury or the death of Hubert Walter in 1205. The monks of the cathedral monastery elected their sub-prior. The king had desired the translation of the Bishop of Norwich. The suffragan bishops of the province of Canterbury were in arms against the monks' right to elect. Innocent confirmed the right of the monks, but set aside both their candidate and the choice of the king, and suggested to the representatives of the monks the English cardinal, Stephen Langton, a leading figure in the learned world of the time. This was in 1206. John resisted, refused to allow the new archbishop to enter the kingdom, and punished heavily all who had shared in the election. In 1208, therefore, Innocent laid the whole of England under an interdict. #### John, the strongest personality among the reigning princes of Europe, held out, ordering his clergy to disregard the censure The next year he was excommunicated. Three years later (1212 Innocent declared him to have forfeited his right to rule; his subjects were freed from their oath of allegiance, and the King of France was charged with the duty of carrying out the de position. Then John surrendered. He made over his kingdom to the pope, receiving it back as the vassal of St. Peter, and promising an annual tribute of a thousand marks. He accepted the archbishop and the interdict was lifted (June 29, 1214). The papal-suzerainty over the new vassal state was not a mere name. In the struggle between John and his barons, which had accompanied the struggle with the pope and which went on after this was settled, Innocent, like a good overlord, came to his vassal’s assistance. The barons forced on John a recognition of their privileges -- the Great Charter of 1215 -- and when John appealed against it, Innocent absolved him from his promises. They had been made without the knowledge or consent of the overlord, and so could not lawfully bind the vassal. #### How soon the new amity between John and the great pope would have ended we can only guess. In the course of the next year (1216) both of them died, and one of the first tasks before Innocent's successor was to secure for John's heir -- the child Henry III -- the full succession to his inheritance. All through the minority of this king papal legates watched over his interests, [ ] protecting his rights against the turbulent nobility with all the armament of papal censure and the new prestige of the Apostolic See. #### Where Innocent III's conception of the papacy's universal lordship found most its striking exposition was, of course, in his relations with the empire. Here, at the beginning, fortune favoured Innocent supremely. He was elected while the anti- German reaction that followed the death of Henry VI [ ] was still sweeping all before it in Italy. In Henry's own kingdom of Sicily the reaction was led by his widow Constance, ruling as regent for her baby son, Frederick II. In the centre of Italy, too, in the papal lands Henry had occupied and in the lands of the Countess Matilda, the anti-imperialist spirit was no less strong; and here, as in Rome itself, Innocent had little difficulty in re-establishing the temporal authority of the Roman See. It was not by any means a complete victory over the forces of disruption which had had their own way now for generations, but, thanks to the skill with which the new pope used his opportunity, the Holy See, in Rome and in Italy, was, by the end of 1199, in a stronger position politically than for forty years and more. #### Henry VI died at the end of August, 1197. When Innocent was elected pope, in the following January, no successor to Henry, as King of Germany, had as yet been chosen by the German princes. Henry's son, the baby King of Sicily, was ruled out from that succession by his age. A much more likely candidate was Henry's brother, Philip of Swabia, who, however, as the chief agent of Henry's Italian policy, lay under the sentence of excommunication for his share in the violation of ecclesiastical rights. #### In March, 1198, a gathering of German princes elected Philip, notwithstanding the excommunication. But not all the princes had taken part in the election. There was a strong minority which had no desire to see a fourth king and emperor from the Hohenstaufen; three months after the election of Philip, these other princes elected Otto of Brunswick, the younger son of Barbarossa's lifelong rival, Henry the Lion. So it came about that, where Innocent's predecessors had been faced with the menace of a strongly united empire under a master politician, Henry VI, who was also King of Sicily, Innocent III -- his rights as suzerain over Sicily once more recognised -- saw Germany torn by civil war, and the rivals, Philip and Otto, striving each to enlist his support. In a short nine months the wheel had indeed turned. #### The pope was, at first, most carefully neutral. As the year 1198 ran out, and through the spring of 1199, Philip gained steadily. By May of that year he was almost everywhere victorious, and a gathering of his supporters notified the pope, from Spires, that Philip had been elected emperor, and that his nobles and bishops would support him in his endeavour to regain all the jurisdiction of his brother and predecessor, Henry VI (May 28, 1199). The peril that had hung over the papacy and Christendom in the reign of the aged Celestine III began to threaten once again. #### Innocent protested immediately that, in proclaiming Philip emperor, the diet of Spires had gone beyond its powers. The princes had the right indeed to elect their king, but it was for the pope alone to make the German king emperor. Beyond this protest Innocent, for the moment, went no further, all his energies being directed to driving out of Sicily the partisans of Philip, who had successfully occupied the kingdom and were rebuilding the centralised despotism of Henry VI. #### By the January of 1201 the pope had made up his mind, and in March he published his decision. The reasoning that lay behind it is contained in one of the most famous of all papal statepapers, the Deliberation on the question of the Empire. [ ] Frederick of Sicily the pope rules out because of his age; Philip, also, the pope rejects -- as one lying under excommunication for offences so far unamended and unrepented, and also because he came from a family traditionally hostile to the Church. The empire moreover is not, in law, a family heritage; and to confer it upon yet a fourth Hohenstaufen would be to make it hereditary in fact. It is then to Otto that the pope makes over the supreme dignity, who comes of a family for loyal centuries to the interests of religion; wherefore "By the divine