Otho, however, did not at first forget the devotion which the Pope had shown him in his evil days, when triumph so unexpected and accidental (as it seemed) came to him. After taking full possession of the position which now there was no one to contest with him, he made a triumphal progress across the Alps, and was crowned Emperor at Rome, the last and crowning dignity which Philip had never been able to attain: where he behaved himself with much show of affection and humility to Innocent, whose stirrup he held like the most devoted son of the Church as he professed to be. There was much swearing of oaths at the same time. Otho vowed to preserve all the rights of the Church, and, with reservations, to restore the Tuscan fiefs of Matilda, and all the presents with which from time to time the former Emperors had endowed the Holy See, to the Pope"s undisturbed possession. Rome was a scene of the utmost display and splendour during this imperial visit.
Otho had come at the head of his army, and lay encamped at the foot of Monte Mario, where now the little group of pines stand up against the sky in the west, dark against the setting sun. It was October when all the summer glow and heat is mellowed by autumnal airs, and the white tents shone outside the city gates with every kind of splendid cognisance of princes and n.o.ble houses, and magnificence of mediaeval luxury. The ancient St. Peter"s, near the camp, was then planted, we are told, in the midst of a great number of convents, churches, and chapels, "Like a majestic mother surrounded by beautiful daughters"--though there was no Vatican as yet to add to its greatness: but the line of the walls on the opposite side of the river and the ancient splendour of Rome, more square and ma.s.sive in its lingering cla.s.sicism than the mediaeval towns to which the German forces were more accustomed, shone in the mid-day sun: while towards the left the great round of St. Angelo dominated the bridge and the river, and all the crowds which poured forth towards the great church and shrine of the Apostles. There was, however, one shadow in this brilliant picture, and that was the fact that Rome within her gates lay not much unlike a couching lion, half terrified, half excited by the army outside, and not sure that the abhorred Tedeschi might not at any moment steal a march upon her, and show underneath those splendid velvet gloves, all heavy with embroideries of gold, the claws of that northern wolf which Italy had so often felt at her very heart. It is a curious sign of this state of agitated feeling that Otho published in Rome before his coronation a solemn engagement in his own name and that of his army that no harm should be done to the city, to the Pope and Cardinals, or to the people and their property, while he remained there. He had strong guards of honour at all the adjacent gates as a precautionary measure while the great ceremonies of his consecration went on.
It was not the present St. Peter"s, it need not be said, which, hung with splendid tapestries and lit with innumerable candles, glistening with precious marbles and gilding, and decorated with all the splendour of the church in silver and gold, received this great German potentate for that final act which was to make his authority sacred, and establish him beyond all question Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a dignity which only the Pope could complete, which was nothing, bringing no additional dominion with it, yet of the utmost importance in the estimation of the world. It cannot but have been that a sense of elation, perhaps chequered with doubt, but certainly sanctioned by many n.o.ble feelings--convictions that G.o.d had favoured his side in the long run, and that a better age was about to begin--must have been in Innocent"s mind as he went through the various ceremonies of the imposing ritual, and received the vows of the monarch and placed the imperial crown on his head. We are not told, however, whether there was any alarm in the air as the two gorgeous processions conjoined, sweeping forth from the gates of St.
Peter"s, and across the bridge and by all the crowded ways, to the other side of the city, to the Lateran palace, where the great banquet was held. Otho with his crown on his head held the stirrup of the Pope at the great steps of St. Peter"s as Innocent mounted; and the two greatest potentates of earth, the head of the secular and the head of the spiritual, dividing, with the most confusing elasticity of boundary between them, the sway of the world, rode alone together, followed by all that was most magnificent in Germany and Italy, the great princes, the great prelates vying with each other in pomp and splendour. The air was full of the ringing of bells and the chanting of the priests; and as they went along through the dark ma.s.ses of the people on every side, the officers of Otho scattered largesse through all the crowded streets, and everything was festivity and general joy.
But when the great people disappeared into the papal palace, and the banquet was spread, the German men-at-arms began to swagger about the streets as if they were masters of all they surveyed. There is no difference of opinion as to the brutality and insolence of the German soldiers in those days, and the Romans were excited and in no humour to accept any insult at such a moment. How they came to blows at last was never discovered, but after the great spectacle was over, most probably when night was coming on, and the excitement of the day had risen to irritability and ready pa.s.sion, a fray arose in the streets no one knowing how. The strangers had the worst of it, Muratori says.
"Many of the Teutons were killed," says one of the older chronicles, "and eleven hundred horses;" which would seem to imply that the dregs of the procession had been vapouring about Rome on their charges, riding the inhabitants down. Nor was it only men-at-arms: for a number of Otho"s more distinguished followers were killed in the streets. How long it was before it came to the ears of the Emperor we are not informed, nor whether the banquet was interrupted. Probably Otho had returned to his tent (Muratori says he did so at once, leaving out all mention of any banquet) before the "calda baruffa" broke out: but at all events it was a startling change of scene. The Emperor struck his tents next morning, and departed from the neighbourhood of Rome in great rage and indignation:--and this, so far as Pope Innocent was concerned, was the last good that was ever heard of Otho. He broke all his vows one by one, took back the Tuscan States, seized the duchy of Spoleto and every city he pa.s.sed on his way, and defied the Pope, to whom he had been so servile, having now got all from him that Innocent could give.
