| ### CHAPTER 8: THE CRISIS OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 1181-1198 ###  |

| #### 1. THE IMPERIAL MENACE TO THE FREEDOM OF RELIGION: (2) THE EMPEROR HENRY VI |

| #### #### THE quite exceptional longevity of Alexander III [ ] had been an undoubted factor in the recent failure of the emperor to reduce the papacy. With that pope's death the phenomenon, more usual in medieval times, of short reigns returned: Lucius III reigned for four years, Urban III for less than two, Gregory VIII for a matter of weeks only, Clement III for three years, then Celestine III for all but seven. Five conclaves in the ten years that followed Alexander s death! It was all the more unfortunate for the Church in that these were the years of a new imperial aggression; and this time the means employed -- and successfully -- were those of diplomacy. #### Lucius III, elected at Velletri (September 1, 1181) in accordance with the new electoral law -- for death had found Alexander III once more an exile -- was one of the late pope's most intimate counsellors. He had been, years before, a disciple of St. Bernard, who had given him the Cistercian habit. Innocent II, as far back as 1141, had made him a cardinal, and it was as Cardinal Bishop of Ostia that, in 1159, he had crowned Alexander III. He had been the chief factor in the speedy recognition of Alexander as pope in 1160 and had played a great part in the negotiations of 1177. He was of a more supple disposition than Alexander, and, at the price of concessions to the commune, he managed to regain possession of Rome within a few weeks of his election. By the following February (1182), however, he was once more driven out, and, desperate before his inability to protect the other cities of his States from the raids and violence of the Romans, he turned for help to the emperor. #### It was not the new pope's first contact with Frederick. Already the emperor had sought to settle the question of the Matildine lands, left dormant in 1177, offering in exchange for them an annual percentage of his Italian revenues. Lucius had, however, refused to discuss the matter while the other question left out at the Peace of Venice remained unsettled, namely the relation of the emperor to the Lombard Communes. In 1183, however, the six years' truce expired, and Frederick and the communes came to an agreement, in the Treaty of Constance. The emperor thereby abandoned his claim to name the rulers of the Lombard cities; he acknowledged the Lombards' right to fortify their towns and to conclude alliances and leagues; and, in return, the cities pledged themselves to allow the emperor free passage through northern Italy, and to give him the means to provide for his armies. #### This was in June, 1183. The Lombards had won all they had fought for. The emperor had renounced the claims that would have made Lombardy a permanent Italian base of operations. But now, by another stroke of diplomacy, he acquired a much more certain base in the south. The means of this was the marriage of his heir, the future Henry VI, to the heiress of the King of Sicily. A matrimonial alliance with Sicily had been one of Frederick's schemes in 1173, but Alexander III had been too much for him. Now, with the Lombard question settled and the aged Lucius III isolated and helpless, the emperor had his way. The betrothal took place at Augsburg, October 29, 1184, and the marriage at Milan, fifteen months later. It was the gravest check for a hundred and fifty years to the papal policy of political independence. Future popes would have to meet the permanent menace of an emperor who was not only lord of Germany, but master of Sicily and Naples and with extensive rights in Lombardy, too. #### Lucius III, for all his extreme old age and the political misfortunes which brought him to the emperor as to a protector, was by no means unmindful of the danger. Nor was he afraid to protest. Despite the emperor's insistence -- in order to secure the empire for his heir -- that Henry should now be crowned emperor with himself, Lucius steadfastly refused. Barbarossa began to prepare an offensive alliance with the Lombard towns. It left the pope, if tremulous, still firm in his refusal. Before the matter could go further Lucius died (November 25, 1185), leaving to his successor an almost impossible task. #### It was at Verona that the pope had made his stand, where through the summer of 1184 a long series of discussions with the emperor had taken place, in circumstances that made their meeting almost as important as a council of the Church. One of the questions then discussed concerned a heritage from the days of the schism. The Lateran Council of 1179 had declared null the ordinations of the anti-popes and of those who acknowledged them. The emperor asked for a revocation of this, and while the pope was willing to consider the matter, the cardinals urged that only a General Council had competence for it. The pope, thereupon, promised to call such a council to meet at Lyons. A further question discussed was the growth of heresy, and the outcome of this discussion was the famous joint decree of pope and emperor Ad abolendam. [ ] #### Lucius III died the next year (1185). The Archbishop of Milan who succeeded, as Urban III, was unable to hinder the Sicilian marriage, already arranged, but he took what opportunities came his way of limiting Frederick's success. He supported strongly the candidature of the anti-imperialist, Folmar, for the electoral see of Treves, and when Frederick volunteered to help Milan in its attack on Cremona, the pope forbade the Italian cities to join in the war. Urban was soon an exile at Verona, undecided whether to seek a refuge in Venice; and now, while Frederick marched against his German allies, the young Henry VI invaded the Papal States. #### Suddenly the news arrived that Jerusalem had fallen to the Saracens. [ ] Consternation fell upon Christendom. The emperor himself took the cross and departed for the East. He left Henry as his regent. In this young sovereign the popes were to meet the most capable foe that had so far risen against them. Henry VI's Italian career divides itself easily enough. There is a period of preparation, and