authority transmitted to us by blessed Peter, we recognise you as king, and we command all men to swear to you loyalty and obedience." #### On June 8, 1201, Otto solemnly pledged himself to restore to the pope all the territories occupied contrary to the will of the Holy See in the previous fifteen years: the Patrimony, Ravenna, Spoleto, Ancona; and to make over the lands inherited from the Countess Matilda. The war now took another turn and the pope intervened, setting all his diplomacy to rally supporters to Otto, outside Germany as well as among its princes. Philip replied through the proclamation of the diet of Bamberg (September 8, 1201). The pope, it was declared, was a foreigner, and the election of the emperor was the concern of Germany alone; it was rather the emperor who should name the pope, than the pope the emperor; ancient history showed how true this was. The bishops agreed with the lay princes. #### For reply (May, 1202) the pope repeated his ruling, and the reasons for it, stating with legal formality the relations of the pope and princes to the empire. The German princes are declared to possess the right to elect the king and emperor-elect. But the source of their right is the Apostolic See. The right was granted to them when the pope transferred the empire from the Greeks to the Germans. The king elected by the princes the pope may reject -- for the pope is not bound to crown as emperor a candidate who is unworthy, who may be, for example, a person excommunicated, or even a heretic. The pope, then, is to judge the fitness of the candidate; and if the pope reject him the princes must elect another, in default of which the pope will himself choose the emperor. Should it so happen that two candidates are elected -- the present difficulty -- the princes must call in the pope to arbitrate. Should they not do so, the pope will decide without their invitation. In making his decision the pope is to be guided, not by the legality of the elections that have been made, but by the qualifications and character of the rivals elected. #### The bishops who had signed the manifesto of Bamberg were now excommunicated, and their resistance brought upon Germany a renewal of the schism of forty years before. Soon, in many sees, there were two bishops -- the excommunicated supporter of Philip and the bishop recognised by the pope -- and contests everywhere. #### Despite the pope's activity Otto's cause, however, continued to decline. He lost supporters steadily, and in Italy the native anti-papal forces, given new life through their association with the greater conflict, prevailed once more. The work of 1198 was undone, and Innocent driven from Rome like the weakest of his predecessors. In Germany Otto's army was destroyed and he himself fled for safety to England. All along the line Philip was victorious and, to all appearances, finally victorious. But he still needed the pope, and, in June, 1206, he made a bid for recognition. Between him and the pope's support there lay the old excommunication for his invasion and robbery of Church lands. Now he offered to submit. Innocent suggested to Otto that the question of the election be submitted to arbitration. Otto refused. Philip gave satisfaction for the crimes that had earned his personal excommunication in the time of Innocent's predecessor, and was absolved (August, 1207). He next offered to make all the restitution in Italy to which Otto had pledged himself. Everything was tending to a complete reconciliation between Innocent and Philip when, in June, 1208, he was murdered, by a personal enemy, for reasons of private revenge. #### If Otto and the princes could now come to terms, the war would cease. An accommodation was found: Otto married his predecessor's daughter, and he consented to submit himself to a re-election. This time the princes accepted him unanimously. There remained the pope, Otto's patron so long as his cause had had a fighting chance, and thanks to whom, in very large part, he was now the elect of Germany. Otto, in the first critical stage of the struggle, had already made all the desirable promises. Now, as emperor-elect, petitioning the pope for the imperial crown, he renewed them, in the Charter of Spires (March 22, 1209). On October 4, 1209, Otto IV was crowned at Rome by the pope. After eleven years of diplomacy and war, years of a patient firmness equal to his high claims, Innocent had seemingly restored the papal overlordship to where it had been at Barbarossa's accession. #### His victory was little more than an appearance. Otto was no sooner crowned than he began to show himself more Ghibelline than the Hohenstaufen, and heir to all the ambitions and the policies of Henry VI. The territories of the Holy See were once more occupied; imperial officials were installed in the different Italian cities; and the emperor invaded Sicily, the kingdom of the pope's ward and vassal, Frederick II. #### Innocent fought the new tyranny by every diplomatic means in his power and then, just thirteen months after the coronation, he excommunicated Otto and freed his subjects from their allegiance to him. Saul had proved unreliable; another would take his place. #### Innocent's David was the young King of Sicily. In September, 1211, the imperial crown was offered to him, and a year and three months later he was crowned King of Germany at Frankfort. All that was Hohenstaufen in Germany rallied to him, and Otto's fortunes declined as rapidly as they had declined before Frederick's uncle ten years earlier. The papal diplomacy succeeded now where then it had failed. Philip II of France was free at last to be the pope's ally, in Germany as in Languedoc; French interests and the papal interests coincided; and in the great battle of Bouvines (July 27, 1214) Otto's cause went down for ever. He died four years later, but from the day of Bouvines, Frederick was safely master in Germany. #### Innocent, to whose policy Philip of Swabia had finally bent and who had next imposed his will on Otto, had finally succeeded in destroying Otto, for his disloyalty, and had set in his place his own ward and pupil. After seventeen years of endless vigilance, and of a use of all the means he could command, the genius of Innocent had checked the menace of Languedoc, and had secured the Church from the equally dangerous political domination of the empire. The existence of religion once again made secure he could resume the work of reform, give himself wholly to that restoration of Christian life throughout the Church the need for which had inspired every pope for a hundred and fifty years. It should begin with a general council. ####  |