The plea by which Otho defended himself for his seizure of the States of Tuscany was worthy of that scholastic age. He had vowed, he said, it was true, to preserve St. Peter"s patrimony and all the ecclesiastical possessions: but he had vowed at the same time to preserve and to recover all imperial rights and possessions, and it was in discharge of this obligation that he robbed the Pope. Thus ended Innocent"s long and faithful support of Otho; he had pledged the faith of heaven for his success, which was a.s.sured only by accident and crime; but no sooner had that success been secured, than the Emperor deserted and betrayed the Pope who had so firmly stood by him.
It is said that Innocent redoubled from that moment his care of the young Frederic, the King of Sicily, the head of the Hohenstaufen house and party, and prepared him to revenge Otho"s broken oaths by a downfall as complete as his elevation had been; but this is an a.s.sumption which has no more proof than any other uncharitable judgment of motives unrevealed. At all events it is very apparent that in this long conflict, which occupied so much of his life, the Pope played no powerful or triumphant part.
In France the action of Innocent was more successful. The story of Philip Augustus and his wives, which is full of romantic incidents, is better known to the general reader than the tragedy of the Emperors.
Philip Augustus had married a wife, a Danish princess, who did not please him. Her story, in its first chapter at least, is like that of Anne of Cleves, the fortunate princess who had the good luck not to please Henry VIII. (or perhaps still more completely resembles a comparatively recent catastrophe in our own royal house, the relations of George IV. and his unlucky wife). But the French king did not treat Ingelburga with the same politeness which Henry Tudor exhibited, neither had she the discretion to hold her tongue like the lady of Flanders. The complaints of the injured queen filled the world, and she made a direct appeal to the Pope, who was not slow to reply. When Philip procured a divorce from his wife from the complacent bishops of his own kingdom on one of those absurd allegations of too close relationship (it might be that of third or fourth cousin), which were of so much use to discontented husbands of sufficient rank, and married the beautiful Agnes of Meran, with whom he was in love, Innocent at once interfered. He began by commands, by entreaties, by attempts at settling the question by legal measures, commissioning his legates to hold a solemn inquiry into the matter, examining into Ingelburga"s complaints, and using every endeavour to bring the king back to a sense of his duty. There could be no doubt on which side justice lay, and the legates were not, as in the case of Henry and Catherine, on the side of the monarch. It was the rejected queen who had the Pope"s protection and not her powerful husband.
Philip Augustus, however, was summoned in vain to obey. The litigation and the appeals went on for a long time, and several years elapsed before Innocent, after much preparation and many warnings, determined not merely as on former occasions to excommunicate the offender, but to p.r.o.nounce an interdict upon the kingdom. Perhaps Innocent had learned the lesson which had been taught him on such a great scale, that excommunication was not a fortunate weapon, and that only the perfect subordination of the higher clergy could make it successful at all. The interdict was a much greater and more dreadful thing; it was dependent not upon the obedience of a great prelate, but upon every priest who had taken the sacred vows. Had he excommunicated the king as on former occasions, no doubt there would always have been some lawless bishop in France who would have enabled his sovereign to laugh at the Pope and his sentence. But an interdict could not thus be evaded, the ma.s.s of the clergy being obedient to the Pope whatever important individual exceptions there might be. The interdict was proclaimed accordingly with all the accessories of ritualistic solemnity. After a Council which had lasted seven days, and which was attended by a great number of the clergy, the bells of the cathedral--it was that of Dijon--began to toll as for a dying man: and all the great bishops with their trains, and the legate at their head, went solemnly from their council chamber to the church. It was midnight, and the long procession went through the streets and into the great cathedral by the wavering and gloomy light of torches. For the last time divine service was celebrated, and the canons sang the _Kyrie Eleison_ amid the silence, faintly broken by sobs and sounds of weeping, of the immense crowds who had followed them. The images of Christ and the saints were covered with c.r.a.pe, the relics of the saints, worshipped in those days with such strange devotion, were solemnly taken away out of the shrines and consecrated places to vaults and crypts underground where they were deposited until better times; the remains of the consecrated bread which had sustained the miracle of transubstantiation were burned upon the altar. All these details of the awful act of cutting off France from the community of the faithful were performed before a trembling and dismayed crowd, which looked on with a sense of the seriousness of the proceedings which was overwhelming.
"Then the legate, dressed in a violet stole, as on the day of the pa.s.sion of our Lord, advanced to the altar steps, and in the name of Jesus Christ p.r.o.nounced the interdict upon all the realm of France. Sobs and groans echoed through the great aisles of the cathedral; it was as if the day of judgment had come."
Once more after this tremendous scene there was a breathing s.p.a.ce, a place of repentance left for the royal sinner, and then through all the churches of France the midnight ceremonial was repeated. The voice of prayer was silenced in the land, no more was psalm sung or ma.s.s said; a few convents were permitted by special grace, in the night, with closed doors and whispering voices, to celebrate the holy mysteries. For all besides the public worship of G.o.d and all the consolations of religion were cut off. We have seen how lightly personal excommunication was treated in Germany; but before so terrible a chastis.e.m.e.nt as this no king could hold out. Neither was the cause one of disobedience to the Holy See, or usurpation of the Church"s lands, or any other offence against ecclesiastical supremacy: it was one into which every peasant, every clown could enter, and which revolted the moral sense of the nation. Matrimonial infidelities of all kinds have always been winked at in a monarch, but the strong step of putting away a guiltless queen and setting another in her place is a different matter. The nation was on the side of the Church: the clergy, except in very rare cases, were unanimous: and for once Innocent in his severity and supremacy was successful. After seven months of this terrible _regime_ the king yielded. It had been a time of threatening rebellion, of feuds and dissensions of all kinds, of diminished revenues and failing prosperity. Philip Augustus could not stand against these consequences. He sent away the fict.i.tious wife whom he loved--and who died, as the world, and even history at its sternest, loves to believe, of a broken heart, the one victim whom no one could save, a short time after--and the interdict was removed. One is almost glad to hear that even then the king would have none of Ingelburga, the woman who had filled the world with her cries and complaints, and brought this tremendous anathema on France. She continued to cry and appeal to the Pope that her captivity was unchanged or even made harder than ever, but Innocent was too wise to risk his great expedient a second time. He piously advised her to have recourse to prayer and to have confidence in G.o.d, and promised not to abandon her. But the poor lady gained little by all the misery that had been inflicted to right her wrongs. Many years after, when no one thought any more of Ingelburga, the king suddenly took her out of her prison and restored her to her share, such as it was, of the throne, for what reason no man can tell.
