partisans of the pope, were only citizens, emulous of obtaining the
independence of their city or republic, and to withdraw their elective
head from all domination. Some would have even preferred a civil
magistracy simply, as that of Alberic; they united rather in opposition
to the emperor, than in favor of the pontiffs chosen without, or in
defiance of, his authority. Such were the elements of the factions,
which revolted with John XII. which nominated Benedict V. and which
repelled, as far as in their power, Leo VIII. and John XIII. The emperor
had no partizans at Rome save his personal agents, and a few of the
inhabitants; the rest were subjected only by his presence or his arms.
Thus this pontifical faction which, in the sequel, appears to have
supported the most monstrous excesses of pontifical ambition, was
originally but a republican party, that more than once, it had been easy
to engage in the destruction of the temporal power of the popes, by
conferring on the Romans, and on some others of the cities of Italy, a
suitable government.

Otho died in 973; and from his death to the pontificate of Gerbert or
Sylvester II. the most remarkable events are, the accession of Hugh
Capet to the throne of France, the excommunication pronounced against
his son Robert, and the attempts of Crescentius to force Rome from the
yokes of Otho II. and Otho HI. the feeble successors of Otho the Great.

Crescentius was the son of Theodora, and, according to Fleury, of Pope
John X. We behold him governing Rome in quality of Consul towards 980;
but it is probable that from the year 974, he exercised a considerable
influence; stormy or weak pontificates restored the civil magistracy.
Benedict VI. the successor of John XIII. had been dethroned, imprisoned,
and strangled, or condemned to die of hunger. Boniface VII. the usurper
of the Holy See, after having plundered the churches, fled with his
booty to Constantinople: they hesitated not to fill his place, and the
imperial influence determined the election in favor of Benedict VII. who
belonged to the family of Alberic, now counts of Tusculum; a powerful
family, by whom the Emperor Otho II. and his agents, strengthened the
German party. But this emperor occupied in a war with the Greeks in the
Duchy of Beneventum, feared to displease the Romans by taking too active
a part in their affairs. He therefore prevented not Crescentius, who had
obtained their confidence, from ruling both the city and its bishop. In
983, when Benedict VII. died, the Romans and their consul elected John
XVI. Boniface, however, returned from Constantinople, made himself
master of Rome and of the person of John, caused him to perish in a
dungeon, and maintained himself during the space of eleven months, at
the head of the city and of the church. There is reason to think that
Crescentius contributed to the fall of Boniface, whom a sudden death
snatched from the vengeance of the people. John XV. elected in 985, had
disputes with the consul, who exiled him, and did not agree to see him
until the pope had promised to respect the popular authority. In despite
of this promise, Otho III. was called into Italy by John, who submitted
with reluctance to the ascendancy of Crescentius. John died at the
moment he expected to see himself delivered from this governor. Otho
III. nominated for pope a German, who took the name of Gregory V.: this
foreign pontiff elected by the influence of the Counts of Tusculum, on
the approach of the imperial army, odious on every account to the
Romans, became still more displeasing to them from German manners and
hauteur¹²⁸  It was at this moment Crescentius formed the project of
replacing Rome under the sovereign authority of the Greek emperors,
masters at once more gentle and more remote, accustomed to respect the
privileges of the people, and under whose protection the Neapolitans and
Venetians breathed freely and prospered. Greek ambassadors proceeded to
Rome under pretence of fulfilling a mission to the court of Otho; they
conferred with the consul, who deferred not to expel Gregory, and to
replace him by a Greek named Philogathus, who from being bishop of
Placentia, became pope or anti-pope under the name of John XVI. But Otho
came to Rome, and laid hold of this new pontiff, whom Gregory condemned,
in spite of the prayers of St. Nil, to lose his life by a series of the
most horrible torments. Crescen-tius had retired to the wall of Adrian;
they affected to treat with him, they pledged themselves to respect his
person: he relied on this promise given by the emperor, quitted the
fortress, submitted himself to Otho, and was instantly beheaded with his
most faithful partisans.

  ¹²⁸ Bellarmine and others, have attributed to Gregory V. the
      institution of the seven electorates of the empire: this absurd
      opinion has been often refuted. See for example, Natal. Alex.
      Dissert. 18, in secul, 9 and 10; Maimbourg’s Hist, of the decline
      of the empire, 1. 2, &c.; and Dupin’s Treatise on the
      ecclesiastical power, p. 270.

It was John XV. who filled the chair of St. Peter, when in 987 Hugh
Capet dethroned the Carlovingian race, and made himself king of France.
This prince knew how to make this necessary revolution acceptable to the
French nobles and bishops; it proceeded without commotion, and above all
without the intervention of the Roman Court. Hugh did not apply to John
as Pepin before had done to Zachary; and the happiness of not being
indebted to the Holy See, for his elevation, was without doubt, one of
the causes of the security of Hugh, the long duration of his dynasty,
and the propagation of those maxims of independence, which have
distinguished and done honour to the Gallican church. These maxims were
proclaimed from the reign of Hugh, by a bishop of Orleans, and by
Gerbert archbishop of Rheims¹²⁹  It was in the affair of an archbishop
of this same city of Rheims, named Arnoul, who had betrayed the new
king, and whom this prince had deposed. John wished to re-establish
Arnoul and annul the election of Gerbert; but the monarch was firm, and,
while he lived, Gerbert remained in the See of Rheims, and Arnoul in the
prison of Orleans.

  ¹²⁹ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 2, p. 275, &c.

Robert, son of Hugh, did not resist with equal success the attempts of
Gregory V. Robert had married Bertha, although she was his relative in
the fourth degree, and that he had been godfather of a son that she had
by the Count of Chartres, her first husband. They exclaimed against a
marriage made in contempt of two such serious impediments. Too much
terrified by these clamours, Robert resolved to restore Arnoul to the
See of Rheims: this complaisance by which he hoped to reconcile himself
to the See of Rome, appeared but an indication of his weakness. The pope
did not hesitate to declare the marriage void; he excommunicated the two
spouses, and Robert, compelled to part Bertha, married Constance. This
pliability has been much urged against him; but after the
re-establishment of Arnoul, a perseverance in retaining Bertha would
have led almost infallibly to fatal consequences. We must consider that
Robert was the second king of his family; that this new dynasty had
scarcely reigned ten years; that Gerbert, one of the most judicious men
of this epoch, had left the King of France in order to attach himself to
Otho III.; that this emperor had appeared at the council in which
Gregory V. had excommunicated the son of Hugh; and finally, that these
anathemas were then so dreadful, that at the present day we can scarcely
avoid suspecting exaggeration in what is related to us of their
effects.¹³⁰  It was the first time France beheld herself placed under an
interdict, and that she received the injunction to suspend the
celebration of the divine offices; the administration of the sacrament
to adults, and religious sepulture to the dead. We are assured that
Robert, when excommunicated, was abandoned by his courtiers, his
relations, his household, and that even two servants who remained with
him caused to pass through the fire the things which he had touched.

  ¹³⁰ “I know,” says Bossuet, “that Peter Damien assures us, that no
      person held intercourse with the king, except two servants for the
      necessary occasions of life. But, either those of whom the pious
      Cardinal received this information have exaggerated, or at least
      we must suppose that the public officers continued to exercise
      their duties, since without it the government could not subsist an
      instant. Besides if it were true, that the exercise of certain
      public offices had been suspended for some time, all history would
      testify to this interregnum, and relate the confusion which would
      have resulted from it.” Defence of the Grail. Cler. p. 2,1. 6, c.
      27.  Bossuet also observes, that at the moment in which Robert was
      struck with these terrible anathemas, nobody thought or asserted
      that this excommunication could carry the least attaint to the
      sovereign authority of this monarch.

This Gerbert whom we have mentioned, became pope after Gregory V. by the
name of Sylvester II. It was he who, being archbishop of Rheims, and
seeing himself condemned by John XV. had expressed himself in these
words:¹³¹

    “If the bishop of
    “Rome sin against his brother, and that, often warn−
    “ed, he obey not the church, he ought to be re−
    “garded as a publican: the more elevated the rank,
    “the greater the fall. When St. Gregory said, that
    “the church ought to fear the sentence of its pastors,
    “whether just or unjust, he did not mean to recom−
    “mend this fear to the bishops, who do not consti−
    “tute the flock, but are the heads and leaders thereof.
    “Let us not furnish our enemies with an occasion to
    “suppose that the priesthood, which is one in every
    “church, be in such sort subject to a sovereign pon−
    “tiff that if this pontiff suffer himself to be corrupted
    “by money, favor, fear or ignorance, no person can
    “hence be a bishop, unless he upholds himself by
    “such means. The church has for a rule, the
    “Scriptures, the decrees, and the canons of the Holy
    “See, when these are conformable to Scripture.”

Driven from Rheims, Gerbert was received by Otho the III., who created
him, first, archbishop of Ravenna, then head of the church in 998. He
died in 1002, after having in this short pontificate, confirmed as far
as in his power, the imperial authority at Rome, and refused the
indications of independence which had agitated her citizens.

We cannot take leave of the 10th centuiy, without lamenting the gross
ignorance into which Europe was plunged. Possessions were regulated by
custom, and transactions pursued by remembrance alone. In the midst of
these people, these nobles, these kings, who knew neither how to read
nor write, the rudest instruction was, in the clergy suffered to put
them in possession of the civil administration.¹³²

  ¹³¹ Concilior. vol. 9, p. 744. A discourse which Arnoul bishop of
      Orleans, pronounced in the Council of Rheims in 991, has been
      occasionally cited under the name of Gerbert, which discourse may
      be read in the history of this council revised by Gerbert. This
      very remarkable document is too long to be inserted here.

  ¹³² Researches on France, b. 8, c. 13.

    “The ecclesiastics, says Pasquier, di−
    “vide among themselves the keys as well of reli−
    “gion as of letters, altho’ so to speak, they derived
    “from these only sufficient provision for their
    “cubs.”

They alone could spell ancient writings, and trace some letters. They
assumed the dictating of wills, the regulation of marriages, contracts,
and public acts; they extorted legacies and donations, they freed
themselves from the secular jurisdiction, and endeavoured to subject all
things to a jurisprudence of their own.¹³³

  ¹³³ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 2, p. 293.

CHAPTER IV. ENTERPRISES OF THE POPES OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY

A SHORT time after the death of Sylvester II. a patrician, consuls,
twelve senators, a prefect, and popular assemblies, were seen to
re-appear at Rome. A second Crescentius, the son perhaps of the first,
filled the prefectorial office. As to the patrician, who was named John,
and who was the principal author of the reestablishment of this civil
magistracy, he is expressly designated to us as son of the first
Crescentius. But in 1013, Henry II. came to Rome: he received from Pope
Benedict VIII. the imperial crown: and the Romans, in spite of their
menaces, lost once more their independence. Baronius¹³⁴  relates a
diploma in which Henry confirms the donations of his predecessors: it is
added that Benedict, before receiving this emperor, made him swear that
he would be faithful to the pope, and regard himself only as the
defender and advocate of the Roman Church. Glaber,¹³⁵  a contemporary
historian, after having related this coronation, says, that it appears
very reasonable, and a thing well established, that no prince could take
the title of emperor, ‘save he whom the pope shall have chosen and
clothed with the insignia of this dignity:’  words which seem much less
to express in this place the sentiment of an individual than an opinion
generally established in his time.

  ¹³⁴ Ann. Eccles. ad ann. 1014. vol. 9, p. 48.

  ¹³⁵ Hiclor, 1. l, c. ult.

However Mabillon¹³⁶  and Muratori¹³⁷  deny the authenticity of the
diploma instanced by Baronius; and we see that in 1020, when Benedict
VIII. resorted to Henry in Germany, this prince confirmed the donations
of his predecessors with an express reservation of the imperial
sovereignty.

