Chapter 6 POWER OF THE POPES OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

INNOCENT III. in one and the same year, bestowed in the plenitude of his power three royal crowns; to Ioanice, that of Walachia217 ; to Premislaus, that of Bohemia218 ; to Peter II., that of Arragon. Peter received his at Rome, and did the pope homage for his states, which became tributary to the Holy See.219 But Innocent, the dispenser of kingdoms, and who even gave away that of Armenia, distinguished himself still more frequently by his anathemas. Venice, France, England, the emperor, all the great potentates of Europe, have experienced the force of his spiritual arms.

The Venetians, already powerful by their commerce, had assumed the cross but for the purpose of extending it; they gained lands and riches in meriting indulgences. Alone capable of equipping great fleets, they exacted eighty-five thousand crowns of gold for transporting the Christian army into Palestine; and, with the assistance of the legions they conveyed, conquered important places in Dalmatia. Innocent, in order to put a stop to their progress, thought of excluding them from the bosom of the Church. But one of the effects of commercial prosperity is, to weaken in people's minds the dread of ecclesiastical censures: the Venetians made themselves masters of the city and territory of Zara: they continued to fortify and aggrandize themselves; the anathema launched against their republic, had no important effect: the pontiff abstained from renewing it.

He treated Philip Augustus more rigorously. This monarch of France received from Innocent an express order to take back the divorced Ingelburg, and send away Agnes or Maria de Meronie, whom he had married after this divorce. The king at first assumed an attitude sufficiently bold; but the kingdom was under interdict; the divine offices, the sacraments, marriages, had ceased; the permitting the beard to grow enjoined; the use of flesh forbidden; mutual salutation prohibited. It was in vain that Philip humbled himself, he was obliged to ask of the pope a new enquiry into the affair; it even became necessary to prevent the result of this examination, by declaring that he was about to recall Ingelburg. She was indeed allowed the titles of wife and queen, but it was in the confinement of a castle. Emboldened by this success, Innocent did not hesitate to erect himself into a supreme arbiter between the kings of France and England, then armed one against the other. He commanded them to assemble their bishops, abbots, and nobles of their states, to deliberate on a peace, and to think on the best means of restoring the churches and abbeys which had suffered during the war. Philip replied that it did not belong to the pope to interfere in the disputes of kings, nor especially to convey to them such ordinances. Some French lords added, that the order to make peace was but another reason for continuing the war.220 But Innocent replied, that an unjust war being a crime, and all crimes having for their judge the Holy Church, he fulfilled a pontifical office in disarming them both. On this principle says Fleury221 the pope is judge of all the wars between Sovereigns: that is, to speak in plain terms, he is the sole Sovereign in the world. However it may be, Philip, after having renewed his course of conquest, thought proper to consent to a truce, and not irritate too far a pontiff determined on the boldest undertakings. He thus deferred, but by no means avoided, the excommunication. An anathema against Philip was one of the last acts of Innocent III., and one of the results of a new war kindled by this pontiff himself, between the king of England and France, whom he had affected to reconcile.

In fact, this very king of Great Britain whom Innocent had appeared, in 1204, to support against the French, became, a few years after, one of the victims of pontifical despotism. The pope having been desirous, in contempt of the canons and the laws, to dispose of the see of Canterbury in favour of cardinal Langton, John opposed himself to it only by fits of rage which exposed his weakness. Innocent, who knew how to use his power with more prudence, employed by degrees, three modes of repressing this intractableness: first, an interdict upon the kingdom; next, the personal excommunication of the monarch; finally, the deposition of a king who had been so fully convicted of obstinacy in his disobedience to the Holy See.222

The English, already dissatisfied with their sovereign, were loosed from the oaths which they had taken to him, and the crown of England was decreed to Philip Augustus, who, imprudent enough to accept it, evinced his gratitude, by releasing Ingelburg from the castle of Etampes, and re-calling her to the throne. But while Philip prepared to reap, with arms in his hands, the fruits of the pontiff's liberality, a legate named Pandolph, took advantage in England of the fright of the deposed king, and presented him the means of recovering his sceptre, by accepting it as a pure gift from the hands of the Church. On his knees before Pandolph, John placed his hands between those of this priest, and pronounced in the presence of the bishops and lords of Ireland, the following words,223

"I, John, by the Grace of God, king of

"England, and lord of Ireland, for the expiation

"of my sins, of my perfect accord, and by the

"advice of barons, give to the Roman Church, to

"Pope Innocent and his successors, the kingdom of

"England and the kingdom of Ireland, with all the

"rights attached to the one and the other: I hence-

"forward hold them of the Holy See of which I shall

"be the faithful vassal, faithful to God, to the Church

"of Rome, to the sovereign pontiff, my lord, and to

"his successors lawfully elected. I pledge myself

"to pay every year, a tax of one thousand marks of

"silver; to wit, seven hundred for England, and

"three hundred for Ireland."

This discourse is scarcely ended, when the legate is presented with a part of the tribute promised to St. Peter: Pandolph casts the money on the ground, tramples it under his feet, nevertheless collects it again, satisfied with thus expressing the subjection of temporal treasures as well as temporal powers.224 The sceptre and the crown remain in his hands: he keeps them five days; and when, after he has obtained some additional securities, he finally restores them, he pretends forsooth, that they are received as a perfectly gratuitous favour. He now passes immediately into France to announce what he has performed in England.- Philip learns from Pandolph, that John, the vassal of the pope, occupies, under the protection of the Holy See, the throne of Great Britain, and that henceforth every enterprise against this kingdom will be punished by excommunication. Philip replied, that he took up arms at the solicitation of the pope alone, that the preparations for it had cost two millions, that a fleet, recently equipped, is in the road at Boulogne, that it waits the troops destined to land at Dover, and that the time for receding is departed. In the mean time, the rebellion of a vassal compels the French monarch to carry the war into Flanders: to this vassal the king of England, the emperor Otho IV. and almost all the princes of Europe join themselves. But the victory which the French obtain at Bouvines, dissipates the hopes of their enemies: Otho is no longer emperor, save in name; and John would have been already dethroned, if Rome had not obtained for him a truce of five years.

