The Makers of Modern Rome Part 11

INNOCENT III.

It is not our object, the reader is aware, to give here a history of Rome, or of its pontiffs, or of the tumultuous world of the Middle Ages in which a few figures of Popes and Princes stand out upon the ever-crowded, ever-changing background, helping us to hear among the wild confusion of clanging swords and shattering lances, of war cries and shouts of rage and triumph--and to see amidst the mist and smoke, the fire and flame, the dust of breached walls and falling houses. Our intention is solely to indicate those among the chiefs of the Church who are of the most importance to the great city, which, ever rebelling against them, ever carrying on a scarcely broken line of opposition and resistance, was still pa.s.sive in their hands so far as posterity is concerned, dragged into light, or left lying in darkness, according as its rulers were. It is usual to say that the great time of the Church, the age of its utmost ascendency, was during the period between Gregory VII. and Innocent III., the first of whom put forth its claim as Universal Arbiter and Judge as no one had ever done before, while the second carried that claim to its climax in his remarkable reign--a reign all-influencing, almost all-potent, something more like a universal supremacy and rule over the whole earth than has ever been known either before or since. The reader has seen what was the effect upon his world of the great Hildebrand: how he laboured, how he proclaimed his great mission, with what overwhelming faith he believed in it, and, it must be added, with how little success he was permitted to carry it out. This great Pope, a.s.serting his right as the successor of Peter to something very like a universal dominion and the power of setting down and raising up all manner of thrones, princ.i.p.alities, and powers, lived fighting for the very ground he stood on, in an incessant struggle not only with the empire, but with every illiterate and ign.o.ble petty court of his neighbourhood, with the robber barons of the surrounding hills, with the citizens in his streets, with the villagers on his land--and, after having had more than once his independent realm restricted to the strong walls of St. Angelo, had at last to abandon his city for mere safety's sake, and die in exile far from the Rome he loved.

The life of the other we have now to trace, as far as it is possible to keep the thread of it amid the tremendous disorders, disastrous wars and commotions of his time, in all of which his name is so mingled that in order to distinguish his story the student must be prepared to struggle through what is really the history of the world, there being scarcely a corner of that world--none at least with which history was then acquainted--which was not pervaded by Innocent, although few we think in which his influence had any such power as is generally believed.

This Pope was not like Hildebrand a man of the people. He had a surname and already a distinguished one. Lothario Conti, son of Trasimondo, lord of Ferentino, of the family of the Dukes of Spoleto, was born in the year 1161 in the little town of Anagni, where his family resided, a place always dear to him, and to which in the days of his greatness he loved to retire, to take refuge from the summer heats of Rome or other more tangible dangers. He was thus a member of the very n.o.bility with which afterwards he had so much trouble, the unruly neighbours who made every road to Rome dangerous, and the suzerainty of the Pope in many cases a simple fiction. The young Lothario had three uncles in the Church in high places, all of them eventually Cardinals, and was destined to the ecclesiastical profession, in which he was so certain of advancement, from his birth; he was educated partly at Rome, at the school of St. John Lateran, specially destined for the training of the clergy, and therefore spent his boyhood under the shadow of the palace which was to be his home in later years. From Rome he went to the University of Paris, one of the greatest of existing schools, and studied canon law so as to make himself an authority on that subject, then one of the most engrossing and important branches of learning. He loved the "beneficial tasks,"

and perhaps also the freedom and freshness of university life, where probably the bonds of the clerical condition were less felt than in other places, though Innocent never seems to have required indulgence in that respect. Besides his readings in canon law, he studied with great devotion the Scriptures, and their interpretation, after the elaborate and highly artificial fashion of the day, dividing each text into a myriad of heads, and building up the most recondite argument on a single phrase with meanings spiritual, temporal, scholastic, and imaginary. There he made several warm friends, among others Robert Curzon, an Englishman who served him afterwards in various high offices, not so much to the credit of their honour in later times as of the faithfulness of their friendship.

Young Conti proceeded afterwards to Bologna, then growing into great reputation as a centre of instruction. He had, in short, the best education that his age was acquainted with, and returned to his ecclesiastical home at Rome and the protection of his Cardinal-uncles a perfectly well-trained and able young man, learned in all the learning of his day, acquainted more or less with the world, and ready for any service which the Church to which he was wholly devoted might require of him. He was a young man certain of promotion in any case.

He had no sooner taken the first orders than he was made a canon of St. Peter's, of itself an important position, and his name very soon appears as acting in various causes brought on appeal to Rome--claims of convents, complaints among others of the monks of Canterbury in some forgotten question, where he was the champion of the complainants who were afterwards to bring him into so much trouble. These appeals were constantly occurring, and occupied a great deal of the time and thoughts of that learned and busy court of Rome, the Consistory, which became afterwards, under Innocent himself, the one great court of appeal for the world.