John XIX. the successor of Benedict, was banished by the Romans, and
restored by the Emperor Conrade, in 1033, whom he had crowned in 1027.
After John, who survived his re-establishment but a short time, his
nephew was elected pope, and took the name of Benedict IX. when he,
according to Glaber,¹³⁸  was but ten years of age.

  ¹³⁶ Annal. Bened. ann. 1014.

  ¹³⁷ Annals of Italy, year 1014, vol. 6, p. 45.

  ¹³⁸ Lib. 4, c. 6,1. 6, c. 6.

The elevation of an infant to the pontifical throne is not probable; but
all circumstances concur in proving that Benedict IX. was in 1033 but a
very young man: he bore to the chair of St. Peter the thoughtlessness
and irregularities of youth; and he was equally reproached for his
robberies and assassinations as for his gallantries. Behold how he is
pouryrayed to us by Victor III. one of his successors and
contemporaries¹³⁹ :

  ¹³⁹ J Dialo. 1: 3, In app. Chron. Cassin. vol. 1.

    “I am horrified to state how shame−
    “ful was the life which Benedict led, how dissolute, how
    “detestable. Therefore I shall commence my rela−
    “tion at the period when God took pity on his holy
    “church. After Benedict IX. had wearied the Romans
    “with his thefts, his murders, his abominations, the
    “excess of his villainy became insupportable; he
    “was expelled by the people: and to replace him
    “they elected for a stipulated price, in contempt of
    “the holy canons, John, Bishop of Sabine, who filled
    “the Holy See for three months only, under the
    “name of Sylvester in. Benedict IX. who was de−
    “scended from the Consuls of Rome, and whom a
    “powerful party recalled, wasted the environs of the
    “city, and by the aid of his soldiers, compelled
    “Sylvester to retire ignominiously to his bishoprick
    “of Sabine. Benedict in resuming the tiara, did not
    “leave behind him his manners, always hateful to the
    “clergy, and to the people, whom his irregularities
    “continued to disgust; terrified with the outcry
    “raised against his crimes, given up besides to volup−
    “tuous pleasures, and more disposed to live as an
    “Epicurean than as a pontiff, he adopted the re−
    “solution of selling the pontificate to the arch−
    “priest John, who paid him a considerable sum
    “for it. This John nevertheless passed in the city
    “for one of the best of the ecclesiastics; and while
    “Benedict took up his abode in houses of pleasure,
    “John under the name of Gregory VI. governed the
    “church two years and three months, till the arrival
    “of Henry III., king of Germany.”

Such is the picture drawn for us by a pope, of the condition of the Holy
See, under three popes, his predecessors, from 1033 to 1046.

It may be proper to observe, that Benedict the VIII. his brother John
XIX. and their nephew, Benedict IX. were of the house of the Alberics
counts of Tusculum. This is one of the first examples of pontifical
nepotism, or of the efforts of a family to perpetuate itself in the Holy
See.

We have seen by the statement of Victor III. that in 1045, there existed
at the same moment three popes; to wit, Benedict IX. who had retired to
his castle; Sylvester III. exiled to his original bishopric; and Gregory
VI. seated at Rome, since 1044. This last pontiff, who had purchased his
place, wished to reap its fruits, and could not behold them without
grief considerably lessened from the loss of many domains, usurped by
seculars from the Holy See. He took up arms to reconquer them, without
neglecting, however, the excommunication of their possessors. These were
the principal acts of his pontifical court. He is represented to us, as
a very ignorant man, even for the age in which he fired; it is doubtful
whether he could read;¹⁴⁰  and history relates, that a coadjutor was
given him to perform the pastoral functions, while he was signalizing
himself by warlike exploits.

  ¹⁴⁰ Amolice Angerius de Viti Pontificum, p. 340.

At the moment of Henry’s arrival, at Rome, the three popes were there,
Benedict IX. at the palace of the Lateran, Sylvester III. at the
Vatican, and Gregory VI. or John his coadjutor, at Saint-Mary-Major.
Henry deposed the whole three without any difficulty, and caused a
fourth to be elected, Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who took the name of
Clement II. To this Clement succeeded Damasius II.

Leo IX. and Victor II. all like himself, the creatures of Henry III. The
ten years of this emperor’s reign, are one of the epochs during which
the Romans and the popes have been most decidedly subject to the
imperial power.

Leo IX. the relative and subject of Henry, indemnified himself for that
obedience which he could not refuse to this emperor, by acts of
authority against other sovereigns. He held a council at Rheims in
defiance of the King of France, Henry I. proclaimed in it the pontifical
supremacy, and deposed and excommunicated prelates and seculars. In a
council at Rome, he decreed that the females whom the priests should
abuse in the bosom of this city, should remain slaves of the palace of
the Lateran.¹⁴¹  This pontiff, whom they have placed in the catalogue of
saints, should rather have obtained a place in the rank of warriors. He
led an army against the Normans, who defeated him, and kept him prisoner
at Beneventum. His ponticate is memorable from the completion of the
schism of the Greek church; but the religious discussions which belong
to the history of this schism, exceed the limits of our subject: the
principal political result of this division was, to extinguish the
already very feeble influence of the Emperors of the East over the
affairs of Italy.

  ¹⁴¹ Fleury’s Eccles. Hist 1. 59, n. 75.

’Tis under Leo IX. that Hildebrand begins to be distinguished, a man the
most celebrated of his age. Born in Tuscany, where his father, they say,
was a carpenter, he studied in France, embraced the monastic rule there,
and returned into Italy to give counsel to Leo IX. Nicholas II. and
Alexander II. and finally to succeed them in the pontifical throne. The
idea of a universal theocracy had assumed in his fiery and iron soul the
character of a passion; all his life was devoted to the undertaking. To
assure the empire of the priesthood over the rest of mankind, he saw the
necessity of reforming their manners and concentrating their relations,
to isolate them more strictly, and to form them into one great family,
the members of which should no longer recollect having belonged to a
secular one. Ecclesiastical celibacy was as yet but a general practice,
introduced into and renewed in almost every church, but in almost all,
nevertheless, modified by exceptions or transgressions. Hildebrand
resolved to reduce it to a rigorous law: at his instigation, Stephen IX.
in 1058 declared marriage incompatible with the priesthood; treated as
concubines all the priest’s wives; and excommunicated both them and
their husbands, if the union was not instantly divided. The clergy made
some resistance; the priests of Milan, especially, objected the
permission granted them by St. Ambrose to marry, but in first nuptials
only, and provided it was with a virgin.¹⁴²  Hildebrand to cut these
remonstrances short, classed in the number of heretics the obstinate
gain-sayers.¹⁴³

  ¹⁴² Landolph Senior. Hist Mediol. 1. 3. et 4;—Rer. Italic. t. 4, p.
      96, See.—Cocio. Hist, of Milan, pa. 1, b. 6, &C.

  ¹⁴³ Baron. Ann. Leoies. ad ann. 1069.

Under Nicholas II. Hildebrand changed the mode of electing the popes.
Until his time, all the Romans, clergy, nobles, and people, had assisted
in these elections. It was ruled that for the future they should be
selected by the cardinal bishops alone, to whom the cardinal clerks
should afterwards be united, and they were to close the matter by
demanding the approbation of the rest of the clergy, and even that of
the body of the faithful. The cardinal bishops are no others than the
seven bishops of the Roman territory: Nicholas, in the same decree calls
them his fellow countrymen, “comprovinciales episcopi.¹⁴⁴  With respect
to the cardinal priests or clerks, it was those who administered the
offices of the twenty-eight principal churches of the city of Rome. Long
before Nicholas, these twenty-eight priests and these bishops, had been
designated by the appellation of ‘cardinals’; but now for the first
time, behold them invested with the exclusive and determinate privilege
of nominating the new popes: the rest of the clergy and the people
preserve no more than the power of rejecting the proposed. Such was the
origin of the Electoral College of Cardinals; a college, however, which
received subsequently, and by degrees, its present organization. It had,
as we see, for its first founder, Nicholas II. or rather Hildebrand. Let
us not omit the clause which terminates this decree:¹⁴⁵

  ¹⁴⁴ Mabillon. Mus. Italic, v. 2. p. 114.—Fra. Pagi. Breviar. Pontif.
      Roman, vol. 2, p. 374.—Thomassin. Dicipl. vet. et nor. 1.2, c.
      lid, 116.—Muratori. de origine Cardinalatus. Ant Ital. v. 6. p.
      156.

  ¹⁴⁵ Concilior. tom. 9. p. 11,36.—Fleury Hiat.Eccles. 1.60 n 31.

    ‘saving the honour and respect due to king Henry,
    ‘future emperor, to whom the Apostolic See has given
    ‘the personal privilege of concurring in the election
    ‘by consent.’

The rights of the emperor were as yet too firmly founded to permit being
silent on them: they satisfy themselves by misrepresenting them, and by
referring to them as a concession granted by the Holy See, as a personal
privilege with which it was pleased to gratify Henry.

In founding ecclesiastical benefices, kings and nobles had reserved to
themselves the right of appointing to them; none could possess them
until after they had been invested by the donor or his heirs. It was a
simple application of the feudal system to ecclesiastical domains; but
the Court of Rome complained of the bad selection to which this system
led, and especially of the bargains which were driven between the
patrons and the candidates. A vast number of benefices were disposed of
no doubt: but this traffic has subsisted under every regime; the
question never has been other than that of knowing for whose benefit it
should be earned on. Hildebrand armed himself with a sanctified zeal
against this abuse: to extinquish it, he ventured to dictate for
Nicholas II. a decree, which prohibited the acceptance of a benefice
from a layman, even gratuitously.¹⁴⁶  This decree, published in 1059, in
the same council which confined to the cardinals the election of the
popes, presented itself under the form of a special rule against simony.
Little attention was at first given to it, it was rarely carried into
effect; but we are bound to point it out here as the prelude to the
quarrels about investitures.

  ¹⁴⁶ Baronins. Ann. ecclea. ad. ann. 1069, 5,32,34.

For a long period, kings and nobles had invested prelates in presenting
them with a switch or branch, as is practised in the investiture of
counts and knights. But the clergy, from the tenth century, had more
than once thought to deprive the patrons of benefices of their
privileges, by proceeding without delay to the election and consecration
of the prelate. It seemed allowed on all sides, that the consecration
rendered the election irrevocable: and if the patron layman had been
advertised of neither one nor the other, he lost the opportunity of
bestowing or selling the dignity. To escape this stratagem, the
sovereigns decreed that, immediately after the death of a prelate, the
ring and crozier should be transferred to his successor only in
investing him. Adam de Breme¹⁴⁷  refers to the reign of Louis le
Débonnaire this form of investiture: but it is infinitely more probable,
that it was not introduced until under Otho the Great, after the middle
of the tenth century: it was almost universally established in the
eleventh.¹⁴⁸  Hildebrand promised to himself its abolition, firstly,
because it secured to laymen the right of nomination or of sale, and
further, as it caused two symbols of the ecclesiastical power to pass
through the hands of the profane.

  ¹⁴⁷ Hist, eccles. 1.1. n. 2.

  ¹⁴⁸ Humbert 1.3. contra Simonaicus c. 7 et 11.