It was the English themselves who at this interval pronounced, regardless of the menaces of Rome, the dethronement of their monarch; they offered his crown to Louis, son to Philip Augustus. New decrees of Innocent's prohibit both father and son from invading the State of a prince, a feudatory of the Holy See. The father affects to disapprove a conquest which Rome deems sacrilege, but furnishes, nevertheless, all the means for its execution: the son, in fine, embarks; and the sovereign pontiff, who clearly sees that the father and son understand each other, excommunicates them both. Louis was almost in possession of Great Britain, when the death of John gave a different direction to men's thoughts and their affairs.225

As sovereign of Rome, and as possessing in Italy a very galling preponderance, the Western Emperor was the most exposed to the attempts of Innocent III. To depress the empire, it behoved above all things to re-establish at Rome and in the ecclesiastical domains, the pontifical authority; the pope commenced, therefore, by turning to account the ascendancy which his birth, reputation, and talents, gave him over the Romans; he abolished the consulate, and arrogated to himself the imperial rights, invested a prefect, installed the public officers, and received the oaths of the senators. It was at this moment, says Muratori,226 that the imperial authority at Rome breathed its last sigh.

Out of Rome, Orbitello, Viterbo, Ombria, Romagna, and the March of Ancona, acknowledged Innocent III. for their sovereign. Reigning thus from one sea to the other, he conceived the hope of conquering Ravenna, which was still wanting to him, of possessing himself of the complete heritage of Matilda, of subjecting still further the two Sicilies, and, especially, prevent-ing their having for master the head of the empire; this last point was always a principle in the policy of the Holy See. Once should it govern in a direct manner the most part of the Italian provinces, it would be content to exercise elsewhere, a spiritual supremacy: the States which it could not possess, it would be satisfied to bestow, to resume, or to confer on such princes as should render themselves worthy by their docility. The conjunctures of the time altogether, as we have said, favoured this plan, at the accession of Innocent III. Frederick the II. was a child whom his father had caused to be elected King of the Romans, and his mother Constance, had placed him under the protection and even tutelage of the pope. One of this guardian's first acts was, to deprive his pupil of the title of King of the Romans, as well as of the prerogatives attached to the crown of Sicily. Between Philip of Swabia, and Otho of Saxony, simultaneously nominated emperors, the first of whom represented the house of Ghibeline, the second that of Guelph, Innocent determined in favour of Otho, even in prejudice of Frederick, whom he considered as a third competitor. It was, he said, to the Holy See belonged the privilege of judging sovereignly the claims of these competitors of the empire. The fortune of war favoured Philip of Swabia, with whom the prudent court of Rome already treated, when he was assassinated.-His daughter became the wife of Otho the IV. who thus having United all rights and suffrages, considered himself sufficiently powerful to refuse the pope the heritage of Matilda. Innocent now took the part of fulfilling his obligations as a guardian; he opposed his ward, Frederick, to the ungrateful Otho, excommunicated this prince, whom he had himself crowned, and raised Upper Italy against him. In this conjuncture the Ghibelines were seen armed by the pope against an emperor, whom the Guelphs sustained in his resistance to the pontiff: an historical phenomenon, which ought not to astonish us, as we have already observed, that these two parties were attached rather to particular families than to opinions. We may add, that it is the fate of permanent factions to experience many unlooked for changes, to modify according to circumstances their original designs, to retain their names, and their insignia, much longer than their thoughts or their sentiments, to preserve, in fine, no other invariable interest than that of remaining rivals, and falling foul of each other; it suffices then to be, and to be at war, it matters not to what end. It was especially the battle of Bouviines, which determined, as we have remarked, the fall of Otho IV. and the preponderance of the party of Frederick II. Innocent thus reaped in part the fruits of the triumph of Philip Augustus.

These disputes were connected with the crusade of 1202, which like that of 1095, and those of 1147 and 1189, placed in the hands of the pope the clue of all the movements of Europe. Each of these expeditions occasioned quarrels between the crusaders and the Greeks, and this misunderstanding appeared to Innocent an open for re-conquering the Eastern Church, escaped now two centuries from the domination of the court of Rome. The Greek empire, worn out by war and by faction, became the prey of the crusaders, who, being unable to retain Jerusalem, made themselves masters of Constantinople. Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was nominated Emperor of the East; after him four other Frenchmen filled successively the same throne, while, having taken refuge in Nice, the Greek emperors reigned only over some provinces. The palaces and temples of Byzantium were plundered, and the booty, collected by the French lords was estimated at a quantity of silver of two hundred thousand pounds weight. They found it convenient to indemnify themselves in Greece for the losses sustained in Palestine; the vow which they had made, to combat only infidels, no longer repressed their covetousness; the re-establishment of holy places was but a pretext for pillaging the rich ones; and already the affectation of sentiments of religion was relinquished.:

"They

"cast, says Fleury, the relics into unclean places,

"they scattered on the ground the body and blood

"of our Lord; they employed the sacred vases

"for profane uses, and an insolent woman danced in

"the sanctuary and seated herself in the chair of the

"priest."

Innocent, who was not ignorant of these profanations and complained of them, did not approve the less of the conquest:227

"God, said he, willing to

"console the church by the re-union of the schisma-

"tics, has caused the empire of the haughty, supersti-

"tious and disobedient Greeks to pass over to the

"humble, catholic, and submissive Latins."