About a hundred years had pa.s.sed between the death of the great Pope Gregory, the monk Hildebrand, and the entrance of Lothario Conti upon public life; but when the reader surveys the condition of that surging sea of society--the crowded, struggling, fighting, unresting world, which gives an impression of being more crowded, more teeming with wild life and force, with constant movement and turmoil, than in our calmer days, though no doubt the facts are quite the reverse--he will find but little change apparent in the tremendous scene. As Gregory left the nations in endless war and fighting, so his great successor found them--king warring against king, prince against prince, count against count, city against city, nay, village against village, with a wide margin of personal struggle around, and a general war with the Church maintained by all. A panorama of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, could it have been furnished to any onlooker, would have showed its minutest lines of division by illuminations of devastating fire and flame, by the clangour of armies in collision, by wild freebooters in roaming bands, and little feudal wars in every district: every man in pursuit of something that was his neighbour's, perhaps only his life, a small affair--perhaps his wife, perhaps his lands, possibly the mere satisfaction of a feud which was always on hand to fill up the crevices of more important fighting.

With more desperate hostility still the cities in pairs set themselves against each other, all flourishing, busy places, full of industry, full of invention, but fuller still of rage against the brother close by, of the same tongue and race, Milan against Parma, Pisa against Genoa, Florence against all comers. Bigger wars devastated other regions, Germany in particular in all its many subdivisions, where it seems impossible to believe there could ever be a loaf of bread or a cup of wine of native growth, so perpetually was every dukedom ravaged and every princ.i.p.ality brought to ruin. Two Emperors claiming the allegiance of that vast impossible holy Empire which extended from the northern sea to the soft Sicilian sh.o.r.es, two Popes calling themselves heads of the Church, were matters of every day. The Emperors had generally each a show of right; but the anti-popes, though they had each a party, were altogether false functionaries with no show of law in their favour, generally mere creatures of the empire, though often triumphant for a moment. In Gregory's day Henry IV. and Rudolf were the contending Emperors. In those of Innocent they were Philip and Otho. There were no doubt different principles involved, but the effect was the same; in both cases the Popes were deeply concerned, each a.s.serting a prerogative, a right to choose between the contending candidates and terminate the strife. That prerogative had been boldly claimed and a.s.serted by Gregory; in the century that followed every Pope had rea.s.serted and attempted with all his might to enforce it; but though Innocent is universally set forth as the greatest and most powerful of all who did so, and as in part responsible for almost every evil thing that resulted, I do not myself see that his interference was much more potential than that of Gregory, of which also so much is said, but which was so constantly baulked, thwarted, and contradicted in his day. So far as the Empire was concerned the Popes certainly possessed a right and privilege which gave a certain countenance to their claim, for until crowned by the ruling Pontiff no Emperor had full possession of his crown: but this did not affect the other Christian kingdoms over which Innocent claimed and attempted to exercise the same prerogative. The state of things, however, to the spectator is very much the same in the one century as the other. The age of storm and stress for the world of Christendom extended from one to another; no doubt progress was being made, foundations laid, and possibilities slowly coming into operation, of which the beginnings may be detected even among all the noise and dust of the wars; but outwardly the state of Europe was very much the same under Innocent as under Gregory: they had the same difficulties to encounter and the same ordeals to go through.

Several short-lived Popes succeeded each other on the papal throne after Innocent began to ascend the steps of ecclesiastical dignity, which were so easy to the nephew of three Cardinals. He became a canon of St. Peter's while little more than twenty-one. Pope Lucius III.

employed him about his court, Pope Gregory VIII. made him a sub-deacon of Rome. Pope Clement III. was his uncle Octavian, and made him Cardinal of "St. Sergius and St. Bacchus," a curious combination, and one which would better have become a more jovial priest. Then there came a faint and momentary chill over the prospects of the most rising and prosperous young ecclesiastic in Rome. His uncle was succeeded in the papal chair by a certain Cardinal, old and pious but little known to history, a member of the Orsini family and hostile to the Conti, so that our young Cardinal relapsed a little into the cold shade. It is supposed to be during this period that he turned his thoughts to literature, and wrote his first book, a singular one for his age and position--and yet perhaps not so unlike the utterance of triumphant youth under its first check as might be supposed--_De contemptu mundi, sive de miseriis humanae conditionis_, is its t.i.tle.

It was indeed the view of the world which every superior mind was supposed to take in his time, as it has again become the last juvenile fashion in our own; but the young Cardinal Conti had greater justification than our young prophets of evil. His work is full, as it always continues to be in his matured years, of the artificial constructions which Paris and Bologna taught, and which characterise the age of the schoolmen: and it is not to be supposed that he had much that was new to say of that everlasting topic which was as hackneyed in the twelfth century as it is in the nineteenth. After he has explained that "every male child on his birth cries A and every female E; and when you say A with E it makes Eva, and what is Eva if not heu! ha!--alas!"--he adds a description of the troubles of life which is not quite so fanciful.

"We enter life amid pains and cries, presenting no agreeable aspect, lower even than plants and vegetables, which give forth at least a pleasant odour. The duration of life becomes shorter every day; few men reach their fortieth year, a very small number attain the sixtieth....