Far from reconciling himself to the continuance of a ceremony, in which
the secular authority seemed to confer sacerdotal offices, he pretended,
on the contrary, to erect the head of the church into the supreme
dispenser of temporal crowns. From the year 1059, he made, in the name
of Nicholas II. the first essay of this system. Nicholas received the
homage of the Romans, and created one of their chiefs Duke of Apulia
Calabria and Sicily, on condition that as vassal of the Apostolic See,
this chief, named Robert Guiscard, should take to the Roman Church the
oath of fidelity, pledge himself in the same character to pay it an
annual tribute, and enter into the same engagement for his
successors.¹⁴⁹  Such was the origin of the kingdom of Naples; and this
strange concession stripped the emperors of Constantinople of every
remnant of sovereignty over Grecia Major. Nicholas II. died in 1063; and
to elect and instal his successor Alexander II. the imperial consent was
in no way sought for. The court of Henry IV. then a minor, was offended,
and caused another to be nominated pope, Cadaloo, who named himself
Honorous II. Cadaloo defeated the army of Alexander, and succeeded in
fixing himself in the Vatican; but the duke of Tuscany drove him thence:
Alexander was recognised as the true pontiff, and Hildebrand continued
to reign.

  ¹⁴⁹ Baronins. Ann. eccles. ad ann. 1060.—Muratori’s Annals of Italy
      vol. 6. p. 106.

Hildebrand did not sit in person in St. Peter’s chair until 1073. We may
be surprised he did not sooner occupy it; some authors think the pride
and inflexibility of his character indisposed the electors towards him:
to us it appears more than probable that he in fact did not aspire to
become pope, provided the pope became the sovereign of kings; for were
he ambitious of the tiara, if he had desired, as he was capable of
desiring it, how easily had he triumphed, since the year 1061, or even
previously, over some feeble resistance. It was to the unlimited
aggrandizement of the pontifical power, much rather than to his personal
elevation, his opinions and character impelled him. We perceive in his
conduct none of the manœuvering which private interest suggests: it
evinces all the outlines of an inflexible system, the integrity of which
is never permitted to be compromised by concession or compliance. His
zeal, which was not merely active but daring, obstinate and
inconsiderate, proceeded from an incurable persuasion. Hildebrand would
have been the martyr of theocracy, if circumstances had called for it;
and they were little short of it. Like all rigid enthusiasts, he
considered himself disinterested, and became without remorse, the
scourge of the world. Without doubt, interest is the spring of human
actions: but the success of an opinion is an interest too; and to
sacrifice thereto every other, has been in all ages the destiny of some.
There are those who, cautious of troubling their neighbours, compromise
only their own happiness; these are the more excusable, as it is perhaps
to truth they offer so pure and so modest a sacrifice. Others, like
Hildebrand, think to acquire by the privations they impose upon
themselves, the privilege of terrifying and tormenting nations: and
their melancholy errors cost the world a train of misfortunes.

There are attributed to Gregory VII. the papal name of Hildebrand,
twenty seven maxims which compose a complete declaration of the temporal
and spiritual supremacy of the Roman Pontiff,¹⁵⁰  comprising in it the
right of dethroning princes, disposing of crowns, and reforming all
laws. It is not very certain whether or not he really drew up or
dictated these articles; but the substance of them and their
developement will be found in his authenticated letters: they may be
entitled “The Spirit of Hildebrand;” they were the rule of his conduct,
the creed which he professed, and would have wished to impose on
Christendom. In them it is expressly stated that the pope has never
erred, and that he never can fall into any error; that he alone can
nominate bishops, convoke councils, preside over them, dissolve them;
that princes should stoop and kiss his feet; that by him subjects may be
loosed from their oaths of fidelity; and in a word that there is no name
upon earth but that of the pope.

  ¹⁵⁰ Dictalus Papæ. Concilior vol. 10 p. 110—Baron. Ann. eccles. ad
      ann. 1076, sec. 24. De Marca. 1.7, c. 26.8. 9.

With reason has it been remarked how very much circumstances favoured
the designs of Hildebrand. Since the death of Otho the Great, the German
Empire had done nothing but weaken itself; Italy was divided into petty
states; a young king governed France; the Moors ravaged Spain; the
Normans had just conquered England; the northern kingdoms, newly
converted, were ignorant of the bounds of the pontifical authority, and
were to set the example of docility.

When Gregory VII. saw William the Conqueror established in England, he
did not hesitate prescribing to him to render homage for his kingdom to
the Apostolic See.¹⁵¹  This strange proposition had for its pretext, the
alms which the English had paid for about two centuries to the Roman
Church, and which was called Peter’s pence. The Conqueror, replied that
perhaps the alms would be continued, but it therefore did not follow,
that homage should be demanded of those from whom he received charity.
William at the same time forbad the English from going to Rome, and
prohibited them acknowledging any other pope than him whom he should
approve. This trifling affair had no other consequence; and we only
mention it in this place as it evinces better than any other, that
Gregory knew not how to fix any bounds to the pretensions of the Holy
See. Perhaps he imagined that the newness of William’s power in England
might incline him to wish for the protection of Rome, and make him
willing to purchase it by an act of vassalage: but it was evincing a
very false idea of the state of this conqueror’s affairs, his power, his
character, and his ascendancy over his new subjects. The least
reflection would have diverted Gregory from so ridiculous a step,
shameful because useless.

  ¹⁵¹ Fleury Hist. Ecclea. 1. 62, n. 63.

Sardinia, Dalmatia, Russia, were in Gregory’s eyes but fiefs which
ornamented the tiara. “On behalf of St. Peter,” thus he writes to
Demetrius the Russian prince, “we have given your crown to your son, who
receives it from our hands in taking the oath of fidelity to us.” We
must mention the names of all the princes who reigned in this pope’s
time, in order to fill up the catalogue of those whom he threatened or
struck with his excommunications: Nicephoros Bonotiate, the Greek
emperor, whom he enjoined to abdicate his crown¹⁵² ; Boleslaus, king of
Poland, whom he declared deprived of his authority, and added that
Poland should be no longer a king-dom¹⁵³ ; Solomon, king of Hungary,
whom he sent to learn from the old men of his country, that it belonged
to the Roman church¹⁵⁴ ; the Princes of Spain, to whom he stated that
St. Peter was supreme and sovereign lord of their states and domains,
and that it would be preferable that Spain should fall into the hands of
the Saracens, than cease to render homage to the vicar of Jesus
Christ¹⁵⁵ ; Robert Guiscard, his vassal, whose slightest neglect he
punished with anathemas¹⁵⁶ ; the Duke of Bohemia, of whom he exacted a
tribute of a hundred marks of silver: Philip I. king of France, whom he
affected to subject to similar exactions, and whom he denounced to the
French bishops as a tyrant plunged into infamy and crime, who deserved
not the name of a monarch, and of whom they would render themselves the
accomplices, if they did not rigorously resist him.

  ¹⁵² Concil. Rom. ann. 1078.

  ¹⁵³ Dngloss. Hist. Polon. 1. 3. 295.

  ¹⁵⁴ Gregor. Epist 1. 2, ep. 13, 23.—Fleury Hist. Ecoles* L62,n. 9.

  ¹⁵⁵ Fleury Hist eccles. 1. 62. a 9.

  ¹⁵⁶ Greg. Epist 1. 1, 26, 26, 62, 67.—Fleury, 1. 62. n. 9.

    “Imitate, says he to them, the Roman Church your mother; sepa−
    “rate yourselves from the service and communion of
    “Philip, if he remain obstinate; let the celebration of
    “the holy offices be interdicted throughout all France;
    “and know that, by God’s assistance, we shall deliver
    “this kingdom from such an oppressor.”

But of all the sovereigns of Europe, the emperor Henry IV. who had the
principal influence in Italian affairs, was, on this account, the most
exposed to the thunderbolts of Hildebrand.¹⁵⁷

  ¹⁵⁷ Greg. Epist. 1. 2. ep. 6.—Fleury 1. 62. n. 16.

Against so many potentates, and especially against Henry IV. Gregory had
no other support, no other ally, than an Italian princess, with little
talent, but much devotion, this was Matilda, countess of Tuscany. She
possessed for him a generous and tender friendship; he addressed to her
also, as a spiritual director, extremely affectionate letters; she lived
unhappily with Godfrey-le-Bossu, her first husband: from this
circumstance, and others, rash inductions have been drawn not supported
by any positive fact.¹⁵⁸  It is not the tender passions we can reproach
Hildebrand with; and the ascertained consequences of the connexion with
Matilda, belong only to the history of the pontifical ambition.

This princess gave all her possessions to the Holy See, and three
distinct monuments have been cited of this famous liberality. The first
act, subscribed by her in 1077, has not been found. The second, which
she signed twenty-five years later, when Hildebrand no longer lived, is
preserved at Rome;¹⁵⁹  and a will is also spoken of, which is not
forthcoming, but which they say, confirms the two preceding donations.
There exist indeed some difficulties, respecting these three acts: why
has the first been allowed to go astray? wherefore do historians say, it
was signed at Canossa, while it is referred to in the second, as having
been subscribed at Rome? And this second deed itself, which so
completely divests the giver, which reserves to her only some life
enjoyments, how reconcile it with the extensive domains with which she
continued to enrich monks and canons, from the year 1102, to 1115? Why
not publish her will, which had, perhaps, explained these apparent
contradictions? To all these questions we shall reply, that the act of
1102 subsists; that it expressly renews that of 1077; and that of all
the donations of which the Holy See hath availed itself, that of Matilda
is undoubtedly the best authenticated as well as the richest.

  ¹⁵⁸ Apud omnes sanum aliquid sapientes luce clarius con-stabat falsa
      esse quae dicebantur. Nam et papa tam ésimié tamqne apostolicè
      vitam instituebat, ut nec minimum sinistri rumoris maculum
      conversations ejus sublimitas admitteret; et illâ in urbe
      celiberrimâ atque in tantâ obsequentium fire-quentiâ, obscœnum
      aliquid perpetrans, latere nequaquam potu-isset. Signa etiam et
      prodigia quae per orationes papœ frequen-tiùs fiebant, et zelus
      ejus ferventissimus linguas communie bant.—Lambert Schafur. ad
      ann. 1177. This chronicler attributes, as we see, to Gregory, the
      gift of miracles, and concludes from it that his commerce with
      Matilda was irreproachable. “Nevertheless, says the Jesuit
      Maimbourg, as the world, from a certain malignity attached to it,
      has a greater ’penchant’ for believing the evil than the good,
      especially with persons of some reputation for virtue, this
      commerce failed not to be of bad effect, and tended to blacken his
      character of Gregory at this period.”

  ¹⁵⁹ Diss. of St Marc. p. 1231. 1316 of v. 4. of Ab. Hist, of Italy.

In truth, the emperor Henry V. the heir of this Countess, made himself
master of all she had been possessed of, and which reverted at a later
period to the Court of Rome; but, with time, the popes have secured a
part of this inheritance, and have termed it the Patrimony of St. Peter:
they are indebted for it to the cares of Gregory VII.

Heniy IV. had obtained a victory over the Saxons, when he was addressed
by two legates, who communicated to him the order, to appear at Rome, in
order to reply to the accusations brought against him: it related to
investitures granted by him, ‘by the cross and ring;’ it was requisite
to obtain pardon, or submit to an excommunication¹⁶⁰  Henry, although he
despised the menace, thought proper to give the pope some trouble in the
city of Rome: a tumult took place, and Gregory was seized, struck,
imprisoned, and ransomed. The effect of this ill-treatment was to cast
an interest on the person of the pontiff, and to prepare him against a
more serious vengeance. The emperor in a council at Worms, deposed
Gregory, who, too confident of the inefficacy of such a decree, replied
to it by the following:¹⁶¹

    “On the part of the Almighty God, and of my full
    “authority, I forbid Henry, the son of Henry, to
    “govern the kingdom of the Teutons and Italy:
    “I absolve all Christians from the oaths they have
    “taken, or shall hereafter take to him; and all per−
    “sons are forbidden to render him services as a “king.”

  ¹⁶⁰ Lamb. Schaf. ad ann. 1074.—Life of Gregory VII. ap. Bell. t. 17.
      p. 148.