Another benefit derived from the crusades was, the application of their names to many other leagues formed or fomented by the Roman Church. Innocent III. is the inventor of this artifice, which evinces an abundant acquaintance with the means of leading minds astray by the illusion of words: he applied to the service of his serious political designs, the enormous power of a word which, for the period of one hundred and ten years, had the effect of exciting through Europe the most blind and restless enthusiasm. He preached therefore a crusade against England when he had determined on dethroning John; a crusade against the Hungarians when he affected to become the arbiter of their intestine dissentions; a crusade against a king of Norway, whom also he wished to depose; but above all, a crusade against the Albigenses, a sect extended through the entire south of France. Raymond VI. Count of Tholouse, because he protected the Albigenses his subjects, was excommunicated as the abettor of heresy; and, one of the legates, who excited these troubles, having received a mortal wound, the states of the count, accused without any proof of the assassination, were declared vacant, and the prize of the first crusader who possessed himself of them. In vain Raymond humbled himself to degradation: in vain he had-the more culpable weakness to take up the cross himself against his own subjects; Simon de Montford obtained these wretched provinces, purchased by torrents of blood, with which he had inundated them. Raymond took refuge with his brother-in-law, Peter II. king of Arragon, who, after useless intercession with Innocent, took arms against Simon de Montford, and perished at the battle of Muret, in 1213. Two years afterwards the pope in the midst of a Lateran Council, definitely deposed Raymond, granting him a moderate pension, and bestowed his states on Simon, whom they dared to name Maccabeus, and who died in 1218 at the siege of Thou-louse. We do not mean to exculpate the Albigenses altogether, sometimes also denominated Vaudois, because there are numbers residing in the valleys of Piedmont, and often Good-men, from the regularity of their manners; but, to exterminate thousands of worthy men, because they were deceived, and to dethrone him who ruled them, because he did not persecute them speedily enough, such excessive severity unveils the character and displays the power of Innocent III.228

It is not Without an object that this pope is applauded for the establishment of the inquisition. In fact, Lucius III. from the year 1184, had ordered the bishops to seek ont heretics, to subject them to Spiritual, and deliver them over to secular punishments; but this first germ of so formidable an institution was developed before the time, when Innocent III. thought of sending into Languedoc two Oistertian monks, charged to pursue the Albigenses, to excommunicate them, and denounce them to the civil authority, which was to confiscate their wealth, or proscribe them, under pain of incurring itself ecclesiastical censures. Friar Raynier, friar Guy, and the archdeacon Peter of Castelnau, are the first inquisitors named and known in history. Innocent enjoined the people and their rulers, to obey them; the sovereigns, to proceed against the heretics denounced by these missionaries; the people, to take up arms against disobedient princes, or those who evinced too little zeal. Those first ministers of pontifical vengeance had soon fellow helpers, among whom St. Dominick is distinguished; and from the year 1215, their functions had acquired sufficient consistence and splendour to be solemnly approved in the Lateran council.229 Without doubt, the inquisition, a kind of permanent crusade, had not been perfected or consolidated, save under the successors of Innocent: but, without the memorable experiment he had the honour of making, it is doubtful if it had so tremendously flourished or brought forth its fruits.

Among three hundred popes, or anti-popes, of which history presents us with the names, we know none of them more imposing than Innocent III; his pontificate is most worthy the attention and study of European monarchs: there they may learn to what extent temporal power, united with ecclesiastical functions, amplifies and perverts them; to what universal supremacy was the papacy destined; in fine, what tyranny did it not exercise over princes, and over people, whenever political circumstances, even in a small degree, favoured sacerdotal ambition. A pope, said Innocent, the vicar of Christ, is superior to man, if he be inferior to God-minor Deo, major homine; he is the light of day; the civil authority is but the pale planet of the night. It was Innocent III. who discovered in the chapter of Genesis this celestial theory of the two powers, and it was by similar allegories, proofs of the ignorance of the age and of his own, that he subjugated the West, troubled the East, and governed, and deluged the world with blood.:

"Sword, sword," cried he, on learning the descent of the French on England;

"sword, sword

"spring from the scabbard and sharpen thyself to

"exterminate."

Such were the words of his last address.230 In the midst of the anathemas which he pronounced against Louis and Philip Augustus, he was seized with a fever, which, in a very few days brought on a paralysis, a lethargy, and finally the death of the most haughty of pontiffs, of the most skilful enemy of kings. He had governed the Church, or rather Europe, for eighteen years ten months and nine days; it is the most brilliant period of the papal power. England, Poland, Portugal, and we know not how many other States besides, became his tributaries. All historians of this era231 relate, that in a mysterious vision, St. Latgarde saw Innocent III. in the midst of flames, and that this pious maid having asked him, wherefore he was thus tormented, he answered, that he should continue so to be till the day of judgment, for three crimes which would have plunged him into the depths of the eternal fire of hell, if the holy virgin to which he had dedicated a monastery had not averted the divine wrath. We may be allowed to doubt respecting the vision: but, says Fleury232 this relation proves persons of the greatest virtue were convinced that this pope had committed enormous crimes. What were the three to which St. Lutgarde alluded? It would be extremely difficult to select them in the life of Innocent.

After having had too weak a successor in Honorius III. his place was more worthily supplied by Gregory IX. This pope announced his pretensions by the extraordinary pomp of his coronation.- Historians233 describe this gorgeous ceremony, in which nothing was omitted which could threaten Europe with a universal monarchy. Frederick II. who in receiving the imperial crown from the hands of Honorius, had ceded the heritage of Matilda, and placed his own son on the throne of the two Sicilies, in order that this kingdom should not remain united to the domains of the empire; notwithstanding so many compliances, and though he was the foster child as it were of the court of Rome, Frederick II. became the principal victim of the enterprises of Gregory IX.

