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Innocent IV had died at a moment when it was just his courageous,
patient strength that the cause of the Church most needed. On his
successor's handling of the incipient revolt of Frederick's son Manfred
the whole history of the next fifty years -- and of how much else? --
would depend. This time the interregnum was short -- thanks to one of
Innocent's kinsmen who locked up the cardinals at Naples before they
had time to disperse. After a very brief discussion they elected, on
December 12, 1254, the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, Rinaldo Conti, yet a
third pope in fifty years from the family of Innocent III and Gregory
IX. He was a man of holy life, learned, a great patron of the
Franciscans, an experienced administrator and diplomatist, a cardinal
for twenty-seven years and one of the four who, during the long absence
of Innocent IV, had acted as papal commissaries in Italy (1244-1254).
It was a career which, to all appearance, promised well for the new
reign. Alexander IV, however -- such was the new pope's style -- was
yet again to prove how often an excellent counsellor proves a bad
ruler. The seven years of his rule were, politically, years of
continuous disaster, and his death in 1261 found the Holy See weaker in
Italy than for seventy years.
Manfred steadily regained all he had lost in Sicily. Conradin's
guardians he won over to make common cause with him, and the pope,
resourceless, was driven to Innocent IV's first plan, of delivery
through foreign aid. Once more Henry III of England was approached
(April, 1255) and after six months of negotiation the thing was
arranged and Henry's younger son, Edmund of Lancaster, invested as King
of Sicily and the pope's vassal. The conditions accepted were that
Henry should pay all the expenses so far incurred by the Holy See
(135,000 marks) and the arrears of interest on that sum, and that he
should provide an army and a general. He was licensed to take for the
expedition all monies collected in England for the crusade, and his own
vow to go on the crusade was commuted into a vow to drive Manfred out
of Sicily. Should Henry neglect to fulfil his part of the contract, he
was to lose all monies hitherto advanced, and to be excommunicated,
while England was to suffer an interdict.
Manfred continued to gain ground. Thousands went over to him, even from
the pope's own army, which was so weakened by desertions that, in 1255,
it had to retire across the frontier. The pope thereupon sent urgent
messages to England bidding the king hasten his preparations. When, in
January, 1256, the pope's candidate for the vacant empire died,
Alexander forbade the electors, under pain of excommunication, to
choose Conradin and pressed the election of Henry III's brother,
Richard, the Earl of Cornwall who had refused Innocent IV's offer of
Sicily two years before. But not all this show of papal favour could
move Henry to any activity beyond promises. He was, of course, at this
very time, on the verge of a political crisis at home of the first
magnitude. Not all the popes, nor all their threats, could have won
another penny from the barons of England, or from the bishops.
So for seven years it went on, Henry continually begging an extension
of the time limit: the pope, now bankrupt and with no choice but to
assent -- for of all the princes of Christendom, Henry III was the only
one to be interested in the affair: and Manfred steadily consolidating
his gains. In August, 1258, Manfred felt himself so secure that he
threw off the mask, and, disregarding whatever claims Conradin might
have -- who was, at any rate, of legitimate birth -- he had himself
crowned King of Sicily at Palermo.
Alexander could do no more than plead with Henry and in September,
1260, Manfred, by a great victory at Montaperto, became the dominating
power in Tuscany, too. He was once again excommunicated and, of course,
he again ignored the sentence. He was well on the way to being master
of Italy when, May 25, 1261, Alexander IV died.
His disastrous reign formed an interlude between two great
anti-imperial offensives. The drama of Innocent IV's reign was now to
be resumed. The irresolute Alexander was to be followed, in swift
succession, by two hard-headed Frenchmen, shrewd, practical realists
thanks to whom the dream of Innocent was accomplished and the
Hohenstaufen razed from the land of the living.