This, however, was the only great success of Innocent in the exercise of his papal power. It was an honourable and a just employment of that power, very different from the claim to decide between contending Emperors, or to nominate to the imperial crown; but it was in reality, as we think, the only triumphant achievement of the Pope, in whom all the power and all the pretensions of the papacy are said to have culminated. He had his hand in every broil, and interfered with everything that was going on in every quarter. s.p.a.ce fails us to tell of his endless negotiations, censures, recommendations and commands, sent by legates continually in motion or by letters of endless frequency and force, to regions in which Christianity itself was as yet scarcely established. Every little kingdom from the utmost limits of the north to the east were under this constant supervision and interference: and no doubt there were instances, especially among the more recent converts of the Church, and in respect to ecclesiastical matters, in which it was highly important; but so far as concerned the general tenor of the world"s history, it can never be said to have had any important result.
In England, Innocent had the evil fortune to have to do with the worst of the Plantagenet kings, the false and cowardly John, who got himself a little miserable reputation for a time by the temporary determination of his resolve that "no Italian priest, should t.i.the or toll in our dominions," and who struggled fiercely against Innocent on the question of the Archbishopric of Canterbury and other great ecclesiastical offices, as well as in matters more personal, such as the dower of Berengaria, the widow of Coeur de Lion, which the Pope had called upon him to pay. John drove the greater part of the clergy out of England in his fury at the interdict which Innocent p.r.o.nounced, and took possession, glad of an occasion of acquiring so much wealth, of the estates and properties of the Church throughout the realm. But the interdict which had been so efficacious in France failed altogether of its effect in England. It was too early for any Protestant sentiment, and it is extraordinary that a people by no means without piety should have shown so singular an indifference to the judgment of the Church. Perhaps the fact that so many of the superior clergy were of the conquering Norman race, and, therefore, still sullenly resisted by the pa.s.sive obstinacy of the humiliated Saxons, had something to do with it: while at the same time the banishment of many prelates would probably leave a large portion of the humbler priests in comparative ignorance of the Pope"s decree.
But whatever were the operative causes this is plain, that whereas in France the effect of the interdict was tremendous in England it produced scarcely any result at all. The banished bishops and archbishops, and at their head Stephen Langton, the patriotic Englishman of whom the Pope had made wise choice for the Archbishopric of Canterbury, stood on the opposite sh.o.r.e in consternation, and watched the contempt of their flocks for this greatest exercise of the power of Rome; and with still greater amazement perceived the success that followed the king in his enterprises, and the obedience of the people, with whom he had never been so popular before.
We are not told what Innocent felt at the sight of this unexpected failure. He proceeded to strike King John with special excommunication, going from the greater to the smaller curse, in a reversal of the usual method; but this being still ineffectual, Innocent turned to practical measures. He proceeded to free King John"s subjects from their oath of allegiance and to depose the rebellious monarch; and not only so, for these ordinances would probably have been as little regarded as the other--but he gave permission and authority to the King of France, the ever-watchful enemy of the Plantagenets, to invade England and to place his son Louis upon the vacant throne. Great preparations were made in France for this congenial Crusade--for it was in their quality as Crusaders that the Pope authorised the invasion. Then and not till then John paused in his career. He had laughed at spiritual dangers, but he no longer laughed when the French king gathered his forces at Boulogne, and the banished and robbed bishops prepared to return, not penitent and humiliated, but surrounded by French spears.
Then at last the terrified king submitted to the authority of the Pope; he received the legates of Innocent in a changed spirit, with the servility of a coward. He vowed with his hand on the Gospels to redress all ecclesiastical wrongs, to restore the bishops, and to submit in every way to the judgment of the Church. Then in his craven terror, without, it is said, any demand of the kind on the part of the ecclesiastical amba.s.sadors, John took a step unparalleled in the annals of the nations.
"In order to obtain the mercy of G.o.d for the sins we have done against His holy Church, and having nothing more precious to offer than our person and our kingdom, and in order to humiliate ourself before Him who humbled Himself for us even to death: by an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, neither formed by violence nor by fear, but in virtue of our own good and free will we give, with the consent of our barons, to G.o.d, to His holy apostles, Peter and Paul, to our mother the Holy Roman Church, to our Lord the Pope Innocent and to his Catholic successors, in expiation of our sins and those of our family, living and dead, our kingdoms of England and Ireland with all their accompaniments and rights, in order that we may receive them again in the quality of va.s.sal of G.o.d and of Holy Church: in faith of which we take the oath of va.s.sal, in the presence of Pandulphus, putting ourselves at the disposition of the Pope and his successors, as if we were actually in the presence of the Pope; and our heirs and successors shall be obliged to take the same oath."