  ¹⁶¹ Concilior. vol. 10. p. 366. Here is, according to Otho of
      Freisingen, the first example of the deposition of a king by a
      pope. Lego et relego Roma norum regum et imperatorum gestu, èt
      nusquam invenio quemquam eorum ante hune à Romano pontifice
      excommunicatum vel regno privatum. Otho. Fies. Chron. 1. 6, c.
      35.— Quanta autem mala, quotbella, bellorumque discriminia, inde
      subsecuta sunt? Quoties misere Eoma obscessa, capta rastata? Ibid.
      c. 36.

We would willingly discredit it, but it is proved that these extravagant
words, snatched from the monarch the fruit of all his victories. The
civil war was again kindled in the centre of Germany; an army of
confederates was assembled near Spires, surrounded Henry, opposed to him
the sentence of the pope, and made him pledge himself to forbear the
exercise of his power, until the decision, to be pronounced at
Augsburgh, between him and the pope, in a council over which the latter
was to preside.

To prevent this last decision, Henry determined to seek pardon of
Hildebrand; he found him in the fortress of Canossa, where the pontiff
was shut up with his countess Matilda. The prince presented himself
without guard, and without retinue: stopped in the second enclosure, he
suffered himself to be stripped of his vestments and clothed in
sackcloth. With naked feet, in the month of January 1077, he awaited in
the midst of the court the Holy Father’s reply. This reply was, that he
should fast three days before he could be permitted to kiss Hildebrand’s
feet; and at the end of three days, they would be willing to absolve and
receive him, under the promise of a perfect submission to the
forthcoming decision of Augsburgh. Gregory might have foreseen that this
excess of pride and tyranny would disgust the Italians, by whom he was
already detested. His power had this disadvantage in their eyed, that it
was not beheld at a sufficient distance. Lombardy armed itself in behalf
of Henry, whom the Germans deserted; and while Germany elected another
emperor Italy chose another pope.¹⁶²

Rodolphus duke of Swabia having been nominated emperor, Gregory
excommunicated Henry once more. “I take the crown from him he said, and
give the Teutonic kingdom to Rodolph.” He even made a present to the
latter of a crown, round which was to be seen an indifferent latin
verse, of which here follows a translation. “La Pierre a donne a Pierre,
et Pierre donne a Rodolphe le diademe.”¹⁶³  Peter, a stone, has given to
Peter, and Peter gives to Rodolph a diadem. At the same time Henry
elevated to the papacy Guibert the archbishop of Ravenna, and assembled
an army against Rodolph. In vain Gregory prophesied that Heniy would be
vanquished, would be exterminated before St. Peter: it was Rodolph who
fell; he was killed in a skirmish by Godfrey of Bouillon, nephew of
Matilda. Henry marched down on Rome: after a long seige, he took it by
assault; and Gregory shut up in the mole of Adrian, continued to
excommunicate the conqueror.

  ¹⁶² Henry’s Eccles. Hist. 1074, 1080, 1. 62 and 63.

  ¹⁶³ Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rodolpho.

It will be perceived that the pun is perfect only in the French, the
English is wholly incapable of it.

The commotions which were prolonged in Germany, compelled Henry to make
frequent journies. During the siege of Rome, and after his entrance into
this capital, he quitted it more than once. Robert Guiscard took
advantage of one of these occasions to deliver Gregory, but still more
to ravage and pillage the city: he burned one quarter, which has since
remained almost deserted, that between St. John de Lateran and the
Coliseum, and reduced to slavery a great number of the inhabitants. This
was the most memorable result to the Romans, and the most lasting to
this pontificate¹⁶⁴

Hildebrand, borne away by the Normans to Salerno, terminated his career
there the 24th of May, 1085, excommunicating Henry to the last, with the
antipope Guibert, and their adherents¹⁶⁵  So lived and so died Gregory
VII., whose name, under Gregory XIII., was inscribed in the Roman
martyrology, to whom Paul V. decreed the honours of an annual
festival¹⁶⁶  and for whom Benedict XIII. in the 18th century, challenged
the homage of all Christendom: but we shall see the parliaments of
France oppose this design with an efficacious resistance.

  ¹⁶⁴ Vita Greg. 7, édita à Card. Arrag. p. 313.—Landulph Sen. I. 3, c.
      3, p. 120.—Rer. Jtal. vol. 5, p. 587.

  ¹⁶⁵ Pauli. Beruried. Vit. Greg. VII. c. 110, p. 348.—Sigeb. Chron.
      ann. 1085.

  ¹⁶⁶ Fleury’s Eccles. Hist. 1. 63, a. 25.—Act. Sonet. Bell. 25. maii.

It is deserving of greater reprehension than Gregory himself merited,
the canonization, after five hundred years of study and experience, of
his deplorable wanderings. For the excuse cannot be alleged in favour of
his panegyrists that his enterprises may find in his enthusiasm, his
ignorance, and the thick darkness of his age. Pasquier,¹⁶⁷  with too
much reason describes him as:

    “one of the boldest
    “combatants for the Roman See, who forgot nothing,
    “whether of arms, of the pen, or by censures, of what
    “he conceived to tend to the advantage of the Papacy
    “or disadvantage of Sovereigns.”

The audacious Gregory VII. had a timid successor in Victor III. It is
from him we have borrowed the words at the commencement of this chapter,
to depict some of the preceding popes. Victor III. filled scarcely for a
year the pontifical chair. He confirmed, however, in a council at
Beneventum, the decrees passed against investitures.

  ¹⁶⁷ Researches on France, 1. 3. c. 7.

Urban II. who succeeded him, was during ten years a more worthy
successor of Hildebrand: he instigated against Henry, Conrade, the
eldest son of this emperor, encouraged this ungrateful son to calumniate
his father, and recompensed him by crowning him king of Italy.
Christendom was then divided between Urban II. and Guibert, who had
taken the name of Clement III. and whom Henry IV. re-established in Rome
in 1091. Urban till 1096 travelled in France and Northern Italy. Philip,
king of France, repudiating his Queen Bertha, had married Bertrade:
Philip was excommunicated in his own States by Urban, his born subject,
to whom he had given an asylum¹⁶⁸  But these journies of the pontiff are
especially celebrated by the preaching up of the first crusade.

Hildebrand had conceived¹⁶⁹  the earliest idea of these distant
expeditions, which were, in aggrandizing the church, to diminish the
power of the Greek emperors, or compel them to return under the
domination of the Holy See. He beheld in them an opportunity of
regulating at once all the movements of the Christian princes, of
establishing himself judge of all the quarrels which might arise among
them, to divert them from the Government of their States, and to augment
by their absence the habitual influence of the clergy over all kinds of
affairs. The pilgrimages to the Holy Land became under Gregory VII. more
frequent than they had previously been: the recitals of the pilgrims
were one day to provoke a general movement. This day did not arrive till
Urban’s time: a man named Cucupietre, called Peter the Hermit, made to
the pope a lamentable recital of the vexations which the Christians
experienced in Palestine; he implored on their behalf powerful succours
against the Musselmans. Urban dispatched Peter to all the princes and
churches of Italy, France, and Germany; and after leaving the preacher
time sufficient to spread his enthusiasm among the people of these
countries, the crusade was finally proposed in a council or assembly at
which the pope presided, in an open plain not far from Placentia. There
were collected upwards of thirty thousand laics alone, independent of
prelates and priests: the expedition projected was universally
applauded, but it was applauded alone; no one as yet assumed the cross.
Urban had better success in France; the crusade was resolved on at
Clermont, in an assembly at which he presided and harangued. They
exclaimed “’Tis the will of God;” and these words became the device of
the crusaders, the number of whom encreased beyond measure. The military
history of this expedition does not concern us: we have only to observe,
that the first act of this army was to re-establish ‘en-passant’ pope
Urban, in the city of Rome, at the end of the year 1096. Henry, driven
from Italy by the troops of the Countess Matilda, retired to Germany.
Urban did not die till 1099; and the pontificate of his successor Pascal
II. belongs principally to the twelfth century.

  ¹⁶⁸ Velly’s Hist, of France, v. 2, p. 493.

  ¹⁶⁹ Fleury. Hist. Eccles. 1. 62. n. 14.

The age which we have passed over, ought to remain for ever famous in
the history of the popes. If they are not yet recognized as sovereigns,
if their temporal power has not yet been declared independent, it in
effect rivals and threatens the throne which ought to govern it. Already
the Two Sicilies had become fiefs of the Holy See; the donations of
Matilda have extended, over almost all Middle Italy, the rights or
pretensions of the court of Rome. But what signify the limits and the
nature of these temporal possessions, when the spiritual authority no
longer recognizes restriction, when the gospel ministry transforms
itself into a universal theocracy, which brands, curses, deposes kings,
and disposes of their crowns. One man alone, it is true, had fully
conceived this tremendous system; but the opinions, of which the
ignorance of this man, as well as his contemporaries, was composed,
encouraged his undertakings, however monstrous, and political
circumstances promised him success from them. New dynasties had arisen
in France, England, and other countries: the French emperors, threatened
in their own palaces, had lost every remnant of authority in Italy:  it
was sufficient to humble the Emperor of the West; he alone
counterbalanced in Europe the weight of the Holy See. In attacking him
one might reckon on the support or neutrality of other monarchs; they
were jealous of his preponderance: Rome in humiliating them, disposed
them to reconcile themselves to it by the spectacle of more serious
outrages reserved for their head; they childishly rejoiced in the great
share he should have in the common humiliation. They turn, in the mean
time, against him, the old or new factions which troubled Germany; they
redouble their insolence and their power by the thunder of the anathemas
with which they struck him; and if so many efforts did not overthrow
him, at least, they staggered and weakened him. Such was the war waged
by Hildebrand, against Heniy IV. the first at the period, or as we may
term him, the only representative of the civil power in the West. In
bequeathing this war to his successors, Hildebrand vanquished as he was,
had pointed out the object, traced the plan, and tempered the arms.¹⁷⁰
There had needed to complete his work, perhaps, in the course of the
following century, but two or three successors of his inflexible
enthusiasm. Giannone accuses him of having forged the Donations of
Constantine, Pepin, Charlemagne, and Louis-le-Debonnaire. We have seen
the first of these donations adduced in the eighth century;¹⁷¹  the rest
are mentioned by writers anterior to the eleventh: all these acts were
spoken of before Gregory’s time: at the most he could only have arranged
the texts more categorically, and more favourable to his pretensions. It
is certain, that no means adopted for the establishment of pontifical
tyranny would have alarmed his conscience: the most efficacious,
therefore, appeared to him the most laudable; and, if some of his
proceedings, judged of after the events, seem to us equally imprudent
and violent, we should reflect that so enormous an enterprise could only
be accomplished by audacity in the extreme.

  ¹⁷⁰ Giannone’s Hist, of Italy. 1.10, c. 6.

  ¹⁷¹ Ibid. p. 12.

CHAPTER V.  CONTESTS BETWEEN THE POPES AND THE SOVEREIGNS OF THE TWELFTH
CENTURY

WITH the pontifical power, such as Hildebrand would have it, not to gain
a great deal was to lose a little. Now under the popes of the twelfth
century it was not much extended: they knew not how to reap the fruits
of the labours of Gregory VII. Pascal II. however, who reigned near
twenty years, from 1099 to 1118, very earnestly aspired to universal
monarchy; but his designs, opposed by circumstances, were still more so
by the weakness of his character. The antipope Guibert, who died in
1100, had for a long period for his successors, an Albert, a Theodoric,
a Maginulph: obscure persons, whose pretensions, nevertheless, though
weakly supported by a small Dumber of partisans, sufficed to intimidate
Pascal. He did not press the excommunication of Henry king of England,
when in 1101, the war of investitures was kindled between this monarch
and Anselm archbishop of Canterbury. If he evinced greater boldness
against Philip, king of France, it was, doubtless, because Urban II. had
commenced the quarrel, and that the notoriety, the censures with which
this prince had been struck, admitted of no retraction. Pascal II.
therefore, ventured to send legates into France, who were to
excommunicate king Philip anew, but still on account of his divorce.
Indignant at the attempts of these priests, William, count of Poitou,
and Duke of Aquitain, did himself honour under these circumstances, by a
courage, that Philip, however, did not imitate.—. Philip demanded
absolution of the pope, and obtained it, on swearing to renounce
Bertrade. He came with bare feet in the depth of winter to take, in a
council at Paris an oath which he did not observe.—We know of no
authentic act, which re-established the marriage of Bertrade with
Philip; but they continued to live together without being disturbed by
the church: the states and rights of their children were never called in
question.

