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HONORIUS III, elected pope two days after the death of Innocent III,
was by no means another Innocent, for all that his life had been spent
in his predecessor's service. He had indeed been a personage of
importance in the Roman Church for now thirty years. As the head of the
Treasury he had done much to reorganise the whole financial
administration, and the Liber Censuum, a kind of ecclesiastical
Domesday Book, is his work. He was also the compiler of the twelfth
Ordo Romanus and the author of a life of St. Gregory VII. It was this
trained, careful, mild-mannered official whom Innocent had chosen to
tutor the early years of the new Emperor Frederick II, and possibly
this close association played a part in his election. But Honorius was
now an old man, and the event was to show very speedily how mistaken
were any hopes of future co-operation between pope and emperor based
upon their years of intimate association. It is questionable whether
even Innocent himself could have controlled his ward now arrived at
man's estate.
Frederick II, twenty-two years old when Innocent's death deprived him
of his guardian, and set his tutor on the papal throne, was the wonder
man of his generation. A dozen strains and influences mingled in his
blood: the force of his grandfather Barbarossa, the political craft of
his father Henry VI, the military gift of his mother's Norman blood, a
passion for learning, and all the rich amalgam of the old
long-civilised state where so far he had passed his life, that Sicily
which, even after one hundred and fifty years of Norman rule, was still
more Oriental than European, as much Moslem as Christian. Competent,
determined, crafty, and altogether without scruple, Frederick awaited
only the opportune moment In this ward of the popes the independence of
religion was to meet, yet once again, an enemy who could not triumph
and the Church survive.
For the eleven years during which Honorius ruled, his indulgence to the
young man he had fathered masked the danger. Frederick's vow to lead a
crusade went unfulfilled, and the old pope contented himself with
admonitions and reproaches. Seven times in ten years the farce was
re-enacted, the emperor first fixing a date, and then offering his
excuses which the pope, with inexhaustible faith in his goodwill, was
paternally content to accept. Frederick had pledged his word -- as the
condition of his election to the empire -- that he would never unite to
it the crown of Sicily. Sicily he had made over to his son Henry. In
1220, however, Henry was elected King of the Romans, emperor-to-be. The
pope protested, and Frederick explained that it had been done without
his knowledge. He renewed all the lavish promises of restitution of the
long-lost Matildine lands, took the cross once again, annulled all laws
that encroached on clerical privileges, and Honorius was satisfied.
Meanwhile, during these eleven years, Frederick built up a new
scientific despotism in Sicily, and planned to renew his grandfather's
attempt to make himself master of Lombardy (1226, Diet of Cremona).
This was too much, even for Honorius, and a breach seemed imminent
when, in 1227, the old pope died. In his place was elected the Cardinal
Ugolino. He took the name of Gregory IX -- significantly.
Gregory IX, as the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, had been, since the
election of Innocent III, one of the most prominent figures in the
Curia. He was a near relative of that pope who had created him cardinal
in the year of his accession (1198). He had also chosen Ugolino as one
of the legates to whom was committed the delicate task of reconciling
Philip of Swabia in 1207. Two years later Ugolino was once more in
Germany as legate, in connection with the re-election and coronation of
Otto IV. He had played a great part in the conclave of 1216, and under
Honorius III he had been legate in Lombardy and Tuscany, and then
charged with the preaching of the crusade of 1217-1221. He was himself
no mean scholar, trained in the schools of Paris and Bologna and
especially versed in the new Canon Law. His own life was mortified and
exemplary. He had been a personal friend of St. Francis, whom he had
advised in the composition of the definitive rule, and he had had much
to do with the first approbation of the Order of Preachers also. His
career reveals him as a man of exceptional strength of will, impulsive,
passionate, and yet able to forbear. For the eleven years of his
predecessor's pontificate he had had to look on while the enemy grew in
strength and prepared the positions from which he would attack. Now,
after all these years of Frederick's successful dalliance, the Church
had once more for pope a man with character and strength of will.
