The Church and the Empire Part 9

[Sidenote: Otto's designs.]

But Otto's acceptance was only the beginning of the end. He knew that he owed his position merely to the accident of Philip's death and to the absence of any eligible Hohenstaufen candidate. He had therefore no feelings of grat.i.tude towards Innocent. Moreover, he was now surrounded by Ghibelline influences, and was anxious to be crowned emperor. Thus, despite his promises of 1201 and 1209, to recover to the Papacy all the lands and rights which it claimed, he began to realise that the task to which he must give himself was the restoration of the connection between Italy and Germany, which had been entirely broken since Henry VI's death. In fact, this Guelf prince took up the work of the Hohenstaufen. When, therefore, Otto and Innocent met in Italy a year later, Otto declined to give more than a verbal promise that after his coronation he would do what was right.

Innocent, in return, did not refuse the crown indeed, but made a new departure in naming Otto Emperor without consecrating him as such, and thus denied to him the divinity of the imperial office (October, 1209).

[Sidenote: Otto's success.]

Otto immediately set to work. He recovered for the Empire all the lands of Central Italy which Innocent had already annexed to the papal dominions, including, of course, the Matildan inheritance; he made the Roman Prefect an imperial officer again; and entering into alliance with the German followers of Henry VI, who had never been entirely dislodged from the southern kingdom, he overran Apulia and prepared, by the aid of a fleet lent by Pisa, to pa.s.s over into Sicily. Innocent did everything in his power to check the conqueror. He excommunicated him (August, 1210); in conjunction with Philip Augustus of France, the old ally of Henry VI, he roused disaffection against Otto among the German n.o.bles. Innocent was somewhat taken aback when Otto's subjects, finding that the Pope in his anathema had absolved them from their fealty to the King, held Otto as deposed, and proceeded to elect in his place the young Frederick Roger, Henry VI's son and the papal ward, who was already King of Sicily. This choice also threatened to produce that very union of Germany and Italy which Otto was bent on accomplishing. But the need of checking Otto forced Innocent to acquiesce, and Frederick did everything to allay the papal fears.

[Sidenote: Innocent and Frederick.]

Since Frederick could not stop Otto's progress in the south, it was arranged that he should go north to Germany in the hope of drawing Otto away. Before he left, Frederick had his young child Henry crowned, as an earnest that he did not intend to join the kingdom he was going to seek with that which he already held. He pa.s.sed through Rome on his way north, and Innocent obtained from him a repet.i.tion of his liege homage for Sicily and a promise that the two kingdoms should be kept separate. In return Innocent gave him the t.i.tle of "Emperor elect by the grace of G.o.d and of the Pope," and supplied him with money. Innocent thus hoped that he had taken every precaution to avoid the dangers which he feared, while Frederick, young and inexperienced, seems to have accepted the conditions willingly and to have intended to keep them. His ambition and the unexpected prospects thus opened to him led him on regardless of consequences.

[Sidenote: Otto's failure.]

Frederick's move was perfectly successful. Otto rushed back to Germany, and the death of his wife Beatrice did away with any obligations of loyalty which the partisans of the Hohenstaufen might have felt towards him. Frederick was elected and crowned (December, 1212), and renewed the old Hohenstaufen league with France. Otto turned for help to his uncle, John of England. John was excommunicate, but now made his peace with the Pope. Philip, at first encouraged by Innocent to attack England and then after John's submission forbidden to go, turned his arms against Flanders. A coalition was formed against him, and was joined by John and by Otto; but Philip's victory at Bouvines (July, 1214) broke up the coalition and put an end to Otto's hopes. For the four years of life which remained to him his power was confined to Brunswick.

[Sidenote: Frederick's acceptance.]