At the same period that Matilda renewed her donation, Pascal II.
confirmed the anathemas of his predecessors against Henry IV.¹⁷²  and
raised him an enemy in an ambitious and ungrateful son.

  ¹⁷² He writes in these terms to Robert, Count of Flanders: “Pursue
      every where with all your power, Henry, the chief of heretics, and
      his abettors. You can offer to God no more acceptable sacrifice
      than to combat him who has raised himself against God; who
      endeavours to deprive the church of the kingdom, and who has been
      banished by the decree of the Holy Ghost, which the prince of the
      apostles has pronounced. We appoint this undertaking to you, and
      also to your vassals for the remission of your sins, and as a
      means of arriving at the celestial Jerusalem.”

In vain did a paternal letter invite this son to repentance:¹⁷³  it was
replied, that an excommunicated person was not acknowledged as father,
or as king.

  ¹⁷³ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 2, p. 480.

Loosed from his oaths, and from his duties, by the sovereign pontiff,
the youthful Henry took up arms, and had himself elected emperor in a
diet held at Mayence. Henry the elder, retired to the castle of
Ingelheim: there the archbishops, sent by the Diet, came to summon him
to surrender to them the crown and other insignia of his power:

    “Thou
    “hast rent the church of God, said they to him,
    “thou hast sold the bishopricks, the abbeys, every
    “ecclesiastical dignity; thou hast in no case res−
    “pected the sacred canons: for all these causes, it
    “has pleased the pope and the German princes to
    “expel thee from the throne as from the church.”

    “I adjure you,” replied the monarch,
    “you archbi−
    “shop of Cologne, and you of Mayence, who
    “hold of me your rich prelacies, to declare, what
    “was the price at which you purchased them of
    “me. Oh! if I only exacted from you the oath of fide−
    “lity to me, wherefore do you become the accom−
    “plices, the chiefs of my enemies? Could you
    “not wait the termination of a life which so many
    “misfortunes might abridge, and at least, permit
    “my own hands to place the crown on the head of “my beloved son.”

But Henry was not speaking to fathers; he addressed himself to
inflexible prelates:

    “Is it not to us, cried one of them, the privilege
    “belongs to create kings, and to dethrone them
    “when we have made a bad choice?”

At these words, the three archbishops fell on their sovereign; they tore
the imperial crown from his head; and while he assured them, that if he
suffered at this moment for the sins of his youth, they would not escape
the punishment due to their sacrilegious disloyalty, they smiled at his
menace, and to secure impunity for their crime by consummating it
speedily, they hastened to Mayence, to consecrate and bless in the name
of God the parricide Henry V.¹⁷⁴

Heniy IV. shut up in Louvain, saw an army of faithful subjects assemble
around him. At their head he obtained a victory over the rebels; but,
vanquished without resource, in a second combat, he fell into the hands
of his enemies, who loaded him with insults. “The hatred of the popes,”
writes this unhappy sovereign to Henry the I. King of France,¹⁷⁵

  ¹⁷⁴ Otho Friging. Chron. 1. 7, c. 8, 12.—Abb. Ursperg. Chron. p.
      243.—Sigon. de Regno Italico. 1. 19.

  ¹⁷⁵ Sigeb. Gemblac. apud Stras, vol. 1, p. 866.—Otho Fris. Chron. 1.
      7, c. 12.—Fleury’s eccles. Hist. vol. 66, n. 42.

    “the hatred of the popes, has carried
    “them so far as to violate the laws of nature; they
    “have armed my son against me; this son, in con−
    “tempt of the fidelity he had sworn to me as my
    “subject, comes to invade my kingdom; and what
    “I would I could conceal, he has even practised “on my life.”

Escaped from prison, but plunged into extreme misery, the old emperor
was reduced to solicit in a church, formerly built by his cures, a
subaltern employment, which he did not obtain. He died; they disinterred
him; Pascal II. would not allow an excommunicated corpse to repose in
peace; five years, the remains of an emperor who had distinguished
himself in sixty-six battles, remained without burial; the clergy of
liege, who ventured to collect them, was punished for it by anathemas,
and almost in our own days, a Jesuit named Longueval¹⁷⁶  has adjudged
the fidelity and boldness of this clergy to have been inexcusable.

  ¹⁷⁶ Hist, of the Gall. Church, vol. 8, p. 187.

The best authenticated history has almost the air of a moral fiction,
when after 1106, it represents Henry V. and Pascal occupied in avenging
one upon the other, their common outrages on the rights and repose of
Henry IV. Henry V. came to Rome, kissed the pope’s feet, and desired to
be crowned emperor. Pascal deemed the conjuncture a favourable one for
regaining a formal renunciation of the investitures, which he had just
condemned in a council held at Troyes. But he had hardly mentioned this
pretension, when he was arrested, carried off to the Sabine, and
confined in a fortress. There such a terror seized the Holy Father, that
he, with sixteen cardinals; signed a treaty, in which he secures to the
emperor, the right of investiture, provided he mingles with it no
simony; he did more, he bound himself never to excommunicate Henry V.
and consented to the inhumation of Henry IV. To seal this compact on the
faith of the most awful mysteries, a host is divided between the pope
and the emperor: “As these are divided into two parts, said the pontiff,
so may he be separated from the kingdom of Jesus Christ, who shall
violate this treaty.” Such was the oath which Pascal took, and which he
renewed after he had recovered his liberty.

From this period he had no resource from the reproaches addressed to him
by the Roman clergy, and which were redoubled in proportion as the
emperor and his army removed from Rome. Behold, then, the head of the
church, who permits himself to be taxed with prevarication, who retires
to Terracina to weep his error, who suffers cardinals to annul his
decrees and his promises! he was about, he said, to abdicate the tiara;
happily they opposed this design; and such is the docility of the holy
pontiff, that he constrains himself to preserve power, in order to make
a better use of it. Finally, he revokes, in a council, the treaty he had
the misfortune to subscribe; he declines, however, to excommunicate
Henry him-himself, so scrupulous is he still of violating his
engagement! It was the Cardinals who pronounced this anathema in the
presence of Pascal II. Not only did this Council condemn investitures,
but furthermore, it termed all those heretics who did not condemn them.
Henry V. conceived little danger from it. He came into Italy in 1116, to
take possession of the rich inheritance bequeathed by Matilda to St.
Peter. She had not transferred either sovereign rights or prerogatives,
nor yet fiefs, but merely landed property, which the Roman Church was to
enjoy as the proprietor, ‘jure proprietario’.¹⁷⁷  It matters not—the
emperor pretends that the countess had no power, even on these grounds,
to dispose of those domains; and during the whole of the 12th century,
the popes remained deprived of this inheritance. After having taken
possession, Henry advanced towards Rome; a sedition had burst out there
against Pascal, whose long pontificate displeased the great, and whose
person every one. While the pope fled to Monte Cas-sino, and shut
himself up in Beneventum, the excommunicated monarch entered Rome, as if
in triumph, and there received the imperial crown from the hands of
Bourdin, archbishop of Bruges. Pascal excommunicated Bourdin,
endeavoured to raise up against Henry, now France, now the Normans
established in Lower Italy, and, finally, terminated his career, rather
ingloriously, in the month of January, 1118.

  ¹⁷⁷ Chartula comittissæ Matbildia super concessione bono-rum suorum,
      Roman, eccles. vol. 6, p. 384. Script, rer. Italic.

His partisans gave him for successor, Gelasius II. whom the Frangipani,
a family devoted to the emperor, were unwilling to recognize. Gelasius,
arrested, released, and pursued, took the determination to fly to Gaeta,
his country, from the time he was aware that Henry approached Rome.
Henry had Bourdin raised to the papacy, who, having taken the name of
Gregory VIII. crowned the new emperor. But the moment the latter quitted
Rome, Gelasius entered it secretly. Driven out by the Frangipani he
fled, returned, fled again, retired into Provence, and died at Cluni. He
had reigned but one year, if, indeed, it can be said he reigned at all.

From the time of Gregory VII. to Gelasius II. inclusive, almost all the
popes, drawn from the shade of the cloister, had borne to the throne the
obstinacy and asperity of the monastic spirit. Calixtus II. who replaced
Gelasius, sprung from the house of the counts of Burgundy. The relative
of the emperor, and of many other monarchs, he possessed at least some
idea of the art of governing, and of reconciling great interests. He had
the honour of terminating the disputes about investitures. A diet at
Worms ruled, that for the future the prelates should be elected only in
the presence of the emperor, or of his lieutenants:—that in case of
misunderstanding, the matter should be referred to the emperor, who
should take the opinion of the bishops: that, finally, the emperor
should bestow investiture by the sceptre, and not by the crozier and
ring¹⁷⁸  Calixtus ratified this treaty in the midst of the general
Lateran Council of 1123. We may also applaud this pontiff for saving the
life of his rival Bourdin; he contented himself with exposing him to the
jests of the populace, consigning him for ever to the depths of a
dungeon, and with causing himself to be represented trampling this
antipope under his feet.¹⁷⁹  Such was the generosity of this friend!
Calixtus pressed the king of England to restore a deposed bishop. ‘I
have sworn,’ replied the king, ‘never to suffer him to re-ascend his
seat.’ ‘You have sworn,’ said Calixtus, ‘very well, I am pope, and I
release you from your oath.’ ‘How, replied the monarch, ‘shall I çonfide
in this bishop’s oaths, or in your’s, if your will alone is necessary to
cancel them.’

  ¹⁷⁸ Concilior. vol. 10, p. 883.—Abb. Ursperg. Chron. p. 204.
      —Muratori’s Antiquities of Italy, med. ævi. vol. 6, p. 72.
      —Schill. de libertate eccles. German. 1. 4, c. 4, p. 545.

  ¹⁷⁹ Art of verifying dates, vol. i. p. 283, 284.

Honorius II. who filled the Holy See from 1124 to 1180, is only
remarkable for his disputes with Roger, Count of Sicily, whom he wished
to prevent uniting Apulia and Calabria, an inheritance left him by
William II. his father, to his States. The pope fearing that Roger might
become powerful enough to invade the Ecclesiastical States, sent an army
against him, which was defeated. The king of France, Louis le Gros, was
then exposed to the censures of the bishops of his own kingdom: the
seditious conduct of the bishop of Paris having required repressive
measures, this prelate, whose temporalities were seized, dared to place
his own diocese, and the possessions of the king, under interdict. The
most praiseworthy action of Honorius is the removal of this interdict,
and the having coldly seconded the ardent zeal of St. Bernard, when this
pious abbot, treating his king as an infidel, a persecutor, a second
Herod, solicited the pope to bring this affair before the Holy See.
Louis was indebted for the tranquillity of the last ten years of his
reign; to the prudence of Honorius, whom St, Bernard accused of
weak-ness.¹⁸⁰

It was in the pontificate of this Honorius, that the two factions, the
imperial and the papal, originating as we have seen, in the tenth
centuiy,¹⁸¹ took, in a more decided form, the distinctions of Guelphs
and Ghibeli-. nes. These two appellations are the names of two German
houses, which in 1125, when Henry V. died, disputed the imperial crown.
One of these families, sometimes called* Salique, sometimes Guiebelinga
or Waiblinge, reigned in Franconia, and had furnished the four last
emperors; it was distinguished by its long disputes with the Church: the
other family, originally of Allfort, possessed Bavaria; and many of its
heads, devoted to the popes, had borne the name of Welf or Guelpho.