It was in the March of 1227 that Gregory IX was elected. Frederick was
now, by right of his wife, King of Jerusalem; a crusade was once more
in preparation and the troops converging on Brindisi. On September 8
Frederick set sail. A few days later he had returned. The long delay
that had kept the army in camp through the southern Italian summer had
bred a pestilence; thousands of the troops had perished; Frederick, so
it was announced, had contracted some kind of fever- hence his return.
The crusade, the greater part of it, returned with him; the armies
broke up, the men made their way home. Was Frederick's illness real? It
is not possible to say. Certainly the pope thought it feigned, the
latest, merely, of a series of ingenious devices to escape his duty as
emperor and the obligations to which he had repeatedly pledged himself
by oath. The crusade was at an end, and much of its army destroyed by
Frederick's negligence. On September 29 the pope solemnly
excommunicated him for his breach of the crusader's vow, and two weeks
later in a letter to the Christian world he pointed out the repeated
pledges and perjuries of Frederick since his election to the empire in
1215. The pope wrote a private letter, at the same time, to the emperor
explaining that public opinion, already outraged by Frederick's plunder
of sees, abbeys, and hospitals in his kingdom of Sicily, had a right to
some satisfaction and that Frederick's last exploit had left him no
choice but to act; nevertheless the pope was being merciful; he had
not, for example, deprived Frederick of Sicily: let Frederick respond
in the same spirit.
The emperor replied by a denunciation of the pope for the lack of
charity with which he had stirred up hatred against him throughout the
world. On March 23, 1228, Gregory issued a second excommunication
because the emperor had ignored the first, and with it an interdict
that was to operate in every place where Frederick halted. Furthermore,
if Frederick continued in his evil course, he should be deprived of
Sicily. This was on Maundy Thursday, and by the Wednesday of Easter
Week the emperor's partisans in Rome had driven the pope forth.
Frederick ignored this sentence too, and renewed his preparation to
accomplish that lay conquest of the East which had been the ambition of
the last two Hohenstaufen Princes also. He set sail from Brindisi on
June 18, 1228, with a curiously mixed force which included, besides
Germans and Italians, some of his own Mohammedan subjects. In July he
took possession of Cyprus as regent for the young king, who did him
homage, and in September he landed at St. Jean d'Acre.
The Mohammedan world was passing through one of its periods of
disunion. The Prince of Damascus and the Sultan of Egypt had been
lately in conflict, and for a long time now the sultan's need had
driven him to diplomatic relations with the emperor. By the time
Frederick arrived the sultan's enemy was no more, and the sultan's
promises of Jerusalem to Frederick worth correspondingly less. But
Frederick knew the Mohammedan world as few Western princes, and it was
possibly an advantage to him in the negotiations now beginning that he
was known to be under the pope's ban, officially not a Christian at
all, with the Patriarch of Jerusalem renewing the interdict, the
military orders holding aloof from him and every Dominican and
Franciscan in Palestine preaching openly against him.
The emperor's diplomacy was successful. On February 4, 1229, the treaty
of Jaffa made over to him Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth with the
roads thence to Acre and the villages through which they passed. On the
other hand, the Mohammedans living in the ceded territory were to
remain the sultan's subjects, to enjoy the full exercise of their
religion, and to retain possession of the great mosque of Omar that
stood upon the traditional site of the Temple. Also, Frederick pledged
himself to prevent any attack from the West for ten years. It was for
Frederick a diplomatic victory of the first order. On the other hand,
the old crusade principle of restoring the one-time Christian lands to
Christian rule was abandoned entirely. Catholicism, under this new
arrangement, no longer aspired to drive out the infidel.
Frederick's triumph was consummated when, on March 11,] 229,
accompanied by his nobles and knights and his Saracens without any kind
of religious ceremonial, he took the crown of Jerusalem from the high
altar of the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre and crowned himself king.
The clergy held aloof, the patriarch refusing even to enter the city.
The faithful were no less hostile and when, six weeks later, the
emperor made his way to the ships that were to take him back to Europe,
the butchers of Acre pelted him and his escort with offal.