Not content with creating against this prince a new Lombard league, Gregory, impatient to remove him from the midst of European affairs, summoned him to perform the vow which he had taken to go and combat the infidels in Palestine. Frederick embarked, but called back to Brundosium by illness, was excommunicated as a perjurer: he resumed his route, and for proceeding without absolution he was excommunicated anew. He arrives, he compels the sultan of Egypt to abandon Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Sidon to him, yet, because he treats with an infidel and signs a truce, he is a third time excommunicated. On returning to Europe, he found La Fouille invaded, Italy armed against the empire, and his own son drawn by the pontiff into rebellion and almost into parricide. He triumphed, nevertheless, over so many enemies, arrested and imprisoned his unnatural son, and above all took advantage of a sedition of the Romans against the pope. The Romans who had resumed under Honorius the love of independence, banished Gregory IX. who, compelled to negotiate with the emperor, consented to absolve him for a large sum of money. But Gregory, among other pretensions, claimed Sardinia as a domain of the Holy See. Frederick claimed it as a fief of the empire. Now follows a fourth excommunication, in which Gregory, by the authority of 'Father, Son and Holy Ghost,' the authority of the apostles and his own, anathematizes 'Frederick, late emperor,' looses from their oaths those who had sworn fidelity to him, and forbids them to recognize him as sovereign. This bull, sent to all monarchs, lords, and prelates of Christendom, was accompanied by a circular letter, which commands the publication of the anathema, to the sound of bells, throughout all the churches. Various writings of the Holy Father234 represent Frederick as one of the monarchs described in the Apocalypse; political and religious crimes of every species are imputed to this prince by him, even that of having termed Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, three impostors. Frederick stooped to reply to this torrent of accusation and insult; and that the apology should correspond with the accusation, he treated Gregory as Balaam, as Antichrist, the great dragon, the prince of darkness. By a special epistle235 to the king of France, Louis IX. or St. Louis the pope offered the empire to the brother of this monarch, Robert count of Artois, on condition that the French should make a crusade against Frederick. St. Louis replied, that he saw with astonishment a pope attempt to depose an emperor; that such a power belonged to a general council alone, and only on the plea of the acknowledged unworthiness of the sovereign; that Frederick on the contrary appeared irreproachable; that he had exposed himself to the dangers of war and of the sea, for the service of Jesus Christ, while Gregory, his implacable enemy, took advantage of his absence to plunder him of his States; that the pope, counting for nothing the rivers of blood which had flowed to satisfy his ambition or his vengeance, wished to subject the emperor, for the sole purpose of afterwards subjugating all the other sovereigns; that his offers proceeded less from a predilection for the French, than from inveterate hatred for Frederick; that he would, however, make inquiry as to the orthodoxy of this prince, and if he proved a heretic, would make the most implacable war against him, as in such case he would not fear doing with the pope himself. This epistle, without doubt, mingled errors of the grossest kind with the expression of the most generous resolutions. What! an assembly of priests possess the right of dethroning a sovereign! What! the religious opinions of a prince be a sufficient motive, with those who did not possess the same, to declare war against him! Yes, such were the indisputable results of those decretals from which the popes had compiled the public law of Christendom.

But the more deplorable this madness, the greater is the homage due to the prince, who, fettered by the bands of so many prejudices, could find in his own excellent heart a disinterestedness, a loyalty, and a courage, worthy of the happiest periods of history.

All the reputation of his exemplary piety was needed by Louis IX. to escape the anathemas of Gregory IX. and even the enterprises of the French bishops; for he repressed the bishops with firmness, whenever his understanding allowed him to perceive the abuses of their spiritual functions which they practised. They were seen, for the most trifling temporal interest, shut the churches, and suspend the administration of the sacraments. Experience had taught them the efficacy of these measures; they obtained by this species of pettishness the various objects of their desires. But a bishop of Beauvais, and an archbishop of Rouen, having employed this system with too little caution, and thinking proper to excommunicate some royal officers, St. Louis had their temporalities seized, and obtained from the pope a bull which forbade the interdiction of the royal chapels.:

"He had

"for a maxim, never to yield a blind respect to the

"orders of the ministers of the church, whom he

"knew to be subject to the intemperancies of passion

"as well as other men."

Thus does Daniel the historian express himself, the least suspected assuredly that we can instance here. Joinville relates how the clergy complained bitterly of the little concern of civil officers for sentences of excommunication, and how Louis IX. expressed himself so decisively, on the necessity of ascertaining the justice of these sentences, that they abstained from urging the matter on him. This pious monarch one day caused the money levied for the Holy See to be seized, being unwilling it should be applied to the accomplishment of the ambitious projects of Gregory IX. The pontiff, to be revenged, annulled the election of Peter Chariot to the bishoprick of Noyou; this person was a natural and a legitimated son of Philip Augustus. Louis IX. was not to be shaken; he declared that no other person should possess this bishoprick. Gregory, though he exaggerated his pontifical power, though he protested, that God had confided to the pope the privileges of empire on earth as well as in heaven, confined himself to simple menaces; and France was indebted to her pious sovereign for a firmness, which he had still further occasion to manifest under the succeeding pontificates.

That of Gregory IX. more particularly memorable for the disputes with the emperor Frederick II., is so, likewise, for the publication of an ecclesiastical code compiled by Raymond de Pennafort the third general of the Dominicans. Since the decree of Gratian, decretals, and collections of decretals, had multiplied to that degree that one could scarcely see his way among them. Gregory had, to his own decisions, caused those of his predecessors from Eugenius III. to be added. There resulted from it a collection, of which the subjects are distributed into six books. A sorry verse236 which announces this distribution, maybe too faithfully translated and appreciated in the following:

Judges, judgments, the clergy, marriages, and crimes.

The canonists cite this code under the name of 'The Decretals of Gregory IX.' or simply 'The Decretals,' and sometimes by the word 'extra,' that is, without the decree of Grattan; which decree had been for two centuries the sole source of ecclesiastical jurisprudence. As fruits of the vast correspondence of Alexander III., of Innocent III. and of Gregory IX., these five books are in every respect worthy to serve as a sequel to the decree: they have with it contributed to the propagation of maxims subversive of all government.