And how painful is life! Death threatens us constantly, dreams frighten us, apparitions disturb us, we tremble for our friends, for our relations; before we are prepared for it misfortune has come: sickness surprises us, death cuts the thread of our life. All the centuries have not been enough to teach even to the science of medicine the different kind of sufferings to which man's fragility exposes him. Human nature is more corrupt from day to day; the world and our bodies grow old. Often the guilty is acquitted and the innocent is punished.... Every thought, every act, all the arts and devices are employed for no other end but to secure the glory and favour of men. To gain honour he uses flattery, he prays, he promises, he tries every underground way if he cannot get what he wants by direct measures; or he takes it by force if he can depend on the support of friends or of relations. And what a burden are those high dignities! When the ambitious man has attained the height of his desires his pride knows no bounds, his arrogance is without restraint; he believes himself so much a better man as he is more elevated in position; he disdains his friends, recognises no one, despises his oldest connections, walking proudly with his head high, insolent in words, the enemy of his superiors and the tyrant of his dependents."

The young Cardinal spares no cla.s.s in his animadversions, but the rich are held up as warnings rather than the poor, and the vainglory of the miserable sons of Adam is what disgusts him most. Here is a pa.s.sage which carries us into the inner life of that much devastated, often ruined Rome, which nevertheless at its most distracted moment was never quite devoid of the splendours and luxuries it loved.

"Has not the prophet declared his anathema against luxury in dress? Yet the face is coloured with artificial colours as if the art of man could improve the work of G.o.d. What can be more vain than to curl the hair, to paint the cheeks, to perfume the person? And what need is there for a table ornamented with a rich cover, and laid with knives mounted in ivory, and vases of gold and silver? What more vain again than to paint the rooms, to cover the doors with fine carvings, to lay down carpets in the ante-chambers, to repose one's self on a bed of down, covered with silken stuffs and surrounded with curtains?"

Some historical commentators take exception to this picture as imaginary, and too luxurious for the age; but after all a man of the time must have known better than even Muratori our invaluable guide: and we find again and again in the descriptions of booty taken in the wars, accounts of the furniture of the tents of the conquered, silver and gold vases, and costly ornaments of the table which if carried about to embellish the wandering and brief life of a campaign would surely be more likely still to appear among the riches of a settled dwelling-place. Cardinal Lothario however did not confine himself altogether to things he had intimate knowledge of, for one of his ill.u.s.trations is that of a discontented wife, a character of which he could have no personal experience: the picture is whimsically correct to conventional precedent; it is the established piece which we are so well acquainted with in every age.

"She desires fine jewels and dresses, and beautiful furniture without regard to the means of her husband; if she does not get them she complains, she weeps, she grumbles and murmurs all night through. Then she says, 'So-and-so is much more expensive than I am, and everybody respects her; while I, because I am poor, they look at me disdainfully over their shoulders.' n.o.body must be praised or loved but herself; if any other is beloved she thinks herself hated; if any one is praised she thinks herself injured. She insists that everybody should love what she loves, and hate what she hates; she will submit to nothing but dominates all; everything ought to be permitted to her, and nothing forbidden. And after all (adds the future pope) whatever she may be, ugly, sick, mad, imperious, ill-tempered, whatever may be her faults, she must be kept if she is not unchaste; and even then though the man may separate from her, he may not take another."

This sounds as if the young Cardinal would have been less severe on the question of divorce than his clerical successors. The book however is quite conventional, and gives us little insight into the manner of man he was. Nevertheless there are some actual thoughts in the perennial and often repeated argument, as when he maintains the sombre doctrine of eternal punishment with the words: "Deliverance will not be possible in h.e.l.l, for sin will remain as an inclination even when it cannot be carried out." He also wrote a book upon the Ma.s.s in the quiet of these early days; and was diligent in performing his duties and visiting the poor, to whom he was always full of charity.

When the old Pope died, however, there seems not to have been a moment's doubt as to who should succeed him. The Cardinal Lothario was but thirty-seven, his ability and learning were known indeed, but had as yet produced no great result: his family was distinguished but not of force enough to overawe the Conclave, and nothing but the impression produced upon the minds of his contemporaries by his character and acquirements could account for his early advancement.

Pope Celestine in dying had recommended with great insistence the Cardinal John Colonna as his successor; but this seems scarcely to have been taken into consideration by the electors, who now, according to Hildebrand's inst.i.tution, somewhat modified by succeeding Popes, performed their office without any pretence of consulting either priests or people, and still less with any reference to the Emperor.

The election was held, not in the usual place, but in a church now untraceable, "Ad Septa Solis," situated somewhere near the Colosseum.

The object of the Cardinals in making the election there, was safety, the German troops of the Emperor being at the time in possession of the entire surrounding country up to the very gates of Rome, and quite capable of making a raid upon the Lateran to stop any proceedings which might be disagreeable to their master; for the imperial authorities on their part had never ceased to a.s.sert their right to be consulted in the election of a Pope. Lothario made the orthodox resistance without which perhaps no early Pope ever ascended the papal throne, protesting his own incapacity for so great an office; but the Cardinals insisted, not granting him even a day's delay to think over it. The first of the Cardinal-deacons, Gratiano, an old man, invested him with the pluvial and greeted him as Innocent, apparently leaving him no choice even as to his name. Thus the grave young man, so learned and so austere, in the fulness of his manhood ascended St.