a first attack that ends in failure; then a period of intense activity in Germany in which several strokes of good fortune assist him, a second Italian expedition, and the most complete success; then, in the hour of his triumph, sudden death at the age of thirty-six. #### Henry was a master politician, and he had already systematically placed men he could trust in all the strong places of the Matildine lands and the March of Ancona, thus isolating the pope from Lombardy, when, on November 18, 1189, the death of the King of Sicily renewed the crisis terminated two years before by the crusade. Henry's wife, Constance, was now Queen of Sicily, [ ] but the kingdom which Henry proposed to occupy in her name was by no means unanimously agreed in her favour. There existed a powerful anti-imperialist party, and soon it had organised a new government with Tancred -- an illegitimate descendant of the Norman kings -- as king. The pope, now Clement III, secretly favoured this competitor to Henry, and by the end of 1190 Tancred was master of the situation. Henry then took the field in person, and as he marched through Italy the same good fortune fell to him as had befallen his father in 1159 -- the death of the pope (March 20, 1191). Better still, from the king's point of view, the cardinals elected an old man of eighty-five -- Celestine III. He was not at all willing to confer on Henry the imperial crown, [ ] but he had no means to prevent his occupation of Rome and no choice but to recognise him as emperor. #### The new emperor next invested Naples, where Tancred and the best part of his forces lay. Here disaster followed upon disaster. The Neapolitan fleet destroyed the Pisan fleet that was in the emperor s service, and the July heats were too much for Henry's northern troops. Two of his chief lieutenants died, he himself fell gravely ill and, to crown all, his wife was captured, to become Tancred's prisoner. Henry had no choice but to return to Germany and reorganise. Southern Italy, for the moment, was free of him and the pope had a breathing space, in which to prevent new dangers -- if possible -- by diplomacy. #### With the emperor, however, no understanding was possible so long as he refused to evacuate the papal territories he still held. I or Celestine's legates he had indeed nothing but new threats. The pope proceeded to develop the other policy, of alliance with Tancred. He acknowledged him as King of Sicily and gave him investiture, Tancred conceding to the pope as suzerain the right to decide appeals and the right to send a legate to the kingdom every five years. Further, in a vain hope of conciliating the emperor, the pope persuaded Tancred to release his valuable hostage, the Empress Constance. #### In Germany meanwhile (1192-1193) the emperor was faced with a powerful coalition, the centre of which was Henry of Brunswick. But the capture of Henry's uncle, the English king Richard Coeur de Lion, who also was an ally of Tancred, did much to break up this league of German princes, and his enormous ransom largely solved for the emperor the question how to finance the new Italian expedition. Henry of Brunswick's marriage with the emperor's niece completed the pacification of Germany. Then, just as the emperor was ready to deal with Sicily, Tancred died, on February 28, 1194, leaving only a child to succeed him. Henry's task had lost all its difficulty. The papacy was truly at his mercy. #### He set out in May, 1194. His diplomacy won him the fleets of both Genoa and Pisa, and while he was still at Pisa the Neapolitans came to proffer their homage. Henry was finally master of central and southern Italy. #### He left Constance to rule his new acquisition, and returned to Germany to organise his next expedition: a crusade which should avenge the failure of that of 1190-1192, and should also make him master of Constantinople. The pope, who had not dared to protest at Henry's arrest of Richard Coeur de Lion, a crusader returning from the Holy Land, could only send a message of thanks and congratulation. Along with the grandiose plan to conquer the East and so make himself really another Constantine, there went the determination to transform the elective empire into a dignity hereditary in his own family. The emperor opened his campaign at the Diet of Wurzburg in 1196, persuading many of the bishops and nobles to give him signed promises of support. Next, to further the scheme, he sought to win from the pope the coronation of his baby son, Frederick Roger, then just two years old. With this in view he once again came into Italy. The pope was utterly helpless, but his ninety years gave him one advantage -- he could simply be deaf to the emperor's suggestion. He began by presenting Henry with a list of grievances: oppression of the Church in Sicily, the continued occupation of the papal territory by imperial garrisons; and then, when Henry became dangerously urgent, he promised to give a definite answer by the feast of the Epiphany, 1197. #### That date found the emperor in his kingdom of Sicily, busy with the suppression of a widespread insurrection, long plotted under the oppression of Henry's German subordinates, and for whose explosion his own arrival was the signal. There were plots against his life, in which an alleged paramour of his wife was concerned: Henry had him tortured to death in her presence. And there were savage reprisals throughout the kingdom: plotters burnt at the stake, sawn in two, buried alive. Finally the terror triumphed. By August, 1197, Henry was once more master. A month later fever had carried him off, with just the time before he died to leave his son and heir in the wardship of the one person he could trust in a treacherous world -- the ninety-year-old pope! #### Celestine III lived only a few months longer, and with the election of his successor the wheel of fortune turned indeed its full. While, in place of Henry VI, there was the baby three years old, and while in Germany rival princes fought for the imperial crown, the cardinals, instead of electing yet another octogenarian, set in place of Celestine a man of thirty-seven, the Cardinal Lothario of Segni. He took the name of Innocent III (January 8, 1198). ####  |