[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE CAMPAGNA (1860) _To face page 346._]
So John swore, but not because of the thunders and curses of Innocent--because of Philip Augustus of France hurrying on his preparations on the other side of the Channel, while angry barons and a people worn out with constant exactions gave him promise of but poor support at home. The Pope became now the only hope of the humiliated monarch. He had flouted the sentences and disdained the curses of the Holy See; but if there was any power in the world which could restore the fealty of his va.s.sals, and stop the invader on his way, it was Innocent: or so at least in this last emergency it might be possible to hope.
Innocent on his part did not despise the unworthy bargain.
Notwithstanding his powerful intellect and just mind, and the perception he must have had of the miserable motives underneath, he did not hesitate. He received the oath, though he must have well known that it would be so much waste paper if John had ever power to cast it off. Of all men Innocent must have been most clearly aware what was the worth of the oaths of kings. He accepted it, however, apparently with a faith in the possibility of establishing the suzerainty thus bestowed upon him, which is as curious as any other of the facts of the case, whether flattered by this apparent triumph after his long unsuccess, or believing against all evidence--as men, even Popes, can always believe what they wish--that so shameful a surrender was genuine, and that here at last was a just acknowledgment of the rights of the Holy See. Henceforward the Pope put himself on John"s side. He risked the alienation of the French king by forbidding the enterprise which had been undertaken at his command: he rejected the appeal of the barons, disapproved Magna Charta, transferred the excommunication to its authors with an ease which surely must have helped these unlikely penitents to despise both the anathema and its source. It is impossible either to explain or excuse this strange conduct. The easiest solution is that he did not fully understand either the facts or the characters of those with whom he had to deal: but how then could he be considered fit to judge and arbitrate between them?
The death of John liberated the Pope from what might have been a deliberate breach of his recommendations on the part of France. And altogether in this part of his conduct the imaginary success of Innocent was worse than a defeat. It was a failure from the high dignity he claimed, more conspicuous even than that failure in Germany which had already proved the inefficacy of spiritual weapons to affect the business of the world: for not only had all his efforts failed of success, until the rude logic of a threatened invasion came in to convince the mind of John--but the Pope himself was led into unworthy acts by a bargain which was in every way ign.o.ble and unworthy. If the Church was to be the high and generous umpire, the impartial judge of all imperial affairs which she claimed to be--and who can say that had mortal powers been able to carry it out, this was not a n.o.ble and splendid ideal?--it was not surely by becoming the last resort against just punishment of a traitor and caitiff, whose oath made one day was as easily revoked the next, as the putting on or pulling off of a glove. It is almost inconceivable that a man like Innocent should have received with joy and with a semblance of faith such a submission on the part of such a man as John. But it is evident that he did so, and that probably the Roman court and community took it as a great event and overwhelming proof of the progress of the authority of the Church.
But perhaps an Italian and a Churchman in these days was the last person in the world to form a just idea of what we call patriotism, or to understand the principle of independence which made a nation, even when divided within itself, unite in fierce opposition to interference from without. Italy was not a country, but a number of constantly warring states and cities, and to Innocent the Church was the one sole inst.i.tution in the world qualified and ent.i.tled to legislate for others. He accepted the gift of England almost with elation, notwithstanding all he had learned of that distant and strange country which cared not for an interdict, and if it could in any circ.u.mstances have loved its unworthy king, would have done so on account of his resistance to the Pope. And it would appear that the Pontiff believed in something serious coming of that suzerainty, all traditions and evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Thus Innocent"s part in the b.l.o.o.d.y and terrible drama that was then being played in England was neither n.o.ble nor dignified, but a poor part unworthy of his character and genius. His interference counted for nothing until France interfered with practical armies which had to be reckoned with--when the hand which had launched so many ineffectual thunderbolts was gripped at by an expedient of cowardly despair which in reality meant and produced nothing. Both sides were in their turn excommunicated, given over to every religious penalty; but unconcerned fought the matter out their own way and so settled it, unanimous only in resisting the jurisdiction of Rome. The vehement letters of the Pope as the struggle grew more and more bitter sound through the clang of arms like the impotent scoldings of a woman:
"Let women ... war with words, With curses priests, but men with swords."
Let Pope or prelate do what they might, the cold steel carried the day.
Not less complete in failure, though with a flattering promise in it of prosperity and advantage, was the great crusade of Innocent"s day--that which is called the Venetian Crusade, the immense expedition which seemed likely to produce such splendid results but ended so disastrously, and never set foot at all in the Holy Land which was its object. The Crusades were, of all other things, the dearest object to the hearts of the Popes, small and great. The first conception of them had risen, as the reader will remember, in the mind of Gregory VII., who would fain have set out himself at the head of the first, to recover out of the hands of the infidel the sacred soil which enshrined so many memories. The idea had been pursued by every worthy Pope between Hildebrand and Innocent, with fluctuations of success and failure--at first in n.o.ble and pious triumph, but latterly with all the dissensions, jealousies, and internal struggles, which armies, made up of many differing and antagonistic nationalities, could with difficulty avoid. Before Innocent"s accession to the papacy there had been a great and terrible reverse, which was supposed to have broken the heart of the old Pope under whom it occurred, and which filled Christendom with horror, woe, and shame. The sacred territory for which so much blood had been shed fell again entirely into the hands of the Saracens. In consequence of this, one of the first acts of Innocent was to send out letters over all the world, calling for a new Crusade, exhorting princes and priests alike to use every means for the raising of a sufficient expedition, and promising every kind of spiritual advantage, indulgence, and remission to those who took the cross.