Peter's chair. There is no need to suppose that there was any hypocrisy in his momentary resistance; the papal crown was very far from being one of roses, and a young man, even if he had looked forward to that position and knew himself qualified for it, might well have a moment's hesitation when it was about to be placed on his head.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CAPITOL.

_To face page 316._]

When the announcement of the election was made to the crowd outside, it was received with cries of joy: and the entire throng--consisting no doubt in a large degree of the clergy, mingled with the ever-abundant ma.s.ses of the common people,--accompanied the Cardinals and the Pope-elect to the Lateran, though that church, one would suppose, must still have been occupied by the old Pope on his bier, and hung with the emblems of mourning: for it was on the very day of Celestine's death that the election took place. Muratori suggests a mistake of dates. "Either Pope Celestine must have died a day sooner, or Innocent have been elected a day later," he says. After the account, more full than usual, of the ceremonies of the election, the brilliant procession, and the rejoicing crowd, sweep away into the silence, and no more is heard of them for six weeks, during which time Lothario waited for the Rogation days, the proper time for ordinations; for though he had already risen so high in the Church, he was not yet a priest, but only in deacon's orders, which seems to have been the case in so many instances. The two ordinations took place on two successive days, the 22nd and 23rd of February, 1198.

When he had received the final consecration, and had been invested with all the symbols of his high office--the highest in the world to his own profound consciousness, and to the belief of all who surrounded him--Pope Innocent III. rose from the papal chair, of which he had just taken possession, and addressed the immense a.s.sembly.

Whether it had become the custom to do so we are not informed.

Innocent, so far as can be made out from his writings, was no heaven-born preacher, yet he would seem to have been very ready to exercise his gift, such as it was; it appears to have been his habit to explain himself in all the most important steps in life, and there could be no greater occasion than this. He stood on the steps of his throne in all the glory of his shining robes, over the dark and eager crowd, and there addressed to them a discourse in which the highest pretensions, yet the most humble faith, are conjoined, and which shows very clearly with what intentions and ideas he took upon himself the charge of Christendom, and supreme authority not only in the Church but in the world. He had been deeply agitated during the ceremonies of his consecration, shedding many tears; but now he had recovered his composure and calm.

There are four sermons existing among his works which bear the t.i.tle _In consecratione Romani Pontificis_. Whether they were all written for this occasion, in repeated essays before he satisfied himself with what he had to say, is unknown. Perhaps some of them were used on the occasion of the consecration of other great dignitaries of the Church; but this is merely conjecture. We have at all events under his own hand the thoughts which arose in the mind of such a man at the moment of such an elevation: the conception of his new and great dignity which he had formed and held with the faith of absolute conviction: and the purposes with which he began his work. His text, if text was necessary for so personal a discourse, was the words of our Lord: "Who then is that faithful and wise steward whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season?"

We quote of course from our own authorised version: the words of the Vulgate, used by Innocent, do not put this sentence in the form of a question. His examination of the meaning of the word "house" is the first portion of the argument.

"He has const.i.tuted in the fulness of his power the pre-eminence of the Holy See that no one may be so bold as to resist the order which He has established, as He has Himself said: 'Thou art Peter, and upon this stone I will build my Church; and the gates of h.e.l.l shall not prevail against it.' For as it is He who has laid the foundations of the Church, and is himself that foundation, the gates of h.e.l.l could in nothing prevail against it. And this foundation is immovable: as says the Apostle, no man can lay another foundation than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.... This is the building set upon a rock of which eternal truth has said: 'The rain fell and the wind blew and beat upon that house; but it stood fast, for it was built upon a rock,' that is to say, upon the rock of which the Apostle said: 'And this Rock was Christ.' It is evident that the Holy See, far from being weakened by adversity, is fortified by the divine promise, saying with the prophet: 'Thou hast led me by the way of affliction.'

It throws itself with confidence on that promise which the Lord has made to the Apostles: 'Behold I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.' Yes, G.o.d is with us, who then can be against us? for this house is not of man but of G.o.d, and still more of G.o.d made man: the heretic and the dissident, the evil-minded wolf endeavours in vain to waste the vineyard, to tear the robe, to smother the lamp, to extinguish the light. But as was said by Gamaliel: 'If the work is of man it will come to naught; if it is of G.o.d ye cannot overthrow it: lest haply ye should find that you are fighting against G.o.d.' The Lord is my trust. I fear nothing that men can do to me. I am the servant whom G.o.d has placed over His house; may I be prudent and faithful so as to give the meat in due season!"

He then goes on to describe the position of the faithful steward.

"I am placed over this house. G.o.d grant that I were as eminent by my merit as by my position. But it is all the more to the honour of the mighty Lord when He fulfils His will by a feeble servant; for then all is to His glory, not by human strength but by force divine. Who am I, and what is my father's house, that I should be set over kings, that I should occupy the seat of honour? for it is of me that the prophet has said, 'I have set thee over people and kingdoms, to tear and to destroy, to build and to plant.'