  ¹⁸⁰ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. iii. p. 73, 74.

  ¹⁸¹ Ibid. p. 88, 89.

The duke of Saxony, Lothaire, chosen at Mayence, as successor to Henry,
was impatient to manifest his attachment to the house of Guelph, by
espousing the heiress of Henry duke of Bavaria. The duke of Franconia,
Conrade, was then in Palestine; he hastened to combat Lothaire,
re-animated the partisans of the house of Ghibeline, and caused himself
to be crowned emperor, by the archbishop of Milan, while Honorius II.
declared himself in favour of the confederate of the house of Guelph.¹⁸²

  ¹⁸² Otto Frising. Chron. 1. 7, c. 17.—De Gestis. Fred. 1. 2, c.
      2.—Mase. Comment, de rebus imperii sub Lothario ET. 1. 1, 8. 1. 9.
      23; sub Conrade III. 1. 3, p. 141.—Chron. Weingen-tense de Guelfi
      principibus, apurt Leibnitz, v. 1, p. 781.

At Rome, another powerful family, the Frangipani, had for rivals the
children of a Jew named Leo, who, opulent, and a convert, had become,
under these two qualifications, as formidable as famous. Peter de Leon,
the son of this Jew, sought, under the name of Anaclet, to succeed
Honorius II. to whom the Frangipani gave for a successor, Innocent IT.
The two popes were enthroned and consecrated at the same time in Rome:
but Anaclet proved the strongest there; Innocent took refuge in France,
where St. Bernard had him acknowledged, and held many councils up to the
year 1133. Returned to Rome, he crowned the Guelph, Lothaire, emperor,
in ceding to him the usufruct of Matilda’s domains. Anaclet died; his
successor Victor abdicated the tiara; the schism was extinguished; and
Pope Innocent II. considered himself sufficiently firm upon the
pontifical throne, to menace Count Robert, and the king of France, Louis
the Young. Roger defeated the troops of Innocent, who, fallen into the
hands of the conqueror, saw himself compelled to confirm the title of
king, given to Roger by Anaclet. Louis VII. defended himself with less
success: exercising the right which all his predecessors had exercised,
he had refused to ratify the election of an archbishop of Bourges.
Innocent received the pretended archbishop, consecrated him, and sent
him to take possession, spoke of the king as of a young man whom it was
necessary to instruct, that it was not proper he should in anywise
accustom himself to meddle in the affairs of the church,—and, enraged
with the opposition of this prince, he laid his kingdom under an
interdict: a sentence then so much the more terrible, as, echoed by the
French prelates supported by St. Bernard, it presented to Thibault,
Count of Champagne, a turbulent and hypocritical vassal, the opportunity
of exciting a. civil war. Louis armed himself against Thibault, entered
Vetry, and tarnished his victory by delivering thirteen hundred of its
unfortunate inhabitants to the flames. This excess was subsequently
expiated by a crusade which had itself needed expiation.

Celestine III. the successor of Innocent II. took off the interdict laid
on France, refused to confirm the treaties entered into by his
predecessors with Roger, king of Sicily, and declared himself against
Stephen, who had taken possession of the English throne. The pontificate
of Çelestine II. and that of Lucius II. who followed him, scarcely
completed two years; but these are memorable from the disturbances which
agitated the city and environs of Rome.

Arnauld of Brescia, an austere monk, but eloquent and seditious, had
denounced the ambition and the despotism of the clergy. To maxims of
independence, which were qualified political heresies, he united certain
less intelligible errors, which he adopted of Abelard, his master and
his friend. From 1139, Arnauld, condemned by the second Lateran council,
had left Italy, and had taken refuge in the territory of Zurich. During
his exile the Romans, discontented with Innocent II. restored some
semblance of their former liberty; and these attempts, more bold under
Çelestine II. became, under Louis, serious undertakings. They created a
patrician, popular magistrate, and president of a senate composed of
fifty-six members. The patrician was a brother of the antipope Anaclet;
the thirteen districts of Rome concurred in the choice of these
fifty-six senators. Deputies were sent by this senate to Conrade III.
whom the death of Lothaire had left in full possession of the empire.
The Romans invited Conrade to come and take in the midst of their city
the imperial crown:

    “Let your wisdom, said they to
    “him, call to mind the attempts undertaken by the
    “popes against your august predecessors. The
    “popes, their partisans, and the Sicilians, at the pre−
    “sent time in league with them, prepare for you
    “still greater outrages. But the senate is restored,
    “the people have resumed their vigour; this
    “people and this senate, by which Constantine,
    “Theodosius, and Justinian governed the world,
    “and whose vows, prayers and exertions, call you
    “to a similar degree of power and glory.”

Conrade was perfectly aware of the projects of independence which this
language harboured, and did not think it prudent to imitate Lucius, who
also had addressed an epistle to him. Bold against enemies whom Conrade
had abandoned, and whom Roger threatened, Lucius advanced towards the
capital; he marched surrounded by priests and soldiers. This parade of
all his temporal and spiritual arms, however, was useless; a shower of
stones crushed the double army of the pope, and he himself received a
mortal wound. His party very hastily gave him a successor; but this
person, who was named Eugenius III. hastened to quit Rome, lest he
should see himself compelled to ratify the re-establishment of the
popular magistracy¹⁸³

  ¹⁸³ Otho. Frising. Chron. 1. 7. c. 22,27,31.—De Gest. Frid. re. 1. 1.
      e. 21, 22, 27,26.—Moscow de reb. imperii sub Con rado HI. 1. 3,
      pa. 114.

Eugenius armed against the Romans the inhabitants of Tivoli, and
nevertheless re-entered Rome only by recognizing the senate. He obtained
but the abolition of the dignity of patrician, and the re-establishment
of the prefect. These transactions did not lead to a permanent peace;
Eugeni us again took flight and passed into France, where he seconded as
far as possible St. Bernard, the apostle of the fatal crusade of 1147¹⁸⁴
During the absence of Eugenuis, Arnauld of Brescia returned to Rome,
followed by two thousand Swiss¹⁸⁵  he proposed restoring the consul, the
tribunes, the equestrian order of the ancient Republic of Rome, to allow
the pope the exercise of no civil power, and to limit the power they
were obliged to leave in the emperor’s hands. Eugenius re-appeared in
the capital in 1149, quitted again almost immediately, again returned in
1153 to quit it no more. Imploring the assistance of Barbarossa, who had
been elected emperor, he offered to crown him, and obtained from this
prince a promise to receive the pontifical authority at Rome. Louis VII.
broke at this time his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitain: this divorce,
the only one perhaps which has had fatal consequences for France, is
also the only one which has not experienced on the part of the church,
any sort of opposition. Neither the pope, nor the bishop, nor St.
Bernard complained of it.

  ¹⁸⁴ This expedition is connected with our subject, only by general
      considerations, which we have already laid before oar readers—see
      page 116.

  ¹⁸⁵ Chron. Corbeiens.

Suger, who had advised against it, no longer lived; the French prelates,
whom Louis condescended to consult, expressly approved of it; and the
heiress of Guienne and Poictou, repudiated under the usual pretext of
distant consanguinity, disinherited the daughters whom she had by the
king of France, married Henry Plantagenet, and added two large provinces
to Maine and Anjou, already possessed by Henry, who became afterwards
king of England. Here we behold one of the principal causes of the long
rivalry of these two kingdoms; and if the clergy, for a long time
accustomed to pass the limits prescribed by their profession, had
attempted to trangress them on the present occasion, for once, at least,
we should have been enabled to bless the abuse of their ecclesiastical
functions.

That which must render the pontificate of Eugenius III. memorable in the
History of the Power of the Popes is, the approbation which he bestowed
on Gratian’s Decree. The name of ‘Decree’ designates in this place, a
canonical compilation at first entitled ‘Concord of the Discordant
Canons,’ which was completed in 1152, by the aforesaid Gratian, a
Benedictine monk bom in Tuscany. The then recent discovery of
Justinian’s Pandects, caused the revival in Italy of the study of civil
jurisprudence: the collection of Gratian, became the ‘text’ of
ecclesiastical jurisprudence; and the first of these studies, soon
subjected to the other, appeared only as its appendage. This collection
is divided into three parts, of which one treats of general principles
and ecclesiastical persons, the second of judgment, and the third of
sacred things. The tautology, the impertinencies, the irregularity, the
errors in proper names, the disregard of correctness in the quotations,
are the smallest faults of the compiler; mutilated passages, canons,
false decretals, every species of falsehood, abound in this monstrous
production. Its success was only the more rapid; they began to expound
it in the schools, to cite it at the tribunals, to invoke it in
treaties; and it had almost become the general law of Europe, when the
return of learning slowly dissipated these gross impostures. The clergy
withdrawn from the secular tribunals; the civil power subjected to the
ecclesiastical supremacy; the estates of individuals, and the acts which
determined them, sovereignly regulated, confirmed, annulled, by the
canons, and by the clergy; the papal power freed from all restriction;
the sanction of all the laws of the church conferred on the Holy See,
itself independent of the laws published and confirmed by it: such are
the actual consequences of this system of jurisprudence. Some churches,
and that of France in particular, have modified it; but it is preserved
pure and unaltered in the Roman Church, which has availed itself of it
in the succeeding centuries to trouble the world. From the end of the
eighth century the decretals of Isidore had sowed the seeds of the whole
pontifical power. Gratian has compiled and enriched them. Represented as
the source of all irrefragable decisions, the universal tribunal
which-determines all differences, dissipates all doubts, clears up all
difficulties, the Court of Rome beholds itself consulted from all parts,
by metropolitans, bishops, chapters, abbots, monks, by lords, by
princes, and even by private individuals. The pontifical correspondence
had no limits but in the slowness of the medium of communication; the
flow of questions multiplied bulb, briefs and epistles; and from these
fictitious decretals, attributed to the popes of the first ages, sprung
up and multiplied, from the time of Eugenius III. millions of responses
and too well authenticated sentences. Matters, religious, civil,
judicial, domestic, all at this period more or less clogged with
pretended relations to the spiritual power; general interests, local
disputes, quarrels of individuals, all was referred as a ‘dernier
resort’, sometimes in both first and last instance, to the Vicar of
Jesus Christ; and the Court of Rome obtained that influence in detail,
if we may so term it, of all the most tremendous, precisely for this
reason, that each of its consequences, isolated from the rest, appeared
the more unimportant. Isidore and Gratian have transformed the pope into
a universal administrator.

Frederick Barbarossa was then the principal obstacle to the progress of
pontifical power. Young, ambitious and enterprising, he was connected,
by the ties of blood, with the families of Guelph and Ghibeline. He
seemed destined to extinguish, or at least to suspend, the fury of the
two factions. He announced the design of confirming in Italy the
imperial power; and it could not have been anticipated, that a new
crusade should divert him as speedily from it, after the misfortunes
attendant on that of 1147.