The first of these was Jacques Pantaleon, who at the time of his
election was Patriarch of Jerusalem. He was not a cardinal, but an
experienced ecclesiastic whom urgent affairs had brought at this time
to the papal court. After a three months' conclave, in which an English
Cistercian and a French Dominican had both declined the terrifying
splendour, the eight members of the sacred college were still
undecided, and then the patriarch's name was suggested. and unanimously
they elected him (August 29, 1261). He took the name of Urban IV.
The new pope was a man seventy years of age or more. He was a canonist,
trained in the University of Paris, and he had spent most of his life
in administrative duties at Laon and Liege. When Innocent TV had
noticed him at the Council of Lyons and taken him into the papal
service he was already elderly. That pope sent him into Germany, as
legate, in 1247 and again in 1252 to organise a party and raise money
for William of Holland. In 1253 he was made Bishop of Verdun and in
1255 Patriarch of Jerusalem. After his five years of service in the
debris of the Latin realms of the East, given over now to civil war
between Venetians and Genoese, between Hospitallers and Templars, the
shrewd old Frenchman can have needed no further instruction on the need
for a strong hand at the centre of things. As pope he proceeded to
apply himself with an energy and a ruthlessness that give him, with
Julius II, a place apart in papal history. A contemporary diplomat set
him down as the ablest pope since Alexander III.
Urban IV turned first to set his own administration in order. In twelve
months he had created fourteen cardinals, seven of them his fellow
countrymen, all of them men of distinction. A thorough examination was
made of the whole financial system. The accounts of all creditors were
scrupulously investigated, and all over Christendom the kingdoms, sees,
abbeys and churches on which the Roman Church had claims were reminded
of their obligations and were induced to pay at least in part. As the
pope thus collected the debts due to him so, in the same systematic
way, he set himself to pay what he owed. Church property that was
pledged he gradually redeemed, and slowly he began to refortify the
Papal State. His greatest feat, however, was to build up a pro-papal
party among the bankers of Florence and Siena -- a measure which was to
bring forth its fruit in the time of his successor.
By 1263 the pope had more or less restored the reality of his rule in
his own State, and he had rescued his cause from the perilous isolation
into which, under Alexander IV, it had drifted At the same time he had
begun to provide for the danger which Manfred presented.
Manfred had begun by a bid for recognition that an offer of money
accompanied. Urban had, however, no intention of reversing the policy
of years, and of recognising this illegitimate Hohenstaufen. He had
already determined to set up in Sicily the French prince Charles of
Anjou, and until that delicate scheme was safe he had to use all his
skill to keep Manfred from a new offensive.
It was in December, 1261, three months after his election, that Urban
made the first offer to the French. St. Louis hesitated, halted by the
thought of Conradin's possible claims and of the claims of Edmund of
Lancaster -- to the irritation of the pope who insisted that he was
hardly likely to risk St. Louis' salvation by proposing to him
something that was sinful. Finally, the pope won the king over, and he
allowed the offer to be made to Charles of Anjou, his brother. The
conditions were laid down (June, 1263), Edmund of Lancaster was
formally notified that the offer made to him was withdrawn (July, 1263)
and on August 15 the treaty between Charles and the pope was concluded.
It contained all the usual safeguards. Charles was to do homage to the
pope as overlord, to pay an annual tribute, to pledge himself not to
usurp the rights of the Church and to preserve the rights of the nobles
and people of Sicily. Meanwhile (August, 1263) Charles had been elected
Senator -- an appointment that made him, to all intents and purposes,
the civil ruler of Rome where, since the time of Honorius III, none of
the popes had been able to live, save for short and infrequent
intervals. Not only was Charles elected but, an unheard-of thing, he
was elected for life. The pope at once protested. It would have been
impossible for him to do otherwise. To consent to see ruling Rome,
independently of himself, the man who would soon be ruler, too, of all
Italy from Naples downwards, would be to exchange the menace of the
Hohenstaufen for a danger still more real.
Manfred still more than held his own, despite Urban IV's diplomacy.
Charles, on his side, realised the pope's dilemma and profited by it.