It is of me that the Apostle has said, 'I have given thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatsoever thou bindest on earth is bound in heaven.' And again it is to me (though it is said by the Lord to all the Apostles in common), 'The sins which you remit on earth shall be remitted; and those you retain shall be retained.' But speaking to Peter alone He said: 'That which thou bindest on earth shall be bound in heaven.' Peter may bind others but he cannot be bound himself.

"You see now who is the servant placed over the house; it is no other than the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the Successor of Peter. He is the intermediary between G.o.d and men, beneath G.o.d, yet above men, much lower than G.o.d but more than men; he judges all but is judged by none as the Apostle says: 'It is G.o.d who is my judge.' But he who is raised to the highest degree of consideration is brought down again by the functions of a servant that the humble may be raised up and greatness may be humiliated--for G.o.d resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. O greatest of wise counsels--the greater you are the more profoundly must you humble yourself before them all! You are there as a light on a candlestick that all in the house may see; when that light becomes dark, how thick then is the darkness? You are the salt of the earth: when that salt becomes without savour, with what will you be seasoned? It is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trodden under foot of men. For this reason much is demanded from him to whom much is given."

Thus Innocent began his career, solemnly conscious of the greatness of his position. But the reader will perceive that nothing could be more evangelical than his doctrine. Exalting as he does the high claims of Peter, he never falls into the error of supposing him to be the Rock on which the foundations of the Church are laid. On the other hand his idea of the Pope as beneath G.o.d but above men, lower than G.o.d but greater than men, is startling. The angel who stopped St. John in his act of worship proclaiming himself one of the Apostles' brethren the prophets, made no such pretension. But Innocent was strong in the consciousness that he himself, the arbiter on earth of all reward and punishment, was the judge of angels as well as men, and held a higher position than any of them in the hierarchy of heaven.

The first act of Innocent's papacy was the very legitimate attempt to establish his own authority and independence at home. The long subsistence of the idea that only a Pope-king with enough of secure temporal ascendency to keep him free at least from the influence of other sovereigns, could be safe in the exercise of his spiritual functions--is curious when we think of the always doubtful position of the Popes, who up to this time and indeed for long after retained the most unsteady footing in their own metropolis, the city which derived all its importance from them. The Roman citizens took many centuries to learn--if they were ever taught--that the seat of a great inst.i.tution like the Church, the court of a monarch who claimed authority in every quarter of the world, was a much more important thing than a mere Italian city, however distinguished by the memories and relics of the past. We doubt much whether the great Innocent, the most powerful of the Popes, had more real control over the home and centre of his supposed dominions at the outset of his career than Pope Leo XIII., dispossessed and self-imprisoned, has now, or might have if he chose. No one can doubt that Innocent chose--and that with all the strength and will of an unusually powerful character--to be master in his own house: and he succeeded by times in the effort; but, like other Popes, he was at no time more than temporarily successful. Twice or oftener he was driven by the necessity of circ.u.mstances, if not by actual violence, out of the city: and though he never altogether lost his hold upon it, as several of his predecessors had done, it was at the cost of much trouble and exertion, and at the point of the sword, that he kept his place in Rome.

He was, however, in the first flush of his power, almost triumphant.

He succeeded in changing the fluctuating const.i.tution of the Roman commonwealth, which had been hitherto presided over by a Praefect, responsible to the Emperor and bound to his service, along with a vague body of senators, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller in number, and swayed by every popular demonstration or riot--the very best machinery possible for the series of small revolutions and changes of policy in which Rome delighted. It was in every way the best thing for the interests of the city that it should have learnt to accept the distinction, all others having perished, of being the seat of the Church. For Rome was by this time, as may be said, the general court of appeal for Europe; every kind of cause was tried over again before the Consistory or its delegates; and a crowd of appellants, persons of all cla.s.ses and countries, were always in Rome, many of them completely without acquaintance in the place, and dependent only upon such help and guidance as money could procure, money which has always been the great object of desire to most communities, the means of grandeur and greatness, if also of much degradation. It must not be supposed, however, that the Pope took advantage of any such mean motive to bind the city to himself. He guarded against the dangers of such a situation indeed by a strenuous endeavour to clear his court, his palace, his surroundings, of all that was superfluous in the way of luxury, all that was merely ostentatious in point of attendants and services, and all that was mercenary among the officials. When he succeeded in transferring the allegiance of the Praefect from the Emperor to himself, he made at the same time the most stringent laws against the reception of any present or fee by that Praefect and his subordinate officers, thus securing, so far as was possible, the integrity of the city and its rulers as well as their obedience. And whether in the surprise of the community to be so summarily dealt with, or in its satisfaction with the amount of the present, which Innocent, like all the other Popes, bestowed on the city on his consecration, he succeeded in carrying out these changes without opposition, and so secured before he went further a certain shelter and security within the walls of Rome.

