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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).
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