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Reading Hall The Doors of Wisdom

BOOK VI.

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE (1059-1250).

CHAPTER XVII.

THE QUARREL OVER INVESTITURES (1059-1122).

Complete supremacy of the Emperor Henry III (1039-1056).—Hildebrand's effort to regenerate the Church and emancipate the Papacy; Regulation of 1059.—Gregory VII (1073). His great Plans.—Boldness of his first Acts.—Humiliation of the Emperor (1077).—Death of Gregory VII (1085), and of Henry IV (1106). Henry V (1106). —The Concordat of Worms (1122); End of the quarrel over Investitures.

OTTO the Great had revived the empire of Charlemagne and had resumed the rights attached to the imperial crown; among others those of using the ancient city of Rome as capital of the new empire, of confirming the election of the sovereign pontiff, and of exercising a great influence over all the affairs of the Church. Henry III, son of Conrad the Salic (1039), was the one of the German emperors who made the most of his power, and who best succeeded in making the imperial authority respected on both sides of the Alps. He forced the Duke of Bohemia to acknowledge his supremacy and to pay him a sum of money; he reinstated Peter, the king of Hungary, in his kingdom and received his homage for it. The two duchies of Lorraine had been united, but he separated them; and when the duchies of Bavaria, Swabia, and Carinthia fell vacant, he felt sure enough of his power to re-establish the ducal office in order to give these provinces a more direct government, and one more capable of enforcing the truce of God, which was still only an empty name.

In southern Italy, however, the Emperor came into collision with an enemy who seemed weak enough, but who was able to defy him. Some Norman pilgrims, who had come to Rome toward the year 1016, had been employed by the Pope against the Greeks who were attacking Benevento; others, returning from Jerusalem, helped the inhabitants of Salerno to drive away the Saracens, who were besieging them. The fame of their success, and of the booty which they had gained, brought many other Normans to join them. So many came that they were soon strong enough to make themselves masters of the country. William of the Iron Arm, the oldest of the twelve sons of Tancred of Hauteville, a gentleman of Coutances, was in 1043 elected chief of the country, with the title of Count of Venossa and Apulia. His brothers Drogo (1046), Humphrey (1051), and Robert Guiscard (1057) succeeded him. The Papacy was not slow to repent having brought such warlike neighbors upon itself. Leo IX collected troops, obtaining some from Henry III, and uniting his efforts with those of the Greek Emperor Constantine Monomachus marched against the Normans, who defeated him and made him prisoner. But these wise people thought of Pippin and of Charlemagne; and said to themselves that the popes could give a legal existence to what had before only existed by right of force. They knelt before their prisoner, declared themselves his vassals, and received all they had conquered as a fief from his hands (1053). The Pope left his captivity the suzerain of a new state, of the duchy of Apulia, to which the Normans soon added Sicily, which was conquered by Roger, another brother of Robert Guiscard; these provinces were all united finally into the kingdom of Sicily (made a kingdom in 1130), and a Norman dynasty reigned at Naples, where the counts of Anjou have also reigned, and where until recently the house of Bourbon was still sovereign.

So Henry III met with a check in that direction; although he did not attach any great importance to this war, and though after all it appeared to terminate to his advantage, as the suzerainty gained by the Pope came back to the Emperor, on whom the Pope depended. No other emperor made more use of his right of interfering in ecclesiastical elections, whether of the pope or of the bishops, and no one used it more wisely. He deposed three popes who were disputing the possession of the See at the same time, and three times awarded the tiara to German priests, and awarded it wisely to Clement II, Damasus II, and Leo IX. The council of Sutri had again acknowledged that no pope could be elected without the consent of the emperor.

Nevertheless, since the time of Charlemagne, the Church had not ceased to grow in power and in moral authority. She possessed temporal authority, for she owned a large part of the soil of Christian Europe; she had moral authority, for every one, great and small, accepted her commands submissively, and by her weapon of excommunication she could force even kings to obey her; finally, she had the advantage of unity, for the whole Church of the West recognized the Roman pontiff as her head. Thus, during the eleventh century there were two great powers in existence, the Pope and the Emperor, the temporal power and the spiritual power, both of them very ambitious, as they could not fail to be considering the customs, institutions, and beliefs of the epoch. It was at this time that the great question came up as to who should be the master of the world, the successor of St. Peter or the successor of Augustus and Charlemagne.