Meanwhile Frederick had, as it were, put the crown upon his work of submission to the Papacy. By the Golden Bull (July, 1213), he repeated the promises which Otto had made at Neuss in 1201 with the additions of 1209. In 1215 he went through a second and more formal coronation at Aachen, and took the cross in conjunction with a number of German n.o.bles. In 1216 he further promised, in a formal deed, that in return for the imperial crown his son Henry should become King of Sicily, entirely independently from himself and under the supremacy of the Roman Church. Thus Frederick in his eagerness put himself completely in the hands of the Papacy.

[Sidenote: Innocent and England.]

Otto's cause had been linked with that of his uncle John, over whom Innocent won the greatest of his victories. On a vacancy in the see of Canterbury (1206) the right of election was disputed, as usual, between the monks of the monastery of Christchurch at Canterbury and the bishops of the province. King John thrust in his nominee. Innocent settled the matter by making an appointment of his own. But John refused to accept Stephen Langton; and Innocent proceeded to force his consent. In 1208 the country was laid under an interdict; and John treated the bishops who published it as Philip Augustus had treated the French bishops ten years before. In 1209 Innocent excommunicated John, and in 1212 declared him deposed. Despite the continued obstinacy of Philip of France in the matter of Ingebiorg, Innocent called upon him to execute the papal sentence; and Philip, thinking that the aid of Denmark would be useful, ended the twenty years'

dispute and accorded to Ingebiorg the position of Queen for the rest of his reign. It was certainly a measure of the growing strength of the royal power in France that it had been able to defy the Papacy for so long in a matter in which the King was so clearly in the wrong.

Philip's threatened attack brought John to his knees; and in 1213 he not only accepted Stephen Langton, but even surrendered his kingdom to the Papacy to receive it back as a papal fief, and undertook to pay an annual tribute. The sequel was not quite so satisfactory for Innocent.

The surrender to the Pope and the defeat at Bouvines so enraged the barons and clergy in England that they combined to force John to sign Magna Carta (1215). But John was now under the protection of the Pope; and although Innocent's own archbishop took the lead in the movement against John, Innocent issued a bull in condemnation of the charter; but so long as John lived, even the interdict and excommunication which followed failed to move the barons. Innocent's successors reaped the benefit of his triumph in the influence which they were able to exert in England during the greater part of the reign of Henry III.

[Sidenote: Innocent's successes in Europe.]

Nor was John the only King who laid his crown at the feet of the Pope.

Peter, King of Aragon, hoped to escape the claims of the King of Castile and the tyranny of his own barons by making his kingdom tributary to the Papacy. Prince John of Bulgaria actually asked for and obtained a royal crown from Innocent. The struggles of Sancho, King of Portugal, to free himself from the submission made by a predecessor ended in failure. Leo, King of Armenia, sought the papal protection against the crusaders. The King of Denmark appealed to Innocent on behalf of his much-wronged sister. The contending parties in Hungary listened to his mediation.

But we have already seen that Innocent was not always successful, and that most of his successes were won only after a prolonged contest.

Their matrimonial irregularities brought him into conflict with nearly all the Christian Kings of Spain, and the kingdom of Leon was struck by an interdict which was not removed for five years. It was a more serious matter for the future that the papal acts for the first time roused the opposition of the people in more than one instance; while it is right to notice that Innocent often got acknowledgment of his claim to adjudicate by accepting what had already been done. But despite some notable failures, he did meet with considerable success; and since he got so much, it is not surprising that he aimed at more.

Perhaps the greatest disappointment of his life was the failure of the Fourth Crusade. Innocent found some compensation in the great victory won by the united chivalry of Spain and France over the Almohades on the field of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. But he is responsible for inventing a new kind of crusade--that of Christians against Christians--in the undoubtedly papal duty of dealing with the Albigensian heretics; and it is, in modern eyes at least, a small condonation that he encouraged the founder of the Dominicans and received Francis of a.s.sisi with sympathy.

[Sidenote: The Fourth Lateran Council.]