The election of Sinibald of Fiesque to the papacy, seemed to promise some years of peace between the priesthood and the empire: Sinibald had for a long time been connected by friendship with Frederick; but the cardinal friend became a pontiff enemy, even as the emperor had foretold. Innocent IV. the name of this pope, having placed on the absolution of Frederick, conditions which he would not accept, war was rekindled, and the pope, compelled to fly from Genoa, his country, came thence to solicit an asylum in France. Louis IX. consulted his barons, who maintained, that the court of Rome was always expensive to its guests, that a pope would obscure the royal dignity, and would form in the state another independent one.237 Rejected by the King of France, refused also by the King of Arragon, Innocent addressed himself to the English, whose reply was not more favourable. What! they say, have we not already simony and usury, wherefore then need a pope, who would come in person to devour the kingdom and our churches. Very well! cried the pontiff incensed at this triple affront; we must finish with Frederick; when we have crushed or tamed this great dragon, these petty serpents will not dare to raise their heads, and we shall crush them under our feet.238 To attain this object, he holds a general council at Lyons, a city which at that time belonged neither to France nor the emperor: the archbishops usurped to themselves the sovereignty in it, and maintained that it had ceased to be a fief of the empire.239 There Frederick II. was deposed:

"In virtue, says the pope, of the power to

"bind and to loose, which Jesus Christ has given

"us in the person of St Peter, we deprive the late

"emperor, Frederick, of all honor and dignity; we

"prohibit obedience to him, to consider him as em-

"peror or king, or to give aid or counsel to him,

"under the penalty of excommunication by the act

"alone."

To annihilate the house of Swabia had been for a long time the most ardent wish of the popes, especially of Innocent IV.; but he proclaimed almost fruitlessly, a crusade against Frederick: real crusades occupied them at the time, that is, expeditions into the East, and the fugitive Innocent IV. did not inherit the omnipotence of Innocent III.. The low clergy itself no longer adored the pontifical decrees: a curate of Paris, announcing to his parishioners that which deposed Frederick, addressed them in these remarkable words;:

"I am igno-

"rant my very dear brethren, of the motives of this

"anathema, I only know, that there exists between

"the pope and the emperor great differences, and an

"implacable hatred; which of them is right I can-

"not inform you: but I excommunicate as far as

"in me lies, him who is wrong, and I absolve him

"who is aggrieved in his privileges."

This is the most sensible sermon which, to our knowledge, has been preached in the 17th century. St. Louis, who censured more loudly than the curate the deposition of Frederick, went to Cluni, and drew the pope there also, whom he would not suffer to enter farther into the kingdom. Their first conferences remain secret; and all that can be said of them is, that the obstinate pontiff was deaf to the pacific counsel of the sainted king. But history240 has handed down to us a little more of the details of a second interview, which took place the following year, at Cluni also, between Innocent and Louis.:

"The Holy-

"land is in danger, said the king; and no hope ex-

"ists of delivering it without the help of the emperor

"who holds so many ports, isles, and coasts under

"his authority. Most Holy Father, accept his

"promises, I beseech you in my own name, and

"in the name of the thousands of faithful pil-

"grims, in the name of the universal church:

"open the arms to him who seeks for mercy:

"it is the gospel which commands you to do

"so; imitate the goodness of him whose vicar you

"are."

The pope 'bridling up,' says Fleury,241 persisted in his refusal. Thus these two personages, we may say, exchanged their provinces; it was the monarch who assumed the charitable language of the gospel, it was the priest who preserved the inflexible attitude of presumptuous power. At the same period, we behold a sultan of Egypt, Melie-Saleh, giving lessons of probity to the successor of St. Peter. Pressed by Innocent IV. to abandon, contrary to the faith of treaties, the interests of Frederick, Melie-Saleh replied:

"Your envoy has spoken to us about Jesus

"Christ, with whom we are better acquainted than

"you are, and whom we more worthily honour.-

"You pretend that peace between all nations is the

"object of your desires; we do not desire it less

"than you. But there exists between us and the

"emperor of the West, an alliance, a reciprocal

"friendship, which commenced with the reign of the

"sultan our father, whom may God receive to glory:

"we shall therefore, conclude no treaty unknown to

"Frederick, or contrary to his interests."

However, after useless attempts at reconciliation, and various vicissitudes of success and misfortune, Frederick died in 1250, probably strangled, as they say, by his son, Manfred. On receiving this news, Innocent IV. invites the heavens and the earth to rejoice; these are the very words of a letter which he wrote to the prelates, lords, and people of the kingdom of Sicily. He terms Frederick the son of Satan.242

Conrade IV. son of Frederick II. was called to succeed him; and, in the absence of Conrade, Manfred his brother governed the two Sicilies. Innocent declares, that the children of an excommunicated person can inherit nothing from their parent; he proclaims a crusade against them, and draws into the revolt the Neapolitan nobles. Manfred succeeded in subduing them; he took the city of Naples by assault, and compelled the pope to fly once more to Genoa. The crusade is again preached against the sons of Frederick, and their kingdom is offered to an English prince. The quarrels which soon sprang up between the two brothers, re-animated the hopes of the Court of Rome; it received the most lively expectations from them, when it learned the death of Conrade, when Manfred was suspected of parricide, and nothing more was wanting, but to destroy the last branch of the house of Swabia, Conradine, a child of ten years of age, the son of Conrade, and as grandson, legitimate heir of Frederick II. The pope hesitated no longer to erect himself into king of Naples: in order to support this title, he levied an army; but this army had only a legate for its leader; it was beaten by Manfred. Innocent IV. died from despair in consequence, at the moment he had entered on a negociation with Louis IX. which had for its basis, the conferring on a brother or son of this monarch, the kingdom of the two Sicilies. This pope had excited a civil war in Portugal, by deposing the king Alphonso II., already interdicted by Gregory IX., and calling to the throne a count of Boulogne, brother of Alphonso. Innocent had disputes also with the English, who complained loudly of his extortions, his breach of the laws, and disregard of treaties.243

"The Peter's pence tax did not satisfy him,

"they said; he exacted from all the clergy enor-

"mous contributions; he had general taxes asses-

"sed, and levied, without the king's consent: in

"contempt of the right of patrons, he conferred

"benefices on Romans, who did not understand

"the English tongue, and who exported the money

"of the kingdom."