He then turned his eyes to the States of the Church, the famous patrimony of St. Peter, which at that period of history St. Peter was very far from possessing. Certain German adventurers, to whom the Emperor had granted the fiefs which Innocent claimed as belonging to the Holy See, were first summoned to do homage to the Pope as their suzerain, then threatened with excommunication, then laid under anathema: and finally--Markwald and the rest remaining unconvinced and unsubdued--were driven out of their ill-gotten lands by force of arms, which proved the most effectual way. The existence of these German lords was the strongest argument in favour of the Papal sway, and was efficacious everywhere. The towns little and great, scattered over the March of Ancona, the duchy of Spoleto, and the wealthy district of Umbria, received the Pope and his envoys as their deliverers. The Tedeschi were as fiercely hated in Italy in the twelfth century as they were in recent times; and with greater reason, for their cruelty and exactions were indescribable. And the civic spirit which in the absence of any larger patriotism kept the Italian race in energetic life, and produced in every little centre of existence a longing for at least munic.i.p.al liberty and independence, hailed with acclamations the advent of the head of the Church, a suzerain at least more honourable and more splendid than the rude Teuton n.o.bles who despised the race over which they ruled.

That spirit had already risen very high in the more important cities of Northern Italy. The Lombard league had been already in existence for a number of years, and a similar league was now formed by the Tuscan towns which Innocent also claimed, in right of the legacy made to the Church more than a hundred years before by the great Countess Matilda, the friend of Hildebrand, but which had never yet been secured to the Holy See. The Tuscans had not been very obedient va.s.sals to Matilda herself in her day; and they were not likely perhaps to have afforded much support to the Popes had the Church ever entered into full enjoyment of Matilda's splendid legacy. But in the common spirit of hatred against the Tedeschi, the cruel and fierce German chiefs to whom the Emperor had freely disposed of the great estates and castles and rich towns of that wonderful country, the supremacy of the Church was accepted joyfully for the moment, and all kinds of oaths taken and promises made of fidelity and support to the new Pope. When Innocent appeared, as in the duchy of Spoleto, in Perugia, and other great towns, he was received with joy as the saviour of the people. We are not told whether he visited a.s.sisi, where at this period Francis of that city was drawing crowds of followers to his side, and the idea of a great monastic order was rising out of the little church, the Portiuncula, at the bottom of the hill: but wherever he went he was received with joy. At Perugia, when the papal procession streamed through the crowded gates, and reached the old palazzo appropriated for its lodging, there suddenly sprang up a well which had been greatly wanted in the place, a spring of fresh water henceforward and for ever known as the Fontana di Papa. These cities all joined the Tuscan league against the Germans with the exception of Pisa, always arrogant and self-willed, which stood for those same Germans perhaps because their rivals on every side were against them. It was at this period, some say, and that excellent authority Muratori among them, that the t.i.tles of Guelf and Ghibelline first came into common use, the party of the Pope being Guelf, and that of the empire Ghibelline--the one derived from the house of Este, which was descended from the old Teutonic race of Guelf on the female side, the other, Waiblingen, from that of Hohenstaufen, also descended by the female side from a traditionary German hero. It is curious that these distant ancestors should have been chosen as G.o.dfathers of a struggle with which they had nothing to do, and which arose so long after their time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTA MAGGIORE.

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Innocent, however, was not so good a Guelf as his party, for the Pope was the guardian and chief defender, during his troubled royal childhood, of Frederic of Sicily, afterwards the Emperor Frederic II., but at the beginning of Pope Innocent's reign a very helpless baby prince, fatherless, and soon, also, motherless, and surrounded by rapacious Germans, each man fighting for a scheme of his own, by which to transfer the insecure crown to his own head, or at least to rob it of both power and revenue. The Pope stood by his helpless ward with much steadfastness through the very brief years of his minority--for Frederic seems to have been a married man and ambitious autocrat at an age when ordinary boys are but beginning their studies--and had a large share eventually in his elevation to the imperial throne: notwithstanding that he belonged to the great house which had steadily opposed the claims of the Papacy for generations. It must be added, however, that the great enterprises of Innocent's first years could not have been taken up, or at least could not have been carried to so easy and summary a conclusion--whole countries recovered, the Emperor's nominees cast out, the cities leagued against their constant invaders and oppressors--had there been a fierce Emperor across _i monti_ ready to descend upon the always struggling, yet continually conquered, Italy. Henry VI., the son of Barbarossa, had died in the preceding year, 1198, in the flower of his age, leaving only the infant Frederic, heir to the kingdom of Sicily in right of his mother, behind him to succeed to his vast possessions. But the crown of Germany was, at least nominally, elective not hereditary; and notwithstanding that the Emperor had procured from his princes a delusive oath of allegiance to his child, that was a thing which in those days no one so much as thought of keeping. The inactivity of the forces of the Empire was thus accounted for; the holders of imperial fiefs in Italy were left to fight their own battles, and thus the Pope with very moderate forces, and the cities of Tuscany and Umbria, each for its own hand, were able to a.s.sert themselves, and drive out the oppressors. And there was a period of hopefulness and comparative peace.