The first result of these impa.s.sioned appeals was to fire the spirits of certain priests in France to preach the Crusade, with all the fiery enthusiasm which had first roused Christendom: and a very large expedition was got together, chiefly from France, whose preliminary negotiations with the doge and government of Venice to convey them to Palestine furnishes one of the most picturesque scenes in the history of that great and astute republic. It was in the beginning of the thirteenth century, the opening of the year 1201, when the bargain, which was a very hard one, was made: and in the following July the expedition was to set sail. But when the pilgrims a.s.sembled at Venice it was found that with all their exertions they had not more than half the sum agreed upon as pa.s.sage money. Perhaps the Venetians had antic.i.p.ated this and taken their measures accordingly. At all events, after much wrangling and many delays, they agreed to convey the Crusaders on condition only of obtaining their a.s.sistance to take the town of Zara on the Dalmatian coast, which had once been under Venetian rule, but which now belonged to the King of Hungary, and was a nest of pirates hampering the trade of Venice and holding her merchants and seamen in perpetual agitation. Whether Innocent had surmised that some such design was possible we are not told, but if not his instructions to the Crusaders were strangely prophetic. He besought them on no account whatever to go to war with any Christian people. If their pa.s.sage were opposed by any, they were permitted to force their way through that like any other obstacle, but even in such a case were only to act with the sanction of the legate who accompanied them. The Pope added a word of sorrowful comment upon the "very different aims" which so often mingled in the minds of the Crusaders with that great and only one, the deliverance of the Holy Land, which was the true object of their expedition; and complained sadly that if the heads of the Christian Church had possessed as much power as they had goodwill, the power of Mahomet would have been long since broken, and much Christian blood remained unshed.
He could not have spoken with more truth had he been prophetically aware of the issues to which that expedition was to come. The Crusaders set out, in 1202, covering the sea with their sails, dazzling every fishing boat and curious merchantman with reflections from their shining bucklers and shields, and met with such a course of adventure as never had befallen any pilgrims of the Cross before. The story is told in the most picturesque and dramatic pages of Gibbon; and many a historian more has repeated the tale. They took Zara, and embroiled themselves, as the Pope had feared, with the Hungarians, themselves a chivalrous nation full of enthusiasm for the Cross, but not likely to allow themselves to be invaded with impunity; then, professedly in the cause of the young Alexis, the boy-king of the Greek Empire, went to Constantinople--which they took after a wonderful siege, and in which they found such booty as turned the heads of the great penniless lords who had mortgaged every acre and spent every coin for the hire of the Venetian ships, and of the rude soldiers who followed them, who had never possessed a gold piece probably in their lives, and there found wealth undreamt of to be had for the taking. There is no need for us to enter into that extraordinary chapter in the history of the Greek Empire, of which these hordes of northern invaders, all Christian as they were, and with so different an object to start with, possessed themselves--with no less cruelty and as great rapacity as was shown by the barbarians of an elder age in the sack and destruction of Rome.
Meantime the Pope did not cease to protest against this turning aside of the expedition from its lawful object. The legate had forbidden the a.s.sault of Zara, but in vain; the Pope forbade the attack upon Constantinople also in vain, and vainly pressed upon the Crusaders, by every argument, the necessity of proceeding to the Holy Land without delay. Innocent, it is true, did not refuse his share of the splendid stuffs and ornaments which fell into their hands, for ecclesiastical uses: and he was silenced by the fict.i.tious submission of the Greek Church, and the supposed healing of the schism which had rent the East and the West from each other. Nevertheless he looked on upon the progress of affairs in Constantinople with unquiet eyes. But what could the Pope do in his distant seat, armed with those spiritual powers alone which even at home these fierce warriors held so lightly, against the rage of acquisition, the excitement of conquest, even the sweep and current of affairs, which carried the chiefs of the armies in the East so much further and in so changed a direction from that which even they themselves desired? He entreated, he commanded, he threatened: but when all was said he was but the Pope, far off and powerless, who could excommunicate indeed, but do no more. The only thing possible for Innocent was to look on, sometimes with a gleam of high hope as when the Greek Church came over to him, as appeared, to be received again into full communion with the rest of Christendom: sometimes with a half unwilling pleasure as when Baldwin"s presents arrived, cloth of gold and wonderful embroideries to decorate the great arches of St. Peter"s and the Lateran: and again with a more substantial confidence when Constantinople itself had become a Latin empire under the same Baldwin--that it might henceforward become a basis of operations in the holy war against the Saracens and promote the objects of the Crusade more effectually than could be done from a distance. Amid all his disappointments and the impatient sense of futility and helplessness which must have many a time invaded his soul, it is comfortable to know that Innocent died in this last belief, and never found out how equally futile it was.
There was, however, one other great undertaking of his time in which it would seem that the Pontiff was more directly influential, even though, for any reader who respects the character and ideal of Innocent, it is sickening to the heart to realise what it was. It was that other Crusade, so miserable and so b.l.o.o.d.y, against the Albigenses, which was the only successful enterprise which with any show of justice could be set down to the account of the Church. n.o.body seems even now to know very well what the heresies were, against which, in the failure of other schemes, the arms of the defenders of religion were directed. They were, as Dissent generally is, manifold, while the Church regarded them as one. Among them were humble little sects who desired only to lead a purer and truer life than the rude religionists among whom they dwelt; while there were also others who held in various strange formulas all kinds of wild doctrine: but between the Poor Men of Lyons, the Scripture-Readers whose aim was to serve G.o.d in humility, apart from all pomps of religion and splendour of hierarchies--and the strange Manichean sects with their elaborate and confused philosophical doctrine--the thirteenth century knew no difference. It ranked them all under the same name of heretic, and attributed to all of them the errors of the worst and smallest section. Even so late as the eighteenth century, Muratori, a scholar without prejudice, makes one sweeping a.s.sertion that they were Manicheans, without a doubt or question. It is needless to say that whatever they were, fire and sword was not the way to mend them of their errors; for that also was an idea wholly beyond the understanding of the time.