In the mean time, Adrian IV. born in a village in the neighbourhood of
the abbey of St. Alban, mounted the chair of St. Peter in the month of
December 1154.¹⁸⁶  The king of England, Henry II. congratulated himself
on seeing an Englishman at the head of the Church, and asked his
permission to take possession of Ireland, in order to establish
Christianity there in its primitive purity. Adrian consented to it, with
this observation, that all the isles, in which the Christian faith had
been preached, belonged indubitably to the Holy See, even as Henry
himself acknowledged. The pope, then, did consent to dispose of Ireland
in favour of the king of England, on condition that the king should
cause the Roman church to be paid an annual tax of one penny out of each
house in Ireland. Fleury¹⁸⁷  supposes that John of Salisbury was one of
the ambassadors sent by the king to the pontiff to solicit Ireland from
him; but Matthew Paris¹⁸⁸  names the deputies without mentioning John of
Salisbury; however, the latter might have been commissioned to second
the application to Adrian, whose intimate friend he was.—They passed
three months together at Beneventum. There it was that Adrian, having
asked John what they said of the Roman Church, was answered, that she
passed for the step-mother rather than the mother of other churches,
that the Pope himself was a great expense to the world, and that so many
violences, so much avarice, and so much pride disgusted Christendom. Is
that, said the pope, your own opinion of the matter? “I am really
puzzled,” replied John; “but since the Cardinal Guy Clement joins the
public on this point, I cannot be of a different sentiment. You are most
Holy Father out of the right way; wherefore exact of your children such
enormous tributes? and that which you have received freely, why not
freely bestow it¹⁸⁹ ?” The pope, says Fleury,¹⁹⁰  began to laugh, and to
exculpate Rome, alleged the fable of the stomach and the other members.
But in order that the application should be correct, says the same
historian, it would have been requisite that the Roman Church should
have extended to other churches similar benefits to those she derived
from them.

  ¹⁸⁶ Guill. Neubrig, Rer. Angl. 1. 2. c. 6. et 9,—Ciacon. de Vitis
      pont. Rom. Hadr. 4.

  ¹⁸⁷ Petri Bles. Op. p. 252, 263.—Concilior. v. 9. p. 1143. Hist,
      eccles. 1. 70. n. 16.

  ¹⁸⁸ Hist. Angl. anno. 1155.

  ¹⁸⁹ Joann. Sarisb: Polycrat. 1. 6. c. 24; 1. 8. c. 22.

  ¹⁹⁰ Hist, eccles. 1.70. n. 15.

At the above period, reigned in Sicily, William sumamed the Bad, who
enraged at receiving from the pope only the title of lord, in the place
of that of king, carried hostilities into the ecclesiastical states.¹⁹¹
Adrian, after having excommunicated him, raised against him the nobles,
vassals of this prince, promising to support their privileges with an
invincible constancy, and to have them restored to the heritages of
which they had been deprived. However, the pope shut up in Beneventum,
saw himself obliged to capitulate, and to sacrifice the Sicilians who
had armed themselves in his defence. William of Tyre has blamed him for
it;¹⁹²  but according to Baronius,¹⁹³  we must only pity him, for he
lacked the means of remaining faithful to his engagements; and he was so
far from free, that he was constrained to acknowledge, by authentic
deed, that he enjoyed a perfect liberty. However it was, William the
Bad, and the pope were reconciled; and there were none discontented save
the barons, who, on the word of the holy father, had expected never to
be abandoned.

  ¹⁹¹ Baron. Ann. ecdes. ann. 1154.—Pagi. Act. ann. 1154, n. 4.

  ¹⁹² Lib. 18. c. 2. et segg.

  ¹⁹³ Ann.eccles. ann 1166.—Concilior vol. 10. pa. 1151.

From the commencement of his pontificate Adrian had been relieved of
Amauld of Brescia. An interdict launched for the first time against the
churches of Rome, terrified the people, and compeled the senators to
exile Arnauld, who scarcely out of the city, was delivered to the
sovereign pontiff by Frederick Barbarossa, and buried alive at the break
of day, without the knowledge of the people. His ashes were thrown into
the Tiber, for fear, says Fleury¹⁹⁴  that the people should collect them
as those of a martyr. But this service rendered by Frederick to Adrian
did not prevent their becoming enemies. From the year 1155, when
Frederick came to Rome to receive the imperial crown, the first germs of
their discord were perceptible.¹⁹⁵  Frederick, after having refused to
hold the stirrup for the pope, acquitted himself of it with a very bad
grace. He observed in the palace of the Lateran a picture, in which the
Emperor Lothaire was represented on his knees before the pontif with the
well known inscription:

    Rex venit ante fores, jurans prim urbis honores;
    Post homo, fit paps, sumit, quo dante, coronam:—

that is to say, “the king presents himself at the gates; and after
having recognised the rights of the city, becomes the vassal of the
pope, who bestows on him the crown.” Frederick complained of these two
verses, as well as of the emblems they explained, and obtained but the
vague promise of their future suppression. They still subsisted when, in
the month of April, 1157, the pope’s legates presented themselves before
the emperor, who held a court at Besancon¹⁹⁶  and placed in his hands a
letter from Adrian. It had for its purport an attack committed in the
emperor’s states on the person of the Bishop of Lunden.:

    “How, said the pope, can
    “the impunity of such a crime be explained? Is it
    “negligence? Can it be indifference? Can the
    “emperor have forgotten the benefits conferred on
    “him by the Holy See? Has not the sovereign
    “pontiff willingly conferred on him the imperial
    “crown? Are there not other favours still which
    “he may be disposed to confer?”

This language highly displeased the princes by whom Frederick was
surrounded; they murmured, they menaced; and when one of the legates
replied to them, “of whom then does the emperor hold the crown, if he
holds it not from the pope?” one of the princes no longer restrained his
indignation; he drew his sword, and he had infallibly cut off the
legate’s head, if Frederick had not hastened to oppose his imperial
authority to this violence, and to have the envoys of the Holy See
conducted to their residences, directing them to depart very early the
following morning, and to return to Rome by the shortest road, without
resting at the houses of either bishops or abbots.¹⁹⁷

  ¹⁹⁴ Hist, eccles. 1. 70, n. 4.—Otho Frising. de Gert. Frider. Anoborb.
      1. 2, c. 21.—Vit. Adrioni ed à card. Arrag.

  ¹⁹⁵ Otho Frising. de Oert. Frid. 1.2, c. 14,15,20.—Radev. de Gert.
      Frid. 1.1, c. 11.—Bossnet’s Def. Gull Church. 1.3, e« 18.

  ¹⁹⁶ Radevic. 1. 1, c. 8, 9, 10.

  ¹⁹⁷ Concilior. vol. x. p. 1144.

Adrian took the step of addressing the bishops of Germany; he exhorted
them to neglect no means of bringing Frederick back to more humble
sentiments.¹⁹⁸  We have the reply of these prelates;¹⁹⁹  it is judicious
and firm:

    “Your
    “words, they say to the holy fathers, have shocked
    “the whole court, and we cannot approve them.—
    “The emperor can never suppose, that he holds
    “from you his dignity: he swears that when the
    “Church wishes to subject thrones, such ambition
    “comes not from God; he speaks of figures and
    “inscriptions which you possess, and which outrage
    “his authority; he will not suffer, he says, such
    “gross attempts. We invite you to destroy these
    “movements of hostility between the empire and
    “the priesthood; we adjure you to pacify a chris−
    “tian sovereign, in addressing to him henceforth a
    “language more conformable to the Gospel.”

At the same time that the bishops wrote this epistle, Frederick prepared
to pass into Italy.!²⁰⁰  Adrian called to mind William of Sicily and
perceived that it was time to shew some deference to the emperor.
Legates more skilful and more complying, came to Augsburgh, and
presented Frederick with another epistle from Adrian²⁰¹  The pope
explained in it the terms of his first letter, and the explanation
amounted to a retraction. “By the word ‘beneffcium,’ he says, we
understand not a benefice or a fief, but a benefit or a service. In
speaking of your crown, we do not pretend having conferred it on you; we
refer only to the honour we have had of placing it on your august head;
‘contulimus’ that is to say, imposuimus.” This commentary, which by no
means pleases Baronius,²⁰²  satisfied the emperor, and produced between
this prince and the pope a reconciliation which was not of long
duration.

In the month of October 1150,²⁰³  Frederick held at Roncaille, between
Parma and Placentia, an assembly, in which the bishops and abbots
acknowledged that they held from him their royal privileges.
Dissatisfied with this declaration, and with the asperity with which the
officers of the emperor asserted the right of forage over the lands of
the Roman Church, Adrian wrote an epistle to Frederick which has not
been preserved; but Radevic, who gives us a relation of it,²⁰⁴  says,
that it concealed, under humble and gentle terms, much bitterness and
hauteur. In replying to it, Frederick affected to place, in the
inscription, his own name before that of the sovereign pontiff.²⁰⁵  It
was to revert to an ancient custom, to which were substituted for some
time past forms supposed to be more respectful. This bagatelle nettled
the holy, father; and history relates, that letters were intercepted
which he wrote to the Milanese, and other subjects of Frederick, to
invite them to revolt. We do not possess those letters; but the reply of
Adrian to the emperor has been transmitted to us.²⁰⁶

    “To place your name before ours, says the servant “of the
    servants of Christ, is arrogance, is insolence; “and to cause
    bishops to render homage to you, “those whom the Scriptures call
    Gods, sons of the “Most High, is to want that faith which you
    “have sworn to St. Peter, and to us. Hasten then “to amend, lest
    that in taking to yourself that which “does not belong to you,
    you lose the crown with “which we have gratified you.”

This epistle²⁰⁷  did not remain unreplied to; the minds of both became
inflamed, and in despite of the négociations attempted in an assembly at
Bologna in 1159, war was going to break out, had not the pope died the
first of September of the same year, at the very moment, says an
historian²⁰⁸  at which he pronounced the excommunication of Frederick.

  ¹⁹⁸ Concilior, vol. 10, p. 1145.

  ¹⁹⁹ Radev. Gest. Frider. 1.1, c. 16.

  ²⁰⁰ Radev. 1. 17, c. 23.

  ²⁰¹ Concilior. vol. 10, p. 1147.

  ²⁰² Ana. eccles. ann. 1158. 76.—According to Bossuet, this letter of
      Adrian IV. alone, is requisite to annihilate all the conclusions
      which the Ultramontanes pretend to deduce from the ceremony of the
      coronation of kings.

  ²⁰³ Radev.l. 2. c. 1—15.

  ²⁰⁴ Lib. 2. c. 18*

  ²⁰⁵ App. p. 562.

  ²⁰⁶ Concilior vol. 10.

  ²⁰⁷ Ego dixi: Dii estis et filii Excelsi omnes Ps. 81. r. 6.

  ²⁰⁸ Abb. Ursperg. Chron. p. 221.

Alexander III. elected pope after Adrian IV. did not die until 1181. His
pontificate is the longest of the twelfth century. But four anti-popes,
who succeeded each other in the lapse of these twenty-eight years, under
the names of Victor III., Pascal III., Calixtus III., and Innocent III.,
disputed and weakened the authority of the head of the church. Alexander
who had been at Besancon as one of the envoys of Adrian, found in
Frederick Barbarossa a formidable enemy. This emperor seeing that they
had at the same moment elected two successors of Adrian, Alexander and
Victor, summoned them to appear at Pavia, where he would decide between
them in a council convoked by him. Victor appeared there and was
pronounced the true pontiff. Alexander excommunicated by this council,
in return excommunicated Frederick and Victor, loosed from their oaths
the subjects of the former, and took refuge in France, then the usual
common asylum of the popes expelled from Rome. Returned to this city in
1165, after the decease of Victor, he left it again in 1167, and behold
in what way. The Romans besieged by the Germans, conjured him to
sacrifice to their safety the title disputed with him,:

    “No! he replied, a sovereign
    “pontiff is not subject, to the judgment of any mor−
    “tal, neither of kings nor of people, nor yet of the
    “church; let them know that no power on earth
    “shall make me descend from the rank to which God
    “has elevated me;”

and, while the cardinals carried to the citizens of Rome this pontifical
reply, the holy father stole away without noise.²⁰⁹  Frederick at this
time supported a famous war against almost all Italy, confederated under
the name of the League of Lombardy. Alexander III. became the head of
the Lombards, who gave the name of Alexandria, to a city built by them
in 1168, at the confluence of the Tanaro and the Bormida. The pope
excited the Greek emperor Manuel to arm against the emperor of the West,
and attempted to reconcile the two churches, separated since the
pontificate of Leo IX. But when Manuel required that the Holy See should
be established at Constantinople, this condition caused the failure of
both projects. To occupy a secondary rank in a capital inhabited,
possessed, and ruled by a secular sovereign, this subordinate situation,
which for five centuries had suited the successors of St. Peter, was not
to be listened to by the successors of Gregory VII.