Much of the annual tribute was remitted, and the pope accepted him as
Senator. So matters stood when, on October 2, 1264, Urban IV died.
It was five months -- despite the urgency of the position -- before the
cardinals could agree on his successor. Then, February 5, 1265, they
elected another Frenchman, the Cardinal Guy Fulcodi -- a choice that
crowned the most rapid career in all papal history, for the new pope,
less than ten years before, had been a happily married jurist in the
service of the French King without ever a thought of Holy Orders. He
was a noble, and the son of one of the chief advisers of Raymond VI of
Toulouse. Like Urban IV he was a product of the University of Paris,
where he had made a name as an expert in both civil and canon law. He
followed his father's profession, grew famous as an advocate and was
appointed to the council of Raymond VII. He married and had two
daughters. Then he passed into the service of St. Louis IX of France,
who ultimately made him a member of his private council. Somewhere
about 1256 his wife died, and like his father before him -- who on his
wife's death had become a Carthusian-Guy Fulcodi turned to the Church.
He rose rapidly, named Bishop of Le Puy within a year and Archbishop of
Narbonne in 1259. As a prelate he kept his place in the French king's
service, and was employed very largely in arbitration. Much of his time
was spent in hearing appeals that concerned the inquisition of
Languedoc, and he was responsible for a noteworthy decision on the
degree of proof required before a man was condemned for heresy. It
should, he declared, be "clearer than the day itself." He was one of
Urban IV's first cardinals (1261) and in 1263 that pope sent him as
legate to England, on which mission he was still absent when he was
elected pope.
The new pope thus had an experience of administration and of dealing
with men that could scarcely have been bettered. He was, too, a man of
extremely ascetic life, modelled, apparently, on the lives of the Order
of Preachers to which indeed he was very greatly attached. As pope, he
took the name of Clement IV.
It was natural, if not inevitable, that Clement IV should continue the
policy of his immediate predecessor. It is possible, since he had been
one of the negotiators between Urban and Charles of Anjou, that he was
elected pope for that very reason. Nevertheless, there was a shade of
difference between the political atmosphere of the two reigns. It was
due entirely to the fact that, in the second, Charles himself at last
appeared in Italy.
Clement's first act was to renew the notification to Henry III of
England that his claims had lapsed, and the next was to confirm Charles
in all his rights, renewing the conditions laid down two years before.
The crusade against Manfred, "the virulent offspring of a poisonous
race", was renewed and new efforts made to raise money. By June, 1264,
Urban IV had spent 200,000 pounds (Sienese money) and the treasury was
nearly empty. Nor was there much to hope for from the interest of
Christendom. "In England," said the pope himself, "there is opposition,
in Germany hardly anyone obeys, France groans and grumbles, Spain
suffices not for itself, Italy gives no help but plays one false." [ ]
However, on May 21, 1265, Charles of Anjou arrived in Rome with a small
force. The main body of his army was still in France and preparing to
make its way overland through Lombardy. Charles had few men, he had no
money. Manfred was as strong as ever, and before the French could pass
through Lombardy the papal diplomacy must defeat Manfred in the courts
and cities of the north of Italy.
The pope's one real asset was the character of Charles of Anjou --
haughty, ambitious to the point at times of mania, but the great
captain of the day, a capable organiser, brave, and as energetic as
Manfred was indolent. Charles of Anjou has gone down to history with
the memory of his virtues forgotten in the clamour aroused by his
undoubted pride and cruelty. It is one of the ironies of things that it
is for precisely these vices that the conqueror of the Hohenstaufen has
been damned by writers of Hohenstaufen sympathies. Charles of Anjou
compares more than favourably with any one of the five generations of
that treacherous race with which the Roman Church had to contend, from
Barbarossa to Conradin, his great-great- grandson.
The financial crisis was surmounted thanks to the papacy's
understanding with the bankers. The following of Charles was costing
daily two thousand livres tournois before 1265 was out, and the revenue
and property of the Roman churches were given in pledge. In December
the army from France arrived. On January 6, 1266, Charles was crowned
in St. Peter's as King of Sicily. A few days later he set out to crush
Manfred. The battle took place, January 20, 1266, outside Benevento.