On June 10, 1229, Frederick landed at Brindisi. During the year of his
absence in the East, the war had developed in Sicily between his forces
and those of the pope. The Sicilians had begun by invading the Papal
State. Later Gregory had gained the upper hand. But the emperor's
return was the beginning of a general rout; the papal troops retired,
and Frederick took a terrible revenge on those of his subjects who had
recognised the excommunication and fought against him. There were
wholesale executions, some hanged and others skinned alive. The pope
launched a new excommunication against the emperor (August 29, 1229)
and made a new appeal to Christendom for assistance.
The response was, perhaps, poor; but Frederick desired peace at least
as eagerly as the pope, and after months of negotiation it was
concluded at San Germano (July 23, 1230). On all points Frederick
yielded. He promised to evacuate all papal territories, to restore the
confiscated Church property, and to recall the bishops he had exiled;
the partisans of the pope were to be granted an amnesty; the Church's
rights in Sicily were confirmed anew; an indemnity was promised to the
Templars and Hospitallers
For Frederick the peace of 1230 was simply the first move in his
elaborate plan to achieve world dominion. It would give him time to
reorganise his forces, and to make himself master of Italy before
finally reducing the papacy. To the success of his scheme the open
enmity of the pope would be fatal -- as would be any distraction from
troubles in Germany. The next few years saw Frederick pursuing
apparently contradictory policies in Germany and Italy. North of the
Alps he lavished exemptions and privileges upon the Princes, frittering
away all that imperial hegemony which his father and grandfather had
done so much to construct. In Italy, with as much skill as strength, he
was, at the same time building up a strong, highly centralised
despotism -- first of all in his kingdom of Sicily. Then, to the
anxiety of the pope, he openly declared his policy of extending the
system to northern Italy; the Lombard cities were finally to lose their
rights. The diet of Ravenna (November 1, 1231) which saw this
proclamation made, saw the emperor also in the role of the persecutor
of heretics and the protector of the Dominicans because they were
inquisitors. The plea that his enemies -- in Lombardy and in Germany --
were heretics would ultimately be one of Frederick's justifications.
The time would come when he would denounce the pope himself as the
protector of heretics.
If Frederick had need of some measure of papal support -- of papal
neutrality certainly -- during these crucial years, the pope stood
equally in need of Frederick's aid. Time and again the hostility of the
Romans drove the pope from his city. Each time the pope appealed to
Frederick to fulfil his role of protector and reinstate him. Each time
Frederick was lavish in his promises but left the pope to his own
devices.
So the years of this uneasy truce went by. In 1235 Frederick was
occupied with a revolt in Germany led by his son, the youthful Henry
VII. This put down, in July-, 1236, he appeared once more in Italy,
with a huge army, to end the independence of the Lombard cities once
and for all.
The pope did his best to stave off the war. He explained to Frederick
that the Lombards were the victims of calumny, that truth and peace
were his own one, sole aim. He complained of the way in which Frederick
had neglected to carry out the treaty of 1230. Frederick, however,
pressed on resolutely, sending the pope evasive and, as the pope
complained, highly disrespectful messages in reply. On November 1,
1236, he took Vicenza, sacking the town and massacring the inhabitants.
A year later the great victory of Cortenuova (November 27, 1237)
reversed his grandfather's defeat at Legnano. Save for Milan,
Alessandria and Brescia he was now master of northern Italy. As he
prepared to lay siege to Alessandria, Gregory approached him once more
with proposals for peace. The emperor's only reply was to imprison the
legates who had brought them (May, 1238). He next attempted to break
the understanding between the pope and the Lombard League, but at the
very time his envoys were opening the negotiations at Anagni with
Gregory, he dispatched an army to capture Sardinia -- a papal fief.