Innocent's pontificate ended in a blaze of glory. After the settlement of the strife in Germany he called together a Council which is distinguished as the Fourth Lateran or the Twelfth OEc.u.menical Council. It met in 1215, and was composed of more than two thousand persons, including envoys from all the chief nations of Europe. Its resolutions were embodied in seventy canons dealing with a vast variety of subjects in the endeavour to bring about a drastic reformation of the Church. This is perhaps Innocent's most solid claim to the name of a great ruler. But it only serves to emphasise the wholly external nature of his rule. And subsequent ages have recognised this limitation to his claims for honour in that, while they have freely accorded to him the name of a great man and a great Pope, if not the greatest of the pontiffs, the Church has never added his name to the role of Christian saints.

CHAPTER X

THE PAPAL POWER IN THE CHURCH

[Sidenote: The basis of papal claims.]

The interest of the period with which we are dealing is largely concerned with the attempted definition of the relations between Church and State. The peculiar form of mediaeval thought resolved this into a struggle of the papal power to make itself supreme over all temporal rulers. But scarcely less important or interesting is the concomitant effort of the Papacy to gather up into itself the whole immediate authority of the Church.

This effort was very materially helped by the fact that various national churches which had retained their own customs were gradually brought into communion with Rome. William the Conqueror put an end to the schism which had cut off the Anglo-Saxon Church from Rome, and drew the Church in England into closer contact with Rome than she had enjoyed since the days of Archbishop Theodore. Through Queen Margaret, the Anglo-Saxon wife of Malcolm Canmore, Roman customs superseded those of the Celtic Church in Scotland. Gregory VII prevailed on the Spanish churches to accept the Roman for the Mozarabic liturgy.

Alexander III attracted to Rome the long-isolated Church in Ireland, and Innocent II reconciled the Milanese at last to the papal supremacy. The foundation for the high claims on the part of the Papacy rested on what are known as the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals.

Decretals are answers to questions referred to the Bishop of Rome from other churches. The earliest of these was of date 385. Compilations of the Canons of the Church, in which these answers were included, were put out in the sixth and the seventh centuries, the latter under the name of Bishop Isidore of Seville. In the middle of the ninth century appeared a third compilation, also published under the name of Isidore, and containing fifty-nine additional letters and decrees of earlier date than 385. Inasmuch as the Latin edition of the Bible, which St. Jerome did not translate until about the year 400, is quoted in some of these, this compilation has not unnaturally been styled the False or Forged or Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. The object of this forgery was the exaltation of the Papacy as "the supreme lord, lawgiver, and judge of the Church," since all previous claims were brought together and were referred back to the foundation of Christianity. Two centuries later another doc.u.ment of doubtful authenticity, called _Dictatus Papae_, sets forth in a sufficiently true spirit the principles proclaimed by Gregory VII.

This states, among other things, that the Roman pontiff can alone be called Universal, that his name is unique in the world, that he ought to be judged by none; and it ascribes to him, without the intervention of any intermediary, the supreme and immediate power in all executive, legislative, and judicial matters.

[Sidenote: The Pope: the sole authority in the Church.]

The history of the Church during the two succeeding centuries is merely an exemplification of these claims. It was in the spirit of this doc.u.ment that Innocent II, in the speech with which he opened the Second Lateran Council in 1139, reminded his hearers that Rome was the head of the world, and that the highest ecclesiastical offices were derived from the Roman pontiff as by a kind of feudal right, and could not he lawfully held without his permission. Innocent III, we have seen, describes himself as the Vicar of G.o.d or of Jesus Christ. Thus, although the Pope is potentially present everywhere in the Church, he cannot exercise the great power belonging to the office personally, so that he has called in his brethren, the co-bishops, to share in the care of the burden entrusted to himself; but in doing so he has subtracted in no whit from the fulness of power which enables him to enquire into individual cases and to a.s.sume the office of judge at will. Others, then, may be admitted to a share in the care of the Church (_pars solicitudinis_); but to the Pope has been given the fulness of power (_plenitudo potestatis_). Thomas Aquinas shows how bishop and archbishop equally derive their authority from the Pope, and finds parallels to the relationship between the Pope and the other officers of the Church in the dependence of all things created upon G.o.d and the subordination of the proconsul to the Emperor. This deliberate policy on the part of the Papacy to absorb into itself the whole spiritual authority of the Church may be traced in its attempts to set itself up as supreme administrator, supreme lawgiver, and supreme judge.

