UNIVERSAL SWAY OF THE POPE

O1n every side, the thunder of Rome broke over the heads of princes. A certain Swero is excommunicated for usurping the crown of Norway. A legate, in passing through Hungary, is detained by the king: Innocent writes in tolerably mild terms to this potentate, but fails not to intimate that he might be compelled to prevent his son’s accession to the throne. The king of Leon had married his cousin, a princess of Castile. Innocent subjects the kingdom to an interdict. When the clergy of Leon petition him to remove it, because when they ceased to perform their functions the laity paid no tithes and listened to heretical teachers when orthodox mouths were mute, he consented that divine service with closed doors, but not the rites of burial, might be performed. The king at length gave way, and sent back his wife.

2But a more illustrious victory of the same kind was obtained over Philip Augustus, who, having repudiated Ingeborg of Denmark, had contracted another marriage. The conduct of the king, though not without the usual excuse of those times, nearness of blood, was justly condemned; and Innocent did not hesitate to visit his sins upon the people by a general interdict. This, after a short demur from some bishops, was enforced throughout France; the dead lay unburied, and the living were cut off from the offices of religion, till Philip, thus subdued, took back his divorced wife. The submission of such a prince, not feebly superstitious, like his predecessor Robert, nor vexed with seditions, like the emperor Henry IV, but brave, firm, and victorious, is perhaps the proudest trophy on the scutcheon of Rome.

3Compared with this, the subsequent triumph of Innocent over the pusillanimous John seems cheaply gained, though the surrender of a powerful kingdom into the vassalage of the pope may strike us as a proof of stupendous baseness on one side and audacity on the other.

4A disputed election furnished Innocent with an opportunity of thrusting forward the cardinal Stephen Langton into the archbishopric of Canterbury against the king’s will. When John resisted with anger, the pope laid England under an interdict, in 1208, and afterwards excommunicated the king; the latter sought by reckless cruelty to avenge himself on the clergy, and by severe oppression to make sure of his vassals. At last Innocent deposed him from his kingdom, and handed it over to the king of France. But while he was arming himself for the conquest, John, unable to trust his vassals, yielded in all points, and even received his kingdom in fee from the pope under circumstances of the greatest humiliation. Now was England yielded up to the discretion of an arbitrary pope and a contemptible king; this united the prelates and the barons to wrest Magna Charta from the king in 1215. In vain the pope with spiritual and the king with temporal weapons strove to effect its repeal; John’s death, however, in 1216, quickly put an end to internal discord.

5Still greater prospects seemed to open themselves before the pope in Constantinople. Although the enthusiasm for crusades was already much diminished, nevertheless Innocent had succeeded, by unwearied efforts, in collecting a new army at Venice in 1202. The crafty doge, Enrico Dandolo, notwithstanding all papal admonitions, had first made use of the army for the reconquest of Zara (Jadera); it was then induced by the magnificent promises of a Greek prince, Alexius, to undertake an expedition against Constantinople; and when the reinstated emperor Isaac Angelus was unable to fulfil these promises, Constantinople was conquered, and a Latin empire established there, by the exaltation of Baldwin, count of Flanders, to the throne. Thus the church of Constantinople seemed now to be brought into subjection to the Roman see. However, even now, no one doubted the precariousness of this acquisition. For the new empire already contained the germ of dissolution; on the other hand it completely foiled the powerful enterprise in behalf of Palestine.

6In the latter year of his life Innocent devoted especial attention to the Holy Land: King Frederick took the cross even at his coronation; and at the Lateran council of the year 1215, one of the most brilliant which had ever been held, the accomplishment of another crusade was one of the chief ends in view. The enthusiasm for the Holy Land was indeed by no means extinct; but in Germany the continuance of the twofold reign of Frederick and Otto led to many unfavourable opinions of the Roman see, which necessarily obstructed its readiness to undertake a fresh crusade.[k]