Gregory IX, for all his natural fire, had shown himself as patient as
his predecessor. Certainly Innocent III had taken a shorter way with
the shiftiness of Raymond of Toulouse. By 1239 Gregory had come to the
end of his long-suffering, and on March 20 of that year he renewed the
excommunication against Frederick in a document which listed his crimes
for the information of Christendom. The emperor had imprisoned papal
legates; he had been the cause of the seditions in Rome; he had kept
sees vacant in Sicily and imprisoned and murdered the clergy there, he
had for years plundered sees and churches, and had usurped Church
territories; he had robbed the Templars and the Hospitallers; he had
laid unjust taxes on sees, monasteries and the clergy generally; he had
broken the pledge of 1230 to grant an amnesty, and he had thwarted the
efforts of the pope to renew the crusade. As to the common opinion that
Frederick was a heretic, the pope for the moment reserved himself.
Meanwhile, the emperor was put out of the Church, and all places where
he halted were laid under interdict. The clergy who ignored this
sentence and officiated in despite of it, incurred suspension for life.
This was far more serious for the emperor than anything which had
happened so far. He retorted to the pope that he would speedily be
revenged, and he prepared, in his turn, an encyclical to the princes of
Europe denouncing the "wickedness enthroned in the Lord's seat." All
mendicant friars -- Dominicans and Franciscans -- of Lombard birth were
expelled from his kingdom of Sicily and, a short time later, all friars
indiscriminately -- so closely were the new orders as such seen,
already, as attached to the service of the Roman Church. All who
brought papal documents into the kingdom were to be hanged.
The pope replied in a still more eloquent condemnation, filled with
phrases from the Apocalypse. "A great beast has come out of the sea. .
. this scorpion spewing passion from the sting in his tail. . . full of
the names of blasphemy. . . raging with the claws of the bear and the
mouth of the lion and the limbs and the likeness of the leopard, opens
its mouth to blaspheme the Holy Name. . . behold the head and tail and
body of the beast, of this Frederick, this so-called emperor. . . ." It
recapitulated the emperor's crimes; it exposed his calumnies; it
condemned him as a heretic for his denial of the pope's authority and
for his assertion that the world in its time had been led astray by
three impostors, Moses, Mohammed and Jesus Christ, for his mockery of
the mystery of the virgin birth and his declaring that nothing is to be
believed that cannot be proved by the natural reason.
To this terrible indictment Frederick replied in the language of a
Father of the Church, pained at the pope's lack of charity- "the
pharisee who sits on the plague-stricken seat, anointed with the oil of
wickedness. . . ." He makes a most pious profession of faith and
retorts that the pope is a liar. It is he who is the sole cause of the
trouble and, quoting in his turn from prophecy, the pope is "the great
dragon, the rider on the red horse, the universal destroyer of peace,
Antichrist himself."
The war was now on indeed. Truce between such adversaries was
impossible. Writers on both sides flooded Europe with their pamphlets,
and while Frederick gained steadily in the field through 1239 and 1240,
the pope strove to form an anti- imperial party in Germany, and called
a general council to meet in Rome for the Easter of 1241. He persuaded
the Genoese to provide an escorting fleet for the prelates, and the
Venetians to invade Apulia. Frederick issued a general order that all
bishops and prelates en route for the council were to be arrested, and
licensed his subjects to rob them. He made desperate efforts to detach
Genoa from the pope and even to win over the Order of Preachers. Then,
on May 5, 1241, his fleet met, and defeated, the Genoese fleet as it
neared the end of its voyage convoying the fathers of the council.
Three ships were sunk and twenty-two captured with something like a
hundred bishops, two of the cardinals, the Lombard deputies and four
thousand Genoese. The emperor prepared to march on Rome.
Three months later, with the crisis at its full, Gregory IX died
(August 21, 1241). Frederick had reached Grottaferrata just nine miles
away.
There were at the moment twelve cardinals in all, two of them
Frederick's prisoners. The ten at liberty were closely guarded by the
real ruler of Rome, the Senator Matteo Orsini, and, in a seclusion that
was little better than an imprisonment, for two months they hesitated
and debated whom to elect. To hasten the decision the senator inflicted
on them all manner of hardships. In the end three of the cardinals died
of disease contracted in the filthy and insanitary hole where, for two
whole months of the Roman summer, they had been huddled. Finally they
agreed on the Milanese cardinal, Godfrey. He accepted, and took the
name of Celestine IV. He was advanced in years, sick as a result of the
conclave, and seventeen days later, before he was consecrated, he died.