Innocent, however, who had the affairs of the world on his hands, and could not long confine himself to those of St. Peter's patrimony, was soon plunged into the midst of those ever-recurring struggles in Germany, too important in every way not to call for his closest attention. The situation was very much, the same as that in which Gregory VII. had found himself involved: with this great difference, however, that both compet.i.tors for the German crown were new men, and had neither any burden of crime against the Church nor previous excommunications on their head. Philip of Suabia, the brother of Henry VI., had been by him entrusted--with that curious confidence in the possibility of self-devotion on the part of others, which dying men, though never capable of it themselves, so often show--with the care and guardianship of his child and its interests, and the impossible task of establishing Frederic, as yet scarcely able to speak, upon a throne so important and so difficult. Philip did, it is said, his best to fulfil his trust and hurried from Sicily to the heart of Germany as soon as his brother was dead, with that object; but the princes of his party feared an infant monarch, and he was himself elected in the year 1199 to the vacant seat. There seems no criminality in this in the circ.u.mstances, for the little Frederic was in any case impossible; but Philip had inherited a hatred which he had not done anything personally to deserve. "So exasperated were the Italians against the Germans by the barbarous government of Frederic I. and Henry VI. his son, that wherever Philip pa.s.sed, whether through Tuscany or any other district, he was ill-used and in danger of his life, and many of his companions were killed," says Muratori. He had thus a strong feeling against him in Italy independent of any demerit of his own.

It is a little difficult, however, to understand why Pope Innocent, so careful of the interests of the little king in Sicily, should have so strongly and persistently opposed his uncle. Philip had been granted possession of the duchy of Tuscany, which the Pope claimed as his own, and some offence on this account, as well as the shadow of an anathema launched against him for the same reason by one of Innocent's predecessors, may have prepossessed the Pope against him; but it is scarcely possible to accept this as reason enough for his determined opposition.

The rival emperor Otho, elected by the Guelf party, was the son of Henry the Lion, the nephew of Richard Plantagenet of England the Coeur de Lion of our national story, and of a family always devoted to the Church. The two men were both young and full of promise, equally n.o.ble and of great descent, related to each other in a distant degree, trained in a similar manner, each of them quite fit for the place which they were called to occupy. It seems to the spectator now as if there was scarcely a pin to choose between them. Nor was it any conflict of personal ambition which set them up against each other.

They were the choice of their respective parties, and the question was as clearly one of faction against faction as in an Irish village fight.

These were circ.u.mstances, above all others, in which the arbitration of such an impartial judge as a Pope might have been of the greatest advantage to the world. There never was perhaps such an ideal opportunity for testing the advantage and the possibility of the power claimed by the Papacy. Otho was a young gallant at Richard's court expecting nothing of the kind, open to all kinds of other promotions, Earl of Yorkshire, Count of Poitou--the first not successful because he could not conciliate the Yorkshiremen, perhaps difficult in that way then as now: but without, so far as appears, any thought of the empire in his mind. And Philip had the right of possession, and was the choice of the majority, and had done no harm in accepting his election, even if he had no right to it. The case was quite different from that of the similar struggle in which Gregory VII. took part. At the earlier period the whole world, that was not crushed under his iron foot, had risen against Henry IV. His falsehood, his cruelty, his vices, had alienated every one, and n.o.body believed his word or put the smallest faith even in his most solemn vows. The struggle between such an Emperor and the head of the Church was naturally a struggle to death. One might almost say they were the impersonations of good and evil, notwithstanding that the good might be often alloyed, and the evil perhaps by times showed gleams of better meaning. But the case of Philip and Otho was completely different. Neither of them were bad men nor gave any augury of evil. The one perhaps by training and inclination was slightly a better Churchman than the other at the beginning of his career; but, on the other hand, Philip had various practical advantages over Otho which could not be gainsaid.

Had Pope Innocent been the wholly wise man and inspired judge he claimed by right of his office to be, without prejudice or bias, n.o.bly impartial, holding the balance in a steady hand, was not this the very case to test his powers? Had he helped the establishment of Philip in the empire and deprecated the introduction of a rival, a great deal of bloodshed might have been avoided, and a satisfactory result, without any injustice, if not an ideal selection, might have been obtained.

All this was problematical, and depended upon his power of getting himself obeyed, which, as it turned out, he did not possess. But in this way, in all human probability, he might have promoted peace and secured a peaceful decision; for Philip's election was a _fait accompli_, while Otho was not as yet more than a candidate. The men were so equal otherwise, and there was so little exclusive right on one side or the other, that such facts as these would naturally have been taken into the most serious consideration by the great, impartial, and unbia.s.sed mind which alone could have justified the interference of the Pope, or qualified him to a.s.sume the part of arbitrator in such a quarrel. He did not attempt this, however, but took his place with his own faction as if he had been no heaven-sent arbiter at all, but a man like any other. He has himself set forth the motives and reasons for his interference, with the fulness of explanation which he loved. The bull in which he begins by setting aside the claims of his own infant ward, Frederic, to whom his father Henry had caused the German princes to swear fealty, as inadmissible--the said princes being freed of their oath by the death of the Emperor, a curious conclusion--is in great part an indictment of Philip, couched in the strongest and most energetic terms. In this doc.u.ment it is stated in the first place that Philip had been excommunicated by the previous Pope, as having occupied by violence the patrimony of St. Peter, an excommunication taken off by the legate, but not effectually; again he was involved in the excommunication of Markwald and the other invaders of Sicily whom he had upheld; in the next place he had been false to the little Frederic, whose right he had vowed to defend, and was thus perjured, though the princes who had sworn allegiance to the child were not so.