When Innocent came first to the Papacy his keen perception of the many vices of the Church was increased by a conviction that error of doctrine accompanied in certain portions of Christendom the general corruption of life. In some of his letters he comments severely, always with a reference to the special evils against which he struggled, on the causes and widening propagation of heresy. "If the shepherd is a hireling," he says, "and thinks not of the flock, but solely of himself: if he cares only for the wool and the milk, without defending them from the wolves that attack them, or making himself a wall of defence against their enemies: and if he takes flight at the first sound of danger: the ruin and loss must be laid to his charge.
The keeper of the sheep must not be like a dumb dog that cannot bark.
When the priesthood show that they do not know how to separate holy things from common, they resemble those vile wine-sellers who mingle water with their wine. The name of G.o.d is blasphemed because of those who love money, who seek presents, who justify the wicked by allowing themselves to be corrupted by them. The vigilance of the ministers of religion can do much to arrest the progress of evil. The league of heretics should be dissolved by faithful instruction: for the Lord desires not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live."
It may be curious also to quote here the cautious utterance of Innocent upon the pretension of the more pious sectarians to found everything on Scripture and to make the study of the Bible their chief distinction. The same arguments are still used in the Catholic Church, sometimes even in the same terms.
"The desire to know the Holy Scriptures and to profit by their teaching is praiseworthy, but this desire must not be satisfied in secret, nor should it degenerate into the wish to preach, or to despise the ministers of religion. It is not the will of G.o.d that His word should be proclaimed in secret places as is done by these heretics, but publicly in the Church. The mysteries of the faith cannot be explained by every comer, for not every intellect is capable of understanding them. The Holy Scriptures are so profound that not only the simple and ignorant but even intelligent and learned men are unqualified to interpret them."
At no time however, though he spoke so mildly and so candidly, acknowledging that the best way to overcome the heretics was to convert and to convince them, did Innocent conceal his intention and desire to carry proceedings against them to the sternest of conclusions. If it were possible by any exertions to bring them back to the bosom of the Church, he charged all ecclesiastical authorities, all preachers, priests, and monastic establishments to do everything that was possible to accomplish this great work; but failing that, he called upon all princes, lords, and civil rulers to take stringent measures and cut them off from the land--recommendations that ended in the tremendous and appalling expedient of a new Crusade, a Crusade with no double motive, no object of restoration and deliverance combined with that of destruction, but bound to the sole agency of sheer ma.s.sacre, bloodshed, and ruin, an internecine warfare of the most horrible kind.
It must be added, however, that the preachers who at Innocent"s command set out, more or less in state, high officials, ecclesiastics of name and rank, to convince the heretics, by their preaching and teaching, took the first part in the conflict. According to his lights he spared no pains to give the doomed sects the opportunity of conversion, though with very little success. Among his envoys were two Spaniards, one a bishop, one that great Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order, who filled so great a part in the history of his time. Amid the ineffectual legates these two were missionaries born: they represented to the other preachers that demonstrations against heresy in the cathedrals was no way of reaching the people, but that the true evangelists must go forth into the country, humble and poor as were the adversaries whom they had to overcome. They themselves set out on their mission barefoot, without scrip or purse, after the manner of the Apostles. Strange to think that it was in Provence, the country of the Troubadours, the land of song, where poetry and love were supreme according to all and every tradition of history, that the grimmest heresy abounded, and that this stern pair carried on their mission! but so it was. Toulouse, where Courts of Love sate yearly, and the trouveres held their tournaments of song, was the centre of the tragedy. But not even those devoted preachers, nor the crowd of eager priests and monks who followed in their steps, succeeded in their mission. The priesthood and the religion it taught had fallen very low in Provence, and no one heeded the new missionaries, neither the heretics nor the heedless population around.
No doubt the Pope, the man of so many disappointments, had set his heart on this as a thing in which for once he must not fail, and watched with a sore and angry heart the unsuccess of all these legitimate efforts. But it was not until one of the legates, a man most trusted and honoured, Pierre de Castelnau, was treacherously killed in the midst of his mission, that Innocent was fully roused.
Heretofore he had rained excommunications over all the world, and his curses had come back to him without avail. But on this occasion at least he had a sure weapon in hand. The Pope proclaimed a Crusade against the heretics. He proclaimed throughout Europe that whoever undertook this holy enterprise it should be counted to him as if he had fought for Jerusalem: all the indulgences, blessings, hopes for heaven and exemptions for earth, which had been promised to those who were to deliver the Holy Sepulchre, were equally bestowed on those who went no further than the south of France, one of the richest districts in Christendom, where fair lands and n.o.ble castles were to be had for the conquest without risking a stormy voyage or a dangerous climate.
The goods of unrepentant heretics were confiscated, and every one was free to help himself as if they had been Turks and infidels. In none of his undertakings was the Pope so hotly in earnest. There is something of the shrillness of a man who has found himself impotent in many undertakings in the pa.s.sion which Innocent throws into this.