Let us observe further, that in publishing crusades against Frederick II. and against his son, Innocent granted greater indulgences to them than to the expeditions into Palestine. The pope, said the French nobles, extends his own sovereignty by crusades against the Christians, and leaves our sovereign the task of fighting and suffering for the faith. St. Louis was then in the Holy Land, just released from his captivity. His mother, Queen Blanche, caused the property of the pope's crusaders against Conrade to be seized: let the pope, said she, maintain those who are in his service, and let them begone never to return.244 Thus did the Guelph crusade miscarry in France, in spite of the exertions of the 'pious preachers' and 'pious minors,' the zealous servants of the Holy See. But from the accession of Gregory IX. Italy and Germany never ceased to be torn by the factions of Guelph, and Ghibeline, which assumed more and more their original direction, the latter against the pope, the former against the emperor, and especially against the house of Swabia.

Alexander IV. who succeeded Innocent in 1254, continued to contend with Manfred, summoned him, excommunicated him, and designed him for the victim of a crusade, which did not, however, take place. The pope succeeded only in extorting from the king of England, Henry III. fifty thousand pounds sterling. Henry had made a vow to go into Palestine; this vow was commuted into a stipulated contribution, destined to the support of the war against Manfred. To obtain such a sum, Alexander promised the crown of Naples to prince Edward, son of Henry; which did not, however, prevent his continuing the negociation with Louis IX. and his brother Charles of Anjou. But Alexander was not sufficiently favoured by circumstances, and was too little endowed with energetic qualifications, to obtain much success; he could scarcely keep his ground in the midst of his own domains: a sedition of the Romans compelled him to withdraw to Viterbo, and his seven years reign produced no important result, unless we consider as such the establishment of the inquisition in the bosom of France. We are concerned we cannot conceal, that St Louis had solicited as a favour such an institution. It had become from the time of Innocent III. much consolidated: in 1229, a council at Thoulouse had decreed, that the bishops should depute in each parish one clergyman, and two laymen, for the purpose of seeking out heretics, denouncing them to the prelates appointed to try them, and delivering them to the officers charged with their punishment. Gregory IX. in 1233, had invested the Dominicans, or brother preachers, with these inquisitorial functions; the church was unquestionably enriched by this new power, and St. Louis had the misfortune of not preserving his subjects from it. He paid two enormous tributes to the ignorance of his age, the crusade, and the inquisition.-He was even not far from assuming the Dominican habit, and ceasing to be a king in order to become an inquisitor.245 We enter into these particulars, because they are all effects of the ascendancy of the popes, of that unbounded extent which their temporal royalty gave to their ecclesiastical authority.- Alexander IV. was a zealous protector of the monks, especially the mendicants. This predilection made him unjust to the universities; he was the avowed enemy of that of Paris. The historian of this university, Egasse du Boulay,246 tells us, that the death of this pope gave peace to the Parisian muses.

It was a Frenchman, born at Troyes, who become pope by the name of Urban IV. advanced principally the negociations with the count of Anjou. Impatient to exterminate Manfred, Urban saw too well that the publication of crusades, indulgencies, the equipment of pontifical troops, with all the temporal and spiritual arms of the Holy See, would remain powerless, without the active participation of a sovereign, interested by the allurement of a crown, to complete the ruin of the house of Swabia. Popular commotions rendered the residence of Rome rather uneasy to the sovereign pontiff; Urban had retired to Orvieto, whence by some mutinous acts, he was again driven to Perugia. He was, therefore, solicitous to conclude with Charles of Anjou; although this prince had seemed to detach himself from the pope, in accepting the dignity of senator of Rome, and the treaty, was about to be signed when Urban died: his successor, Clement IV. completed his design.

The incompatibility of the crown of Sicily with the imperial crown, as also with the sovereignty over Lombardy, or over Tuscany; the cession of Beneventum and its territory to the Holy See: annual tributes and subsidies to the church; recognizance of the immunities of the clergy of the Two Sicilies; inheritance of this kingdom reserved to the descendants of Charles alone; in default thereof, power granted to the pope to choose the successors to them. Such were the principal conditions of the treaty, which called Charles of Anjou to reign over the Neapolitans. He would have subscribed to still more humiliating ones. He promised to abdicate before the expiration of three years the title of senator of Rome; even to renounce it sooner, if he completed before this period the conquest of the kingdom which had been bestowed him, and, to neglect nothing to dispose the Romans to concede the disposal of this dignity to the sovereign pontiff: he subjected himself to interdiction, excommunication, deposition, if he should ever break his engagements: he finally pronounced an oath, framed in these terms:247

"I, per-

"forming full allegiance and vassalage to the church,

"for the kingdom of Sicily, and for all the territory

"on this side the Pharos of Messina, to the fron-

"tiers of the ecclesiastical state, now and hence-

"forward promise to be faithful and obedient to St.

"Peter, to the pope my supreme liege, and to his

"successors canonically elected; I shall form no

"alliance contrary to their interests; and, if from

"ignorance I shall be unfortunate enough to form

"such, I shall renounce it on the first order which

"they may be disposed to signify to me.

It was in order to obtain so precarious a crown, to usurp a throne so degraded, that Charles of Anjou entered Sicily, animated by his presence the Guelphic faction, and set it at variance, from the Alps to Mount Etna, with that of the Ghibelines. The latter attached itself more than ever to Manfred, who, after some success, fell and perished at the battle of Beneventum. The young Conradine, until now eclipsed by Manfred, and detained by his mother in Germany, at length appeared: everywhere the Ghibelines received him, and strenuously supported him against the arms of Charles, and the anathemas of Clement; but, defeated at the plain of Tagliaoozzo, he fell into the hands of his rival. Charles was ungenerous enough to deliver his disarmed enemy into the hands of corrupt judges: distrust and revenge borrowed juridical forms; Conradine, at the age of eighteen, was decapitated at Naples, the 26th October, 1258; and the most faithful defenders of his indisputable rights shared his fate. The Ghibelines were proscribed through all Italy; rivers of blood bathed the steps of the subaltern throne, in which Charles went to seat himself at a pontiff's feet. Some writers assert that Clement disapproved of the murder of the young prince; others accuse him of having advised it, and of having said, that the saving of Conradine, would be the ruin of Charles; that the safety of Charles exacted the death of Conradine248 However it was, the Holy See triumphed by the extinction of the house of Swabia.