Before the Pope could claim to be supreme administrator within the Church it was necessary to deprive all other ecclesiastical officers of their independence. The custom of the gift of the pall to archbishops who exercised the office of Metropolitans had already made these highest officers of all into little more than delegates of the Papacy. Gregory VII failed in his attempt to force them to come in person to Rome in order to receive the pall. He succeeded, however, in imposing upon them an oath which, founded upon the oath of fealty, made their position a.n.a.logous to that of a feudal va.s.sal. By this a Metropolitan swore to be faithful to St. Peter and the Pope and his successors who should have been canonically elected; that he would be no party to violence against the Pope; that he would attend in person or by representatives at every synod to which the Pope summoned him; that, saving the rights of his Order, he would help to defend the Papacy and all its possessions and honours; that he would not betray any trust reposed in him by the Pope; that he would honourably treat the papal legate; that he would not knowingly communicate with excommunicates; that when asked he would faithfully help the Roman Church with a force of soldiers. To this was often added an undertaking that he would appear at Rome himself or by a representative at stated intervals; that he would cause his suffragans at their consecration to take an oath of obedience to the Roman pontiff; that he would not part with anything belonging to his official position without the knowledge of the Roman See.

[Sidenote: Claim over bishoprics.]

Gregory's successors imposed this oath by degrees on all bishops, and thus gradually subst.i.tuted the Pope for the Metropolitan. The _Dictatus Papae_ claimed for the Pope the right of deposing or reinstating bishops without reference to a synod; of transferring a bishop from one see to another; of dividing a wealthy see or joining together poor bishoprics. It was the papal policy to champion the suffragans against the Metropolitans until the original metropolitical power of confirming the elections of their newly elected suffragans and consecrating them to the episcopal office was entirely superseded by the growing authority of the Pope. The right of confirmation implied the power of quashing an election, and this could easily grow into a power of direct appointment. This last power was only exercised habitually in certain cases--after a vacancy had lasted for a certain time; if the bishop had died at Rome; if the bishop had been transferred from one see to another. From the end of the eleventh century cases are found of bishops designated to be such, not only, according to the ancient formula, "by the grace of G.o.d," but also by that "of the Apostolic See," and such description becomes fairly common in the thirteenth century.

[Sidenote: Claim over benefices.]

And as the Popes pa.s.sed over Metropolitans in order to obtain a direct hold on the suffragans, so they went on in course of time to pa.s.s over the bishop in every diocese by claiming the disposition of individual benefices. Such a claim began in the first half of the twelfth century in letters of recommendation and pet.i.tions for the appointment of papal favourites to prebends or benefices. But so quickly did this system develop that where Hadrian IV recommended Alexander III commanded, and the mandates of Innocent III were enforced by specially appointed officers. Clement IV lays it down that ancient custom has specially reserved to the Roman pontiff the collation of churches and offices which become vacant through the death of the holder at Rome, but that this is only part of the greater right which is known to belong to Rome and gives to the Pontiff the full disposal (_plenaria dispositio_) of all offices and benefices both at the time of vacancy and by provision beforehand. But so flagrant was the abuse of this power of appointment that it roused the indignant remonstrance of the most ardent supporters of the papal authority in the Church.

England under Henry III was so much exploited by its papal guardian as to gain the name of the "Milch-cow of the Papacy"; but there were many protests.