"Rise, soldier of Christ!" he cries to the king of France; "up, most Christian prince! The groans of the Church rise to your ears, the blood of the just cries out: up, then, and judge my cause: gird on your sword; think of the unity of the cross and the altar, that unity taught us by Moses, by Peter, by all the fathers. Let not the bark of the Church make shipwreck. Up, for her help! Strike strongly against the heretics, who are more dangerous than the Saracens!"
The appeal came to a host of eager ears. Many good and true men were no doubt among the army which gathered upon the gentle hill of Hyeres in the blazing midsummer of the year 1209, cross on breast and sword in hand, sworn to exterminate heresy, and bring back the country to the sway of the true religion; but an overwhelming number besides, who were hungry for booty however obtained, and eager to win advancement for themselves, filled up the ranks. Such motives were not absent even from the bosom of Simon de Montfort, their general, otherwise a good man and true. The sovereignty of Toulouse glimmered before him over seas of blood, which was as the blood of the Saracen, no better, though it flowed in the veins of Frenchmen; but the Provencaux could scarcely be called Frenchmen in those early days. They were no more beloved of their northern neighbours than the English were by the Scots, and the expedition against them was as much justified by distinctions of race as was the conflict of Bannockburn.
The chapter of history that followed we would fain on all sides obliterate, if we could, from the records of humanity, and we doubt not that the strictest Catholic as much as the most indignant Protestant would share this wish; but that, alas, cannot be done. And no such feeling was in any mind of the time. The remedy was not thought to be too terrible for the disease, for centuries after: and the most Christian souls rejoiced in the victories of the Crusade, the towns destroyed, the nests of heretics broken up. The very heretics themselves, who suffered fiercely and made reprisals when they could, had no doctrine of toleration among themselves, and would have extirpated a wicked hierarchy, and put down the ma.s.s with a high hand, as four hundred years later their more enlightened successors did, when the power came to them. There are many shuddering spectators who now try to represent to themselves that Innocent so far off was but half, or not at all, acquainted with the atrocities committed in his name; that his legates over-stepped their authority, as frequently happened, and were carried away by the excitement of carnage and the terrible impulse of destruction common to wild beasts and men when that fatal pa.s.sion is aroused; and that his generals soon converted their Crusade, as Crusades more or less were converted everywhere, into a raid of fierce acquisition, a war for booty and personal enrichment. And all this is true for as much as it is worth in reducing the guilt of Innocent; but that is not much, for he was a man very well acquainted with human nature, and knew that such things must be.
As for Simon de Montfort and his n.o.ble companions, they were not, much less were the men-at-arms under their orders, superior to all that n.o.ble chivalry of France which had started from Venice with so fine a purpose, but had been drawn aside to crush and rob Constantinople on their way, only some seven years before. Baldwin of Flanders became Emperor of the great eastern city in 1204. Simon de Montfort named himself Count de Toulouse in 1215. Both had been sent forth with the Pope"s blessing on quite a different mission, both had succ.u.mbed to the temptation of their own aggrandis.e.m.e.nt. But of the two, at the end Simon was the more faithful. If he committed or permitted to be committed the most abominable cruelties, he nevertheless did stamp out heresy. Provence regained her gaiety, her courts of love, her gift of song. Innocent, for once in his life, with all the dreadful drawbacks accompanying it, was successful in the object for which he had striven.
It is a dreadful thing to have to say of the most powerful of Popes, in whose time the Papacy, we are told, reached its highest climax of power in the affairs of men: he was successful once: in devastating a country and slaughtering by thousands its inhabitants in the name of G.o.d and the Church. All his attempts to set right the affairs of the world failed. He neither nominated an emperor, nor saved a servile king from ruin, nor struck a generous blow for that object of the enthusiasm of his age, the deliverance of Jerusalem. All of these he attempted with the utmost strain and effort of his powers, and many more, but failed. Impossible to say that it was not truth and justice which he set before him at all times; he was an honest man and loved not bloodshed; he had a great intelligence, and there is no proof that his heart was cold or his sympathies dull. But his career, which is so often quoted as an example of the supremacy of the Papacy, seems to us the greatest and most perfect demonstration that such a supremacy was impossible. Could it have been done, Innocent would have done it; but it could not be done, and in the plenitude of his power he failed over and over again. What credit he might have had in promoting Otho to the empire fades away when we find that it was the accident of Philip"s death and not the support of the Pope that did it. In England his a.s.sumed suzerainty was a farce, and all his efforts ineffectual to move one way or the other the destinies of the nation.
At Constantinople his prayers and commands and entreaties had about as much power as the outcries of a woman upon his own special envoys and soldiers. In France he had one brief triumph indeed, and broke a poor woman"s heart, a thing which is accomplished every day by much easier methods; though his action then was the only moral triumph of his reign, being at least in the cause of the weak against the strong. And he filled Provence with blood and misery, and if he crushed heresy, crushed along with it that n.o.ble and beautiful country, and its royal house, and its liberties. Did he ever feel the contrast between his attempts and his successes? Was he sore at heart with the long and terrible failure of his efforts? or was he comforted by such small consolations as fell to him, the final vindication of Ingelburga, the fict.i.tious submission of the Greek Church, the murderous extinction of heresy? Was it worth while for a great man to have endured and struggled, to have lived sleepless, restless, ever vigilant, watching every corner of the earth, keeping up a thousand espionages and secret intelligences all for this, and nothing more?