Full of the idea of his power249 Clement decided, that all ecclesiastical benefices were at the disposal of the pope; that he could confer them whether vacant or not vacant, giving them in the latter case in reversion, or as they term it in expectancy. Such audacity astonished Louis, and the indignation he conceived at it dictated an ordinance, known by the name of 'the pragmatic sanction' of which the following is a summary:

"The prelates, patrons, and collators to benefices,

"shall fully enjoy their privileges.

"The cathedral and other churches of the king-

"dom shall make their elections freely.

"The crime of simony shall be banished the

"kingdom.

"Promotions and collations to benefices shall be

"made according to common right and the decrees

"of councils.

"The intolerable exactions, by which the court of

"Rome has impoverished to such a wretched de-

"gree the kingdom, shall cease, save in cases of

"urgent necessity, and by consent of the king, and

"of the Gallican church.

"The liberties, franchises, immunities, rights and

"privileges, granted by the sovereigns to churches

"and monasteries are confirmed."

This act is so important, and does so much honour to Louis IX. that the Jesuit Griffet250 disputes its authenticity. We may oppose to Griffet, the authority of his brethren Labbe and Cossart;251 of Bouchel, of Tillet, Fontanon, Pinson, Girard, Lauriere, Egasse du Boulay, in fine, that of all the jurisconsults, historians, and even theologians, who have had occasion to speak of the pragmatic sanction of St. Louis. But further, we see it cited in 1491, by the University of Paris; in 1483, in the states held at Tours; in 1461 by the parliament Charles VII. on the occasion of the pragmatic published by this king, expresses himself in these words: in 1440, by John Juvenal des Ursins,:

"You are not the first who has done

"such things; thus did St. Louis, who is sainted and

"canonized, and we must acknowledge he did well,

"your father and others have approved it."

There is, then, no room to doubt, that the most pious of the French kings was the most zealous defender of the liberties of the Gallican church; and this glorious resistance, which he made in 1268 to Clement IV. expiates the unfortunate consent that he gave to the treaty concluded between this pope and Charles of Anjou.

Thirty months elapsed from the death of Clement, to the election of his successor, Gregory X. Charles of Anjou profited of this interregnum to acquire a great authority in Italy; he aspired even to govern it altogether. Gregory X. who, perceived this, endeavoured to oppose four obstacles to it: a new crusade; the reconciliation of the Eastern church; the restoration of the Western empire, and the extinction of the factions of Guelph and Ghibeline. Since the death of Conradine, the discord of these factions was almost without object: it survived from habit and personal animosities, rather than from opposition of political interests. The Guelphs more powerful from day to day, were about re-establishing the independence of the Italian cities, and perhaps reuniting under a head who was not to be a pope.-To provide against this danger, and to keep in check Charles of Anjou, Gregory X. confirmed the election of a new German emperor: this was Rodolph of Hapsburg, head of the house of Austria. This Rodolph renounced, in favour of the Roman church, the heritage of Matilda, and was nevertheless excommunicated, for having supported his sovereign rights over the Italian cities, and for having neglected to assume the cross. They at length became tired of these expeditions into Palestine, where the Christians, driven from the pettiest hamlets, scarcely preserved a single asylum. The Greek church, apparently reconciled to the second general council of Lyons, was not actually so for a long period. The most complete result of the pontificate of Gregory X. was the acquisition of the Comtat Venaissin, in which, however, the king of France, Philip the Hardy, reserved to himself the city of Avignon.

Nicholas III. annulled the oath taken to the emperor by the cities of Romagna; he obliged Charles of Anjou to renounce the vicarship of the empire, and the dignity of senator of Rome; he even incited Peter of Arragon to recover the kingdom of Sicily, which belonged by right of inheritance to his wife Constance. On which we must observe, that Charles had refused to marry one of his granddaughters to a nephew of Nicholas, and that this pontiff sprung from the house of the Ursini, had conceived the idea of dividing among his nephews the crowns of Sicily, of Tuscany, and of Lombardy, These projects did not succeed.

Martin IV. elected by the influence of Charles of Anjou, laid an interdict on the city of Viterbo, excommunicated the Forlivians, confiscated whatever they possessed in Rome, excommunicated Peter III. king of Arragon, and excommunicated Michael Paleologus, emperor of Constantinople. A league of the Venetians, of Charles of Anjou, and the pope, had little success. Another crusade was undertaken against Peter of Arragon, who beat the crusaders: the Sicilian vespers, not without some appearance of justice, were attributed to this prince; a horrible massacre, in which the French were the victims, in the year 1282, and which Martin IV. and Charles of Anjou might have prevented by a more prudent conduct.

When Celestine V. yielding to the advice of the cardinal Benedict Cajetan, had abdicated the papacy, this cardinal succeeded him, imprisoned him, and under the name of Boniface VIII., disgraced the chair of St. Peter, from the year 1294 to 1303. He excommunicated the family of the Colonnas, confiscated their estates, and preached a crusade against them. They were Ghibelines; Boniface, who had belonged to this faction, detested them for it the more. The pope answered in plain terms, that the Roman pontiff, established by providence, over kings and kingdoms, held the first rank on earth, dissipated every evil by his sublime regards, and from the height of his throne, tranquilly judged the affairs of men. You know, he writes, to Edward I. that Scotland belongs to the Holy See of full right. He treated Albert of Austria, elected emperor in 1298, as a usurper, summoned him to appear at Rome, and dispensed his subjects from their allegiance; but he menaced especially Philip the Fair, king of France.252

By the bull 'Clericis La?cos,' Boniface had forbidden, under pain of excommunication, every member of the secular and regular clergy from paying, without the pope's permission, any tax to their sovereigns, even under the title of a gratuitous gift: Philip answered this bull by prohibiting the transportation of any sum of money out of the kingdom, without permission from under his hand. This measure at first seemed to intimidate the pontiff who, modifying his bull, authorised, in cases of pressing necessity, the contributions of the Clergy; but a legate soon arrived to brave Philip, and summon him to alter his behaviour, if he did not desire to expose his kingdom to a general interdict. This seditious priest was arrested; his detention set the pope in a rage.:

"God has appointed me over empires, to pluck up,

"to destroy, to undo, to scatter, to build up and to

"plant."