Robert Grossteste, Bishop of Lincoln, the most revered English Churchman of the thirteenth century, was bidden by Innocent IV to find a canonry in his cathedral for a nominee of the Pope, who, moreover, was still a child. He answered in a rebuke of such severity and dignity as can have rarely been addressed to Rome by one devoted to its service. "Next to the sin of Lucifer," he tells the Pope, "there is not, there cannot be, any kind of sin so adverse and contrary to the evangelical doctrine of the Apostles as the destruction of souls by defrauding them of the duty and service of a pastor." He adds that the most holy Apostolic See cannot command anything that tends to a sin of such a kind except by some defect or abuse of its plenary power: that no faithful servant of the Papacy would comply with a command of that kind "even if it issued from the highest order of angels"; and he therefore, _filialiter et obedienter_, flatly refuses to obey. Scarcely less severe were the strictures of Louis IX's amba.s.sadors, who laid the grievances of the French bishops and barons before the same Pope. They tell Innocent IV that the devotion which the French people have hitherto felt towards the Roman Church is now not only extinguished, but is turned into vehement hate and rancour, and that the claim for subsidies and tribute for every necessity of Rome--a claim which was enforced by the threat of excommunication--was unheard of in previous ages.

[Sidenote: The Pope as supreme legislator.]

The Pope also gradually established his authority as supreme and sole lawgiver within the Church. The _Dictatus Papae_ a.s.serts that for him alone it is lawful to frame new laws to meet the needs of the time. Meanwhile the Forged Decretals had found their place in the various collections of the Canons made in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. In the middle of the twelfth century Gratian, a Benedictine monk of Bologna, put out his _Concordantia discordantium Canonum_, commonly known as the _Decretum Gratiani_, which combined a theoretical disquisition with ill.u.s.trations drawn from the doc.u.ments which had appeared in previous collections. This became the standard mediaeval treatise in ecclesiastical law, and its appearance much encouraged the systematic study of the Canon law. The Popes of the succeeding century and a half made great additions to the law of the Church, partly through the decrees issued by the General Lateran Councils, partly by their own edicts. Such new matter was embodied from time to time. Thus in 1234 the Dominican Raymund de Pennaforte gathered five books of Decretals at the command of Gregory IX; Boniface VIII was responsible for a sixth book in 1298, while other additions were made by Clement V (1308) and John XXII (1317). All these, together with the earlier compilations and some later additions, formed the _Corpus Juris Canonici_. This enormous body of law was full of contradictions and not devoid of falsification and forgery. The growing study of it caused the foundation of Chairs at the universities, and the Popes found it a most convenient method to publish their new decrees through the lecture-rooms. The old Canon Law was entirely superseded by the later Papal Law.

[Sidenote: Power over Councils.]

The Popes made no pretence of hiding their claims to the legislative power. Urban II strongly affirms that it has always been in the power of the Roman Pontiff to frame new laws; and two centuries later Boniface VIII embodies in his addition to the Canon Law the words of an earlier writer, that the Roman Pontiff is considered to hold all laws in the repository of his breast. There was no room in such a theory for any effective co-operation of ecclesiastical Councils, however representative. The _Dictatus Papae_ declares that no General Council can be held without the papal command. Pascal II points out that no Council can dictate the law of the Church, because every Council comes into existence and receives its power by authority of Rome, and in its statutes the authority of the Pope is clearly not interfered with. But the Popes often found it convenient to obtain the sanction of a General Council for their legislation, and the four Lateran Councils (1123, 1139, 1179, 1215) were the occasions for great and important additions to the Canon Law. But from the time of the third Lateran Council, at all events, all ordinances of a General Council were issued in the name of the Pope, although the approval or the fact of the Council was likewise expressed. Thomas Aquinas merely expresses the recognised law of the Church when he says that the Holy Fathers gathered together in Councils can make no laws except by the intervention of the authority of the Roman Pontiff, for without that authority a Council cannot even meet.