The confusion was now greater than ever. Three of the cardinals, rather
than face a renewal of the horrors they had recently under gone, fled
to Anagni; three remained behind in Rome; Frederick still held to his
prisoners. Three of the cardinals were partisans of Frederick; the
others refused to leave Anagni unless Frederick consented to release
his prisoners and to withdraw his army from the neighbourhood of Rome;
Frederick refused utterly, and the deadlock was complete. From October
1241 to June 1243 it continued. Finally, St. Louis IX of France
intervening, the emperor released his prisoners, and on June 25, 1243,
the Cardinal Sinibaldo Fieschi was elected and took the name of
Innocent IV.
The new pope, by birth a nobleman of Genoa, was already known as an
expert canonist. He had taught Canon Law at Bologna and for the last
twenty years he had been employed in the most important posts of the
Roman Church. Gregory IX had made him a cardinal in 1227; he had been
Vice-Chancellor; and from 1235 he had filled, for the most critical
years of all, the difficult post of Papal Legate in Lombardy. He was,
then, as well acquainted with the personalities engaged in the
controversy as with the principles around which it raged. It was now
evident that the pope was not merely fighting another Henry IV, or
Barbarossa, but an anti-ecclesiastical theory of world organisation,
aggressive and fully armed. No wiser choice of a champion against it
could have been made than that of this calm unmoved Genoese, trained
lawyer and practised administrator. Nor had Innocent IV the
disadvantage of being known as an intransigent. Whatever the origin of
the idea, he passed popularly for being favourable to an understanding
with Frederick. His nearest relatives had fought at Frederick's side,
and his election was hailed as a triumph for the emperor. Frederick, if
the story is true, knew better. "I have lost a friend," he said. "No
pope can be a Ghibelline."
The history of the interregnum and of the two years that went before,
made it evident beyond all doubt that Frederick would never rest until
the pope was his chaplain, and himself as great a power in the Church
as in his own kingdom of Sicily. It was not the least of the new pope's
merits that he realised this from the beginning and acted accordingly.
His first messages to Frederick were peaceful, and to his request for a
conference the emperor replied by sending to him his two chief
advisers, the legists Piero della Vigna and Thaddeus of Suessa.
The negotiations ended with Frederick renewing all his old pledges to
restore the papal territory he occupied, and granting an amnesty to all
who had recently fought against him, even the Lombards being included.
This was on Holy Thursday, 1244, but before April was out the pope had
to protest that Frederick was once again breaking his sworn word.
Frederick, in reply, suggested a personal conference between himself
and Innocent. The pope, with the memory of the last two years fresh in
his mind, was, however, too wary to be caught. This time he would
retain his freedom and use it to attack. Disguised as a knight he fled
to Genoa, and thence crossed the Alps to Lyons, a city where the
sovereign was the archbishop and his chapter -- nominally within the
emperor's jurisdiction, but close to the protective strength of the
King of France, St. Louis IX.
The council which Gregory IX had planned, Innocent realised. It met at
Lyons in the July of 1245, two hundred bishops and abbots attending.
This first General Council of Lyons is unique in that its main purpose
was a trial. The emperor was making it his life's aim to restore the
ancient subordination of religion to the State. The pope was determined
to destroy him, to end for all time this power which had once, for so
long, enslaved the Church and which, for a good century now, had never
ceased its attack on the Church's restored independence. There was to
be no return to the bad days which had preceded St. Leo IX and St.
Gregory VII. Since none but a fool would place any reliance on
Frederick's oaths, Frederick should be deposed.
On July 7, 1245, the council, in solemn public session, listened to the
recital of the emperor's crimes and shifty, insincere repentances.
Then, despite the pleading of Thaddeus of Suessa, it accepted the
decree of deposition.