Thus does Boniface express himself in one of his bulls against Philip IV. That which is known by the name of 'Unatn sanctam,' contains these expressions:

"The temporal sword ought to

"be employed by kings and warriors for the church,

"according to the order or permission of the pope:

"the temporal power is subject to the spiritual, which

"institutes and judges it, but which can be judged

"of God alone; to resist the spiritual power, is

"to resist God, unless they admit the two principles

"of the Manicheans."

An archdeacon, the bearer of these bulls, enjoined the king to acknowledge, that he held from the pope his temporal sovereignty. Finally, Bonifice excommunicated Philip: he ordered this monarch's confessor to appear at Rome, to render an account of the conduct of his penitent; he destined the crown of France to this same emperor, Albert, before treated as a criminal, but who now acknowledged by a written document.:

"that the "Apostolic See had transferred from the Greeks to

"the Germans the Roman empire, in the person of

"Charlemagne; that certain secular and ecclesiasti-

"cal princes, hold from the pope the right of electing

"the king of the Romans, the destined successor to

"the empire; and that the pope grants to kings and

"to emperors the power of the sword."

An euloguim is due to the victorious firmness of Philip, in opposition to these extravagancies: the commoners and the nobles of France supported him; the clergy, though already imbued with ultramontane maxims, was led away by the ascendancy of the two former orders. The prelates at all times adhered to the king with a reservation in favour of 'the faith due to the pope', and thirty-four of them proceeded to Rome in defiance of Philip.

A letter of this prince to Boniface, VIII. commences with these words:

"Philip, by the grace of God,

"king of the French, to Boniface pretended pope,

"little or no greeting. Let your very great Fatuity

"take notice, &c."

These insulting expressions, but little worthy of him who employed them, would have very badly succeeded, addressed to any pope who had at all less merited them than Boniface; but his pretensions really bordered on delirium, and he was altogether destitute of the political address requisite for their success. Three men, in the course of the thirteenth century, have checked the menacing progress of the pontifical power. Boniface VIII. by disgracing it with his impotent excesses;253 Philip IV., in publishing this discreditable conduct with unpunished insults; but above all, Louis IX. whose resistance, edifying like his other good works, had assumed against the worldly pride of the popes, the character and authority of the religion of Jesus Christ.

Gregory VII. or Boniface VIII. would infallibly have excommunicated Louis IX.: the anathemas of the former would have been formidable, those of the latter could injure the court of Rome alone.

Boniface caused an ecclesiastical code to be compiled, which bore the name of 'Sexte,' because it was considered as a sixth book, added to the decretals compiled under Gregory IX., by Raymond de Pennafort. This sixth book itself is divided into five, which correspond in the distribution of their contents with those of Raymond's collection, and embrace, with the decretals of Boniface VIII., those of his predecessors since the death of Gregory IX. When so many pontifical laws become accumulated in the several codes, ecclesiastical tribunals, of course, become requisite in order to apply them: episcopal courts therefore sprung up. Father Thomassin fixes their origin under Boniface VIII. and this opinion appears to us a more probable one than that which traces this institution up to the twelfth century.

By officials, we understand, judges properly so called, attached to the cathedrals, and to the sees of archbishops, for the purpose of pronouncing special, civil, or even criminal sentences: now this character does not sufficiently belong to certain dignitaries mentioned in the writings of Peter de Blois, and of which, in 1163, a council of Paris complained.-Furthermore, whether in the thirteenth or twelfth century, the era of the establishment of ecclesiastical courts is certainly long subsequent to the publication of the 'False Decretals,' and to the corruption, of the ancient discipline of the church.

Legates, another instrument of the papal power, were divided into two classes: the first, chosen in the very places in which they exercised their functions; the second, dispatched from the bosom of the Roman court, like arms extended by St. Peter, over the wide extent of Christendom. Among the former are also distinguished those who received an express and personal mission, and those who born, as it may be said, legates, held this title from a privilege annexed to the episcopal or metropolitan see which they filled. Of all these various ministers, or commissaries of the pontifical government, the most powerful would always have been detached from their proper centre, if the very excess of their pomp and power had not too often humbled, in every kingdom, the prelates they came to eclipse and to rule. Their splendour, defrayed in each place by the churches, the monasteries, and the people, excited less of admiration than of murmurs; and even, after the third council of the Lateran had reduced them to twenty-five horses, they were still considered burdensome. It became necessary to dispose of sacred vases in order to make them presents; and to purchase at enormous prices the decisions, answers, favours, commissions, one had occasion to demand of them.

"The legations, says Fleury254 were mines of gold to the cardinals, and they usually returned from them loaded with riches."

Their avarice was so notorious and so unchangeable, that St. Bernard255 speaks of a disinterested legate as a prodigy; but their pride, more intolerable still, displayed too openly beneath the eyes of monarchs, the pretensions of the court of Rome, and provoked a signal resistance. Very early these Legates 'a latere' became unacceptable in France, and it was ruled, that none should be received there, save when they should have been demanded and approved of by the king: this is one of the articles of the Gallican liberties.

The thirteenth century is that in which the popes arrived at their highest pitch of power: councils, crusades, anathemas, canonical codes, monastic orders, legates, missionaries, inquisitors, all the spiritual arms, re-tempered and sharpened by Innocent III. were, during this century, directed against thrones, and often triumphed over them. Innocent bequeathed a universal monarchy to his successors: they have been unacquainted with the means of fully preserving this empire; but, in the year 1300, some small portion of wisdom had sufficed to Boniface VIII. to have been still the first potentate in Europe, and, notwithstanding the disgrace of this last pontificate, the influence of the Holy See still continued to sway that of other courts.