[Sidenote: Popes above law.]

It followed from this a.s.sumption of the supreme legislative power that, in the first place, the Pope himself claimed not to be bound by the laws which he made. Thus in the thirteenth century papal writers denied that the Roman Church could commit simony. Certain acts are simoniacal because they have been prohibited as such by Canon Law; but inasmuch as it is the Pope who had forbidden them, the prohibition does not bind him. And in virtue of this power, from the time of Innocent IV the Popes added to their bulls a _non obstante_ clause whereby they suspended in a particular instance all laws or rights which might otherwise stand in the way of their grant.

[Sidenote: Papal dispensation.]

It followed, further, that the Pope claimed also the power of granting dispensations from existing laws and absolution for their infringement. Every papal bishop was armed with the power of granting pardon in G.o.d's name for breaches of the law which had already been committed. The Pope, however, claimed not only this power concurrently with all other bishops, but he even developed a right of granting dispensations beforehand, so that the tendency was to ignore the bishop of the diocese and to apply directly to the Pope or his representatives, who thus were willing to permit infractions of the law. Thomas Aquinas declares that any bishop can grant dispensation in the case of a promise about which there is any doubt; but that to the Pope alone, as having the care of the Church Universal, belongs the higher power of giving unconditional relaxation from an oath of perfectly clear meaning in the interests of the general good.

But even papal writers sometimes complain of the irresponsibility of the papal acts, and Popes themselves had to allow that there were spheres outside their legislative interference. Thus Urban II acknowledges that in matters on which our Lord, His Apostles, and the Fathers have given definite decisions, the duty of the Pope is to confirm the law. Thomas Aquinas, while holding that the Pope can alter the decisions of the Fathers and even of the Apostles in so far as they come under the head of positive law, yet excepts from the possibility of papal interference all that concerns the law of nature, the Articles of Faith (which, he says elsewhere, have been determined by Councils), or the sacraments of the new law.

[Sidenote: The Pope as supreme judge.]

The third wide sphere of action within the Church in which the Pope established his supremacy was that of justice. The _Dictatus Papae_ a.s.serts not only that the Pope should be judged by no one, but that the "greater causes" of every Church should be referred to him, that none should dare to condemn any one who appealed to Rome, and that no one except the Pope himself can interfere with a papal sentence. Litigants of all kinds were only too ready to appeal against the local tribunal, and the Pope gave them every encouragement. St.

Bernard indignantly pointed out to Innocent II that every evil-doer and cantankerous person, whether lay or cleric or even from the monasteries, when he is worsted runs to Home and boasts on his return of the protection which he has obtained. It is true, Gregory VIII (1187) tried to check the practice of appeals; but his short reign gave no time for any real result. Bishops and archdeacons tried sometimes to stop appeals by excommunication, which prevented the victim from appearing in an ecclesiastical court; but the third Lateran Council (1179) forbade this method of defence. Alexander III definitely laid it down that appeals could be made to the Pope in the smallest no less than in the greatest matters, and at every possible stage, before and after trial, at the p.r.o.nouncement of the sentence and after it has been awarded; and this, he points out, is not the case in civil law, where an appeal is only admitted after judgment.

Indeed, the most serious matter with regard to papal appeals was the reservation by the Pope to his own decision of cases which were regarded as too serious for the local courts. The bishops had themselves largely to thank for the development of this direct papal jurisdiction; for they began the custom of referring to Rome the cases of great criminals and of serious crimes. But these "greater causes,"

claimed for the Pope as early as the time of Gregory VII, included not only grave moral crimes such as murder, sacrilege, and gross immorality, but also cases of dispensation beforehand, of absolution after excommunication for certain offences. Under the same head would come the right of canonisation exercised by archbishops until Alexander III claimed it exclusively for the Pope, and the right of translating a bishop from one see to another, which involved a dissolution of the metaphorical marriage between the bishop and his see and therefore needed a special dispensation.