Manfred's army was defeated, with great slaughter, and he himself was
slain. With that disaster the Hohenstaufen ceased for ever really to
trouble the papacy. The menace that had hung over its spiritual
independence since Barbarossa's declaration at Besancon, a hundred and
nine years before, seemed at last destroyed.
It remained to be seen how Charles of Anjou would develop. Already, in
the matter of senatorship, there had been a hint that the pope feared
lest his new champion should prove a master. Was the chronic problem of
the papacy merely about to enter on a new stage of its long vexatious
history?
Four months after Benevento, Charles resigned the senatorship, and
while Clement gave himself to the double task of rousing an indifferent
Christendom to the needs of the Holy Land and of paying off his debts,
the King of Sicily took possession of his conquest. The Sicilians found
his rule oppressive. Some of the greater nobles were dispossessed.
French officials were imported. There were new heavy taxes. Soon there
were complaints, and from the pope strongly worded remonstrances such
as that provoked by the terrible sack of Benevento after the victory in
January. "You respect nothing," he had then written to Charles, "
neither the goods of the Church nor of others, not age nor sex. You are
crusaders, and you have looted the churches and convents that you
should have protected; you have destroyed the sacred images, you have
violated women consecrated to God. These thefts, these murders, these
appalling sacrileges were not committed during the fight but for the
whole week that followed, and you did nothing to restore order."
Gradually, throughout the kingdom, a party began to form and a name to
be whispered as its leader -- Conradin. The grandson of Frederick II
was now a youth of seventeen, still in Germany, King of Jerusalem and
Duke of Swabia. He was won over to patronise the coming revolt, and in
a flaming manifesto he denounced, as King of Sicily, the popes,
Innocent IV and Alexander IV, who had refused him his father's kingdom
and announced his intention of conquering it himself. The action had
all the old Hohenstaufen spirit, and the pope retorted by
excommunicating Conradin and by a reminder to the princes of Germany
that Charles of Anjou was the lawful King of Sicily and that if
Conradin persisted he would be deprived of his title to Jerusalem as
his grandfather had been stripped of the empire and Sicily.
Conradin, nothing deterred, set out in September, 1267. In October his
banner was hoisted in Rome, where the new senator had gone over to his
cause, and on the 21st of that month he was at Verona with ten thousand
men.
The pope renewed the excommunication on all who supported him,
including the Romans; he named Charles of Anjou imperial Vicar for
Tuscany; he despatched legates into Germany to prevent the movement
spreading there.
In January, 1268, the invader was at Pavia, in April at Pisa. Charles
failed to capture Rome; the Saracens at Lucera were in revolt; and when
Conradin, making for Rome, passed by Viterbo -- where Clement IV still
dwelt -- the pope might well have despaired. Rome received Conradin
with enthusiasm and on August 18 he set out for Lucera. Charles,
however, intercepted him near Tagliacozzo (August 23, 1268) and after a
fierce fight routed his army. A week later he entered treacherous Rome
in triumph, while Conradin fled, a forlorn fugitive, from one place to
another. In the end he was captured and handed over to Charles, who
thereupon proceeded to the act which has damned him for ever with
posterity. He summoned a commission of legists to advise him whether
Conradin could be put on his trial as a disturber of the peace. They
were divided in their opinion. A minority advised Charles he had the
right. Conradin was thereupon tried and condemned to death. Absolved
from his excommunication and fortified with the Mass and the Holy
Eucharist, on October 29, 1268, he was beheaded publicly at Naples. So
ended the Hohenstaufen.
Just a month later, to the day, Clement IV too died. It was
twenty-three years since Innocent IV had deposed the last emperor,
nineteen years almost since the last emperor had died. Not for three
years more did the cardinals manage to give a successor to Clement IV.
Now for three years Christendom was to have neither emperor nor pope.
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