Frederick, in reply, circularised the reigning princes of Europe. If
the decree of deposition is perhaps the clearest expression yet of the
theory of the papal power over temporal rulers as such, Frederick's
riposte may be read as the first manifesto of the "liberal" state. For
it sets out, against the papal practice, a complete,
anti-ecclesiastical theory. All the anti- sacerdotal spirit of the
heresies of the previous century finds here new, and more powerful,
expression. The supremacy of the sacerdotium is denounced as a
usurpation, and anti-clericalism, allied now for the first time to the
pagan conception of the omnipotent state-a doctrine popularised through
the rebirth of Roman Law-offers itself as a world force with the
destruction of the sacerdotium as its aim. Thanks to the imperial
legists, and especially to the genius of the two already mentioned, the
new point of view is set forth imperishably in this manifesto, and the
princes of Christendom are invited to join with the emperor in his
attempt to destroy the common enemy. The Church, they are told, is part
of the State, and, for all that Frederick guards against any overt
denial of the pope's authority, the Catholic prince is, for him,
inevitably a kind of Khalif. It is this prince's mission to keep
religion true to itself, to reform it whenever necessary, and to bring
it back to the primitive simplicity of the gospel. Frederick had indeed
revealed himself. The theory is the most subversive of heresies, and it
is the emperor, the pledged defender of orthodoxy, the prince the very
raison d'etre of whose office is orthodoxy's defence, who is its
inventor and patron. His reply to the excommunication more than
justified the attitude of Gregory IX, and Innocent's initiative.
Frederick, then, proposed to free the Church from sacerdotalism, from
clerical ambition and greed. He planned to take Lyons and to imprison
pope and cardinals as he had done the prelates taken at La Meloria in
1241. Through 1246 the scheme went forward until the emperor's army was
ready.
Two things saved the pope. The King of France -- St. Louis IX -- to
whom he appealed, for all that he had not offered to share in the war
against the emperor and had not broken off relations with him since his
deposition, made it known to Frederick that should he march on Lyons,
French armies would bar his way. Secondly, at Parma, on June 6, 1247,
Frederick's forces suffered a severe defeat.
Innocent had been as busy as Frederick since the council. His diplomacy
had brought about the election of a successor to Frederick in Germany
-- Henry Raspe first of all and then, on his death, William of Holland.
Round the new emperor the pope sought to organise an anti-Hohenstaufen
crusade as, fifty years earlier, Innocent III had organised a crusade
against Raymond of Toulouse. To all who went to Germany to fight the
enemy of religion all the usual crusade indulgences and privileges were
granted, and the pope found a host of preachers in the new orders of
St. Dominic and St. Francis. It was not, however, in Germany that the
issue was to be decided. Italy, the real centre of Frederick's policy,
was the battlefield where the main fight went forward. In February,
1248, the papal troops gained a second victory at Parma, and although
in Sicily their success was less, in the Duchy of Spoleto and the March
of Ancona they carried all before them, capturing in 1249 Enzio, the
most gifted of all Frederick's sons.
Frederick, his head still unbowed, set himself to find new friends, and
he was in the midst of preparations to renew the attack when death
struck him down (December 13, 1250). The wildest stories circulated as
to the manner of his passing. One and not the least unlikely, is that
he asked for the habit of the Cistercian order, to which he had always
shown an attachment For Innocent and the Church it was deliverance from
the greatest of perils, and the bull (Laetentur Coeli -- January 25,
1251) in which the pope announced the news, testifies to the degree of
the strain. Nevertheless, although Frederick was dead the Hohenstaufen
survived, in the two sons of the emperor who continued the fight --
Conrad in Germany and Manfred in Sicily. The way was, however, open for
the pope to return to Italy. He left Lyons in April, 1251, reached
Perugia in November and stayed there another year and a half. In
October, 1253, after an absence of nine years, Innocent re-entered his
see.