He was the greatest of the Popes and attained the climax of papal power. He carried out the principles which Hildebrand had established, and a.s.serted to their fullest all the claims which that great Pontiff, also a deeply disappointed man, had made. Gregory and Innocent are the two most prominent names in the lists of the Papacy; they are the greatest generals of that army which, in its way, is an army invincible, against which the gates of h.e.l.l cannot prevail. Let us hope that the merciful illusions which keep human nature going prevented them from seeing how little all their great claims had come to. Gregory indeed, dying sad and in exile, felt it more or less, but was able to set it down to the wickedness of the world in which truth and justice did not reign. And there is a profound sadness in the last discourse of Innocent; but perhaps they were neither of them aware what a deep stamp of failure remains, visible for all the world to see, upon those great undertakings of theirs which were not for the Church but for the world. G.o.d had not made them judges and dividers among men, though they believed so to the bottom of their hearts.
It is perhaps overbold in a writer without authority to set forth an individual opinion in the face of much more powerful judgments. But this book pretends to nothing except, so far as it is possible to form it, a glance of individual opinion and impression in respect to matters which are otherwise too great for any but the most learned and weighty historian. The statement of Dean Milman that "He (Innocent) succeeded in imposing an Emperor on Germany" appears to us quite inconsistent with the facts of the case. But we would not for a moment pretend that Milman does not know a hundred times better than the present writer, whose rapid glance at the exterior aspects of history will naturally go for what it is worth and no more. The aspect of a pageant however to one who watches it go by from a window, is sometimes an entertaining variety upon its fullest authoritative description.
It will be understood that we have no idea of representing the reign of these great Popes as without power in many other matters. They strengthened greatly the authority and control exercised by the Holy See over its special and legitimate empire, the Church. They drew to the court of Rome so many appeals and references of disputed cases in law and in morals as to shed an increased influence over the world like an unseen irrigation swelling through all the roots and veins of Christendom. They even gave so much additional prestige and importance to Church dignitaries as to increase the power which the great Prelates often exercised against themselves. But the highest pretensions of the Successors of Peter, the Vicars of G.o.d, to be judges and arbiters of the world, setters up and pullers down of thrones, came to no fulfilment. The Popes were flattered by appeals, by mock submissions on the weaker side, even by pet.i.tions for the ever ready interference which they seem to have attempted in good faith, always believing in their own authority. But in the end their decisions and decrees in Imperial questions were swept away like chaff before the strong wind of secular power and policy, and history cannot point to one important revolution[5] in the affairs of the world or any separate kingdom made by their unaided power.
The last great act of Innocent"s life was the council held in the year 1215 in Rome, known as the fourth Lateran Council. It was perhaps the greatest council that had ever been held there, not only because of the large number of ecclesiastics present, but because for the first time East and West sat together, the Patriarch of Constantinople (or rather two patriarchs, for the election was contested) taking their place in it, in subordination to the Pope, as if the great schism had never been. From all the corners of the earth came the bishops and archbishops, the not less important abbots, prelates who were n.o.bles as well as priests, counting among them the greatest lords in their respective districts as well as the greatest ecclesiastics. Innocent himself was a man of fifty-five, of most temperate life, vigorous in mind and body, likely to survive for years, and to do better than he had ever yet done--and he was so far triumphant for the moment that all the kings of Christendom had envoys at this council, and everything united to make it magnificent and important. Why he should have taken for his text the ominous words he chose when addressing that great and splendid a.s.sembly in his own special church and temple, surrounded with all the emblems of power and supremacy, it is impossible to tell; and one can imagine the thrill of strange awe and astonishment which must have run through that vast synod, when the Pope rose, and from his regal chair p.r.o.nounced these words, first uttered in the depths of the mysterious pa.s.sion and anguish of the greatest sufferer on earth. "With desire I have desired to eat this pa.s.sover with you before I suffer." What was it that Innocent antic.i.p.ated or feared? There was no suffering before him that any one knew, no trouble that could reach the chief of Christendom, heavy-hearted and depressed, amid all his guards, spiritual and temporal, as he may have been. What could they think, all those great prelates looking, no doubt, often askance at each other, brethren in the church, but enemies at home? Nor were the first words of his discourse less solemn.
"As to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain, I should not refuse to drink the cup of suffering, were it presented to me, for the defence of the Catholic Church, for the deliverance of the Holy Land, or for the freedom of the Church, even although my desire had been to live in the flesh until the work that has been begun should be accomplished. Notwithstanding not my will, but the will of G.o.d be done! This is why I say, "With desire I have desired to eat this pa.s.sover with you before I suffer.""
These words sound in our ears as if the preacher who uttered them was on the verge, if not of martyrdom, at least of death and the premature end of his work. And so he was: although there was as yet no sign in heaven or earth, or so far as appears in his own consciousness, that this end was near.
The discourse which followed was remarkable in its way, the way of the schoolmen and dialecticians so far as its form went. He began by explaining the word Pa.s.sover, which in Hebrew he said meant pa.s.sage--in which sense of the word he declared himself to desire to celebrate a triple Pa.s.sover, corporal, spiritual, and eternal, with the Church around him.
"A corporal Pa.s.sover, the pa.s.sage from one place to another to deliver Jerusalem oppressed: a spiritual Pa.s.sover, a pa.s.sage from one situation to another for the sanctification of the universal Church; an eternal Pa.s.sover, a pa.s.sage from one life to another, to eternal glory." For the first, the deliverance of the Holy Land and the Holy Sepulchre, after a solemn description of the miseries of Jerusalem enslaved, he declares that he places himself in the hands of the brethren.