Then follows a tremendous description of Philip's family and predecessors, of their dreadful acts against the Popes and Church, of the feuds of Barbarossa with the Holy See, of the insults and injuries of which all had been equally guilty. A persecutor himself and the son of persecutors, how could the Pope support the cause of Philip? The argument is full of force and strengthened by many ill.u.s.trations, but it proves above all things that Innocent was no impartial judge, but a man holding almost with pa.s.sion to his own side.

The pleas in favour of Otho are much weaker. It is true, the Pope admits, that he had been elected by a minority, but then the number of notable and important electors were as great on his side as on Philip's: his house had a purer record than that of Philip: and finally he was weaker than Philip and more in need of support; therefore the Holy See threw all its influence upon his side. Nothing could be feebler than this conclusion after the force of the hostile judgments. We fear it must be allowed that Innocent being merely a man (which is the one unsurmountable argument against papal infallibility) went the way his prepossessions and inclinations--and also, we have no doubt, his conviction of what was best--led him, and was no more certain to be right in doing so than any other man.

Having come to this conclusion, Innocent took his stand with all the power and influence he possessed upon Otho's side--a support which probably kept that prince afloat and made the long struggle possible, but was quite inadequate to set him effectually on the throne, or injure his rival in any serious way. In this partisan warfare, excommunication was the readiest of weapons; but excommunications, as we have already said, were very ineffectual in the greater number of cases; for Germany especially was full of great prelates as great as the princes, in most cases of as high race and as much territorial power, and they by no means always agreed with the Pope, and made no pretence of obeying him; and how was the people to find out that they lay under anathema when they saw the offices of the Church carried on with all the splendour of the highest ritual, its services unbroken, however the Pope might thunder behind? Some of these prelates--such as Leopold of Mainz, appointed by the Emperor, to whom Innocent refused his sanction, electing on his own part another archbishop, Siegfried, in his stead, who was not for many years permitted even to enter the diocese of which he was the t.i.tular head--maintained with Rome a struggle as obstinate as any secular prince. They were as powerful as the princes among whom they sat and reigned, and elected emperors.

Most of the German bishops, we are told, were on Philip's side notwithstanding the decision of the Pope against him. In such circ.u.mstances the anathema was little more than a farce. The Archbishop of Mainz was excommunicated as much as the emperor, but being all the same in full possession of his see and its privileges, naturally acted as though nothing had happened, and found plenty of clergy to support him, who carried on the services of the Church as usual and administered the sacraments to Philip as much as if he had been in the full sunshine of Papal favour.

Such a chance had surely never been foreseen when the expedient of excommunication was first thought of, for it is apt to turn every claim of authority into foolishness--threats which cannot be carried out being by their nature the most derogatory things possible to the person from whom they proceed. The great prelates of Germany were in their way as important as the Pope, their position was more steadily powerful than his, they had va.s.sals and armies to defend them, and a strong and settled seat, from which it was as difficult, or indeed even dangerous, to displace them as to overthrow a throne. And what could the Pontiff do when they disobeyed and defied him? Nothing but excommunicate, excommunicate, for which they cared not a straw--or depose, which was equally unimportant, when, as happened in the case of Mainz, the burghers of the cathedral city vowed that the subst.i.tuted bishop should never enter their gates.

Thus the ten years' struggle produced nothing but humiliation for Innocent. The Pope did not relax in his determined opposition, nor cease to threaten penalties which he could not inflict until nearly the end of the struggle; and then when the logic of events began, it would appear, to have a little effect upon his mind, and he extended with reluctance a sort of feeble olive-branch towards the all-victorious Philip--a larger fate came in, and changed everything with the sweeping fulness of irresistible power. It is not said anywhere, so far as we know, that the overtures of Innocent brought the Emperor ill-luck; but it would certainly have been so said had such an accident occurred under Pio Nono, for example, who, it is well known, had the evil eye. For no sooner had Innocent taken this step than Philip's life came to a disastrous end. The Count Palatine of Wittelsbach, a great potentate of Germany, who had some personal grievance to avenge, demanded a private audience and murdered him in his temporary dwelling, in the moment of his highest prosperity. Thus in the twinkling of an eye everything was changed. The House of Hohenstaufen went down in a moment without an attempt made to prop it up. And Otho, who was at hand, already a crowned king, and demanding no further trouble, at once took the vacant place. This occurred in the year 1208--ten years after the beginning of the struggle. But in this extraordinary and sudden transformation of affairs Innocent counted for nothing; he had not done it nor even contributed to the doing of it: though he had kept the air thunderous with anathemas, and the roads dusty with the coming and going of his legates for all these unhappy years.