  ²⁰⁹ Vit Alex. III. edit, a card. Arrag. p. 468.—Acerbug Rfp-rena, p.
      1151.—-Baron. Ann. eccles. Anji. 1167, s. 11.

As France, so England likewise, acknowledged Alexander III.
notwithstanding the protection he seemed to grant to Thomas a Becket,
Archbishop of Canterbury. This prelate elevated by the king, Henry II.,
to the most eminent dignities, dared to oppose himself to the punishment
of a priest convicted of assassination, and to determine that the sole
punishment should be, deprivation of his benefice.

The king wished that the common law should be applied, by the regular
tribunals, to the frequent crimes of the members of the church; he
desired that no bishop should without his permission go to Rome or
appeal to the Holy See, nor excommunicate or suspend a vassal or officer
of the crown. A parliament at Clarendon adopted these articles: Becket
after having at first rejected them without examination, next adopted
them without reserve, lastly accused himself to the pope of having
betrayed the rights of the clergy, did penance for it, and renounced the
exercise of his ministry until the sovereign pontiff had absolved him.
Treated as a rebel by all the peers of Great Britain, as well
ecclesiastical as secular, he took refuge in France, threatened the king
with the fate of Nebuchadnezzar, and pronounced anathemas against the
most faithful ministers and subjects of Henry. This prince attempted to
recal Becket to reason and his duty: he exhausted every way for the
purpose, even that of taking for arbiter his rival Louis the Young, king
of France. Let the archbishop, said he, conduct himself towards me, as
the most holy of his predecessors did with the least illustrious of
mine, and I shall be satisfied. An apparent reconciliation led Becket
back to England; but if he returned it was to excommunicate anew all the
clerks, curates, canons and bishops, who had declared against him. Henry
lost all patience; even to that degree that he exclaimed: will none of
my servants avenge me of the most meddling and ungrateful of men? Four
assassins went, in effect, to seek the arch-bishop, and dispatched him
in his church of Canterbury. Alexander, who had condemned the Articles
of Clarendon, placed Thomas a Becket in the number of the holy martyrs;
and the king, whose imprudent words had rendered him guilty both of the
murder and the canonization, finished, by tarnishing with the most
ignominious penance the rights and dignity of his throne. This quarrel
has given place to a multitude of letters, as well of Alexander III. as
of many English and French prelates: a deplorable correspondence, in
which we behold with what rapidity were propagated the unsocial maxims
preserved in the decree of Gratian.²¹⁰

  ²¹⁰ Matth. Paris. Hist. mag. p. 82, 83, 101, 104.—Collier’s
      Ecclesiastical History, vol. 1, s. 12.—Concil. Magnse Britann.
      vol. 1. p. 434.—Epistolæ et Vita Thomæ Cantuar. &c. Brux. 1682,
      vol. 2. in 4to.—Natalis Alex. sec. 12, diss. 10, p. 833.—Telly’s
      Hist, of France, vol. 3, p. 181, 198.

Nevertheless, Alexander III. thought of establishing himself, and
dreaded the consequences of too long a war with the emperor. He detached
himself from

Some English writers say that the four assassins, Fitzurse, Tracy,
Britton and Morville, were so far from having an order to kill Becket,
that they dared not re-appear at Court after the commission of the
crime. Hume adds, that the king suspecting the intention of these
gentlemen from some words which had escaped them, dispatched a messenger
after them, prohibiting their attacking the person of the prelate, but
that the messenger arrived too late.

the Lombard League, and came to Venice in 1177, to offer Frederick a
peace, which the reverses of this prince were to render useful and
glorious to the church. The pope reaped the fruits of the labours and
combats of Italy. Frederick acknowledged Alexander, kissed his feet,
held the stirrup of his horse, and restored the ecclesiastical goods,
without, however, including herein the inheritance of Matilda, and
signed a truce for six years²¹¹  For ten years past, Alexander had
invariably resided at Anagni; he seldom resorted to Rome, where the
seeds of sedition had not ceased to ferment. He returned to it in 1178;
his entry was solemn; he received the homage of the people and the oaths
of the nobles, and held in 1179 the third general council of the
Lateran. A crown being sent by him to the king of Portugal, Alphonso
Henriquez, in order that this conqueror should not reign without the
approbation of the Holy See, he was repaid by an annual tribute of two
marks of gold.²¹²  Such have been the principal events of the
pontificate of Alexander III. to whom the college of cardinals is
indebted for the exclusive privilege of electing the popes; he ruled
that this election should be effected by the union of two thirds of the
suffrages in favour of one candidate. The memory of this pope has
remained dear to the Italians, who were pleased at beholding in him the
defender of their liberties; but he evinced still more zeal for the
aggrandizement of the ecclesiastical power. They owe greater praise to
his address and constancy than to his patriotism. He knew how to triumph
over obstacles, support long reverses, weary out the prosperity of
Frederick Barbarossa, and subject to the pontifical authority, the enemy
of the Italian republics.

  ²¹¹ Maratori’s Antiquit Ital. med. ævi. vol. 4, p. 249.— Orig. Guelph,
      vol. 2, p. 479.

  ²¹² Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 3, p. 327.

Lucius III. the first elected in the the forms established by Alexander,
displeased the Romans on this very account, who compelled him to retire
to Verona. Urban III. and Gregory VIII. proposed a third crusade, which
was not undertaken until under Clement III. in 1189. To draw France and
England towards the Holy Land, it was requisite to deaden the ardour of
the quarrels which, from the divorce of Louis VII., divided the two
kingdoms. A legate of Clement III. threatened France with a general
interdict, if Philip Augustus did not hasten to reconcile himself to the
English.²¹³

    "What do I care for
    “your interdict, replied Philip: does it belong
    “to Rome to threaten or disturb my States,
    “when I think proper to bring back to duty my
    “rebel vassals? we may plainly see you have got
    “a relish for the sterling money of the English.”

Philip assumed the cross, nevertheless, as well as Richard, who had
succeeded his father, Henry, on the throne of England. Frederick
Barbarossa also took the cross and died in Armenia, in 1100, leaving the
empire to his son Henry, VI. Clement III. had need to occupy the peoples
minds with this remote expedition. The papal authority had been weakened
anew under the short and feeble pontificates of his two predecessors.
The Romans who had obtained royal privileges, restored them to the Holy
See, only on condition that the cities of Tusculum and of Tivoli should
be given up to their vengeance. Tusculum sacked and reduced to cinders
under Celestin III. took the name of Frescati, when branches of trees²¹⁴
served to form asylums for those that remained of the inhabitants.

Celestine III. elected in 1191, is the last pope of the 12th centuiy.
Innocent III. who reigned from 1198 to 1216 ought to be considered
belonging to the XII. Baronius relates²¹⁵  that in consecrating Heniy
VI. Çelestine pushed with his foot the imperial crown. Muratori disputes
the fact,²¹⁶  which proves, according to Baronius, the popes right to
depose the emperor: in fine there can no finer reason be given for such
a privilege. However it may be, Celestine excommunicated Heniy VI.
Leopold Duke of Austria, Alphonso X. king of Leon, and annulled the
decision of the French bishops, who had approved the repudiation of
Ingelburg II. the wife of Philip Augustus. It is to be remarked that
these anathemas although still formidable, had lost a large portion of
their unfortunate efficacy. Philip took a third wife, without any new
opposition on the part of Celestine. This pope, for some marcs of
silver, acknowledged, as king of Sicily, Frederick II. a child of three
years, son of the emperor Henry VI. In 1197, Henry died, and Germany was
divided between Philip of Swabia, and Otho of Saxony; the simultaneous
election of these two emperors became one of the causes of the
aggrandizement of the pontifical power. Divisions in Germany, rivalry
between France and England, new governments in almost all the states of
Italy, expeditions into Palestine, hostilities of the crusaders against
the emperors of the East, the propagation of the false decretals in the
West: all concurred to promise the most splendid success to the pontiff,
who, uniting boldness to skill, should reign sufficiently long to
conduct a great enterprise: and this pontiff was Innocent III.

  ²¹³ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 3, p. 327.

  ²¹⁴ Frasche.

  ²¹⁵ Ann. eccles. ann. 1191.

  ²¹⁶ Ann. d’ltal. ann. 1191.

CHAPTER VI.  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.

  ²¹⁷ Fleury’s Eccles. Hist. 1. 76, n. 14,1. 76, n. 6.

  ²¹⁸ Ibid. 1. 76, n 9.

  ²¹⁹ Ibid. 1. 76, n, 10.

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.

  ²²⁰ Ego... nottim facio universil ad quos litteræ présentes
      pervenerint, quod ego domino meo Ph. illustri regi Franco rum
      consului, ut neque pacem neque treugam faciat regi Anglis, per
      violentiam y el per coactionem domini papæ aut alicujus paps. Quod
      si dominus papa eidam domino regi super hoc aliquam faceret
      violentiam aut coactionem, concessi domino regi tanquam domino meo
      ligio et creantavi super omnia qus ab eo teneo, quod ego super hoc
      ei essem in auxilium de toto posse meo. Acts drawn up in this form
      in the names of Renaud count of Boulogne, Raoul count of Soissons,
      and of Odo duke of Burgundy, are to be found in the Chamber of
      Charters, all under the date of 1202.

  ²²¹ Eccles. Hist 76 m. 60; 1. 79, no. 8.

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

  ²²² Bofisuet, Defens. eler. Gallie. 1. 3. c..21.

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.”

  ²²³ Innoc. 3. Epist. 1. 15. ep. 77.—Rymer Act. pub. vol. 1, p. 67.

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.

  ²²⁴ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 3. pa. 472.

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

  ²²⁵ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 3. pm 468, 475.

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.

  ²²⁶ “Spiro qua l’ultimo fiato l’autorita degli Augusti in Roms.”
      Muratori, Annals of Italy, win. 1198.

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.”

  ²²⁷ Hist, eccles. 1. 76. n. 2.;  Innoc. III, Epist 1. 8. ep. 69.

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

  ²²⁸ Velly’s  Hist, of France, vol. 3, p. 430, 468.

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.

  ²²⁹ Concilior,  vol. 11, p. 142,—Director. Inquis. part 1,c. 2.

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.

  ²³⁰ Ionoc. III. Serm. de consec. pontif. op. yoI. i. p. 180.

  ²³¹ Fleury’s eccles. Hist 1. 77, n. 62.

  ²³² Thom. Cantiprat. in vita St. Lutg. virg. apud Surium 16
      Jan.—Raynald. ad. ann. 1216.

  ²³³ Hist, eccles. 1. 77, n. 62.

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.

  ²³⁴ Fleury’s eccles. Hist. 1. 79, n. 21.

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.

  ²³⁵ Concilior. vol. 11, p. 340, 346, 357.

  ²³⁶ Matt Paris, ann. 1239, p. 444.—Daniels, Hist, of France, vol. 3.
      p. 210.—Bossuet Def. Cler. Gall. 1. 4. c. 6.

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