While the war continued, the pope looked for a new vassal on whom to
confer the forfeited throne of Sicily. His first thought was the Earl
of Cornwall, brother to the English king, Henry III. On his refusal he
turned to the brother of St. Louis -- Charles of Anjou. By June, 1253,
the first negotiations were ended and the pope presented the conditions
under which the crown of Sicily would be granted. The king was to do
homage to the pope; he was to pledge himself not to hinder the Church's
full exercise of its exclusive jurisdiction over clerics, and in
ecclesiastical matters, not to tax the clergy, and to leave the
administration of vacant sees entirely to the Church. Charles now drew
back, and while he hesitated news arrived from Germany which
revolutionised the situation. Conrad was dead (May 21, 1254) and, like
his grandfather Henry VI, sixty years before, this born enemy of the
popes had named the pope as guardian for his infant heir Conradin.
The pope's first thought was to make what use the opportunity offered
of strengthening his hold on Sicily. He called on the regent, Berthold,
Archbishop of Palermo, to hand over the government to him as overlord
and marched south with an army. Before Innocent would come to an
understanding he intended to be in possession, acknowledged as
suzerain. The regent refused to surrender and was excommunicated. 011
September 8 the papal army took San Germano, and the regency collapsed.
Berthold resigned and Manfred accepted the pope s terms. He was
confirmed in the fiefs his father had bequeathed him and granted
recognition as regent for certain territories on the mainland.
Conradin's titles as King of Jerusalem and Duke of Swabia were
recognised. His claims to succeed in Sicily were left undecided.
The pope was now (October, 1254) master of the situation. The kingdom
of Sicily was, for the moment, as much his possession as the Papal
State itself. What were his plans for the future? Did he intend to rule
it directly until such time as he thought fit to confer it on Conradin?
Did he intend to annex it to the Papal State? Was he likely to carry
out the project that would have made the Earl of Lancaster king? There
is room here for differences of opinion, and historians are by no means
agreed as to the pope's intentions. Whatever plans had taken shape in
his mind, a sudden change on the part of Manfred threw everything into
confusion once more. In an affray in which Manfred's responsibility was
engaged, the Count of Borello was murdered. Manfred fled to raise
supporters among his father's Saracens at Lucera, and by November the
war was on once more. On December 2, 1254, he defeated the papal army
and took Foggia. Five days later, at Naples, Innocent died.
Historians -- Catholics equally with the rest -- have not spared bitter
words for Innocent IV. His inflexibility and determination in the long
struggle, and the rigidity they developed, are set side by side with
the more seductive and picturesque traits of his treacherous enemy. The
treachery is forgotten, and the menace too, which the family tradition
presented, in pity for the tragic end of the dynasty. But Innocent IV
was one of the greatest of the popes none the less, a man whom nothing
short of the high ideals of St. Gregory VII inspired. His tragic
pontificate knew few peaceful days; his greatest achievement, like all
violent victories, left a mixed legacy to his successors. But again,
the achievement was great; and it sets him at least as high as the
predecessor and namesake who, in popular fancy, has altogether
overshadowed him. One of the writers best qualified to judge Innocent
IV, the scholar who edited his registers, sums it up thus: [ ] "The
Holy See had survived one of the most terrible crises it had ever
faced, thanks to the sang-froid, the decision and the incomparable
tenacity of this great pope."
The activities of Innocent IV were not wholly absorbed by the struggle
with the Hohenstaufen. His vassal the King of Portugal he deposed for
his encroachments on ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and in his place
appointed his brother. One of the kings in Russia made over his kingdom
to him. In all the far Eastern territories where heathenism still
survived -- Prussia, Livonia and Esthonia -- he created sees, and in
several embassies he did what he could to win over to the faith the new
hordes from the East, the Tartars, who for a moment seemed about to
throw Europe back into the savagery and chaos of the tenth century.
There was not any aspect of Christian life that Innocent failed to
support. but very often his support could go little further than
sympathetic words, so greatly was he occupied with the battle for life
against Frederick.
This preoccupation with the theologico-political problem told nowhere
more unfavourably than in the affairs of the Latin East.
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