The Church had never before had so lofty an ambition, at least never in so clear and fixed a form. At the time of the Iconoclasts, and under the successors of Charlemagne, the Church aspired to emerge from the trammels of the state so as to develop her own life with freedom. Now she aspired to control the lay society, and even its rulers.

The Papacy was started on this new career by a monk of humble origin, Hildebrand, the son of a carpenter of Soana, in Tuscany, who had resided in the monastery of Cluny for some time, when Leo IX, stopping there on his way to take possession of the Holy See, carried him away with him.

This was not the first time that a simple monk, by the force of his character and genius, gained a supreme ascendency over the whole Church. Just then a feeling of violent disapproval was felt in the convents of the ambition of a certain number of bishops, of their intrigues, their vices, and their worldly lives, of the traffic they made of ecclesiastical dignities—a traffic called "simony"—and of their very worldly passions. At the festivities of Whitsuntide, in the year 1063, the mitred abbot of Fulda and the bishop of Hildesheim disputed with their daggers the right of precedence in the middle of the church. The Emperor just escaped being killed, and the altar was covered with blood.

Many voices were lifted up against these disorders, and among others that of Peter Damiani, the cardinal bishop of Ostia, who demanded a radical reform in the Church, a return to simplicity, to primitive poverty, and to the elections made by the priests and people. Hildebrand threw himself into this reaction with all the ardor of an austere, eager, and sincere character. He was not only impelled by his interest for religion, but also by an interest for his Italian fatherland. He hoped, by means of a papacy which should be supreme over Italy and all Christendom, to reform the Church and set Italy free. But the Church herself must first be set free. We have seen that the defeat of Leo IX at Civitella (1053) was worth more to him than a brilliant success would have been; for as the Normans had declared themselves vassals of the Holy See, resolved to defend it, the Pope henceforth had valiant warriors close at hand who were at his disposal.

Henry III died in 1056, leaving a son, Henry IV, whose minority was very stormy, a fact which greatly assisted the projects of the Court of Rome. In 1059, a new Pope, Nicolas II, also under Hildebrand's influence, published a decree which regulated the election of the popes in a new manner. They were to be elected by the cardinal bishops, priests, and deacons of the Roman territory; the people were to give their consent afterward ; the Emperor was to retain his right of confirmation; and, finally, the pope was to be chosen by preference from the Roman clergy. Another decree forbade the clergy to receive the investiture to any ecclesiastical fief from any temporal lord.

These decrees were of the highest importance, as they withdrew the Pope from the Emperor's authority, and placed the immense temporal power of the Church in the now free hand of the pontiff. A number of bishops, chiefly those of Lombardy, who disliked the authority of the Pope, especially in its new severity, still more than that of the Emperor, and who, besides, were troubled by the anathemas pronounced against the simoniacal and married priests, brought about a schism and obtained an anti-pope, Honorius II, from the imperial court, which was also much irri­tated by the decrees. Hildebrand had on his side all the citizen class and the nobility also, except at Rome, where the nobles feared lest his power should prove dangerous to their independence. In the struggle that followed between the two factions, Hildebrand was victorious, and his triumph was complete, when he was chosen to the Holy See under the name of Gregory VII (1073). He is the last Pope whose election was submitted to the Emperor's sanction.

As Pope, Gregory now completed the work he had begun as monk. His plans grew with his power. Charlemagne and Otto the Great had made the Papacy subordinate to them, and had joined the Church with the State. But now the royal authority, the centralizing power, was declining throughout all Europe in proportion as feudalism, or the local powers, those of the dukes, counts, and barons, increased. The Church, on the other hand, had seen the faith of her people growing even stronger in this century. It seemed to her chief that the time had now come for her to grasp the government of the bodies as well as of the souls of men, or at least to draw closer the ties that bound all Christendom to the Holy See, and to exer­cise a constant surveillance and activity, in order to put down the licentiousness of manners, violations of justice, and all the causes that led to the destruction of the soul. His aim was a lofty one, and his great ambition was natural enough in a priest. It is fortunate, however, that he did not succeed, and that the European nations preserved their independence, which they would have lost under such an absolute papal authority.

Gregory aimed at four things : to emancipate the Papacy from German supremacy; to reform the Church in her customs and discipline; to make her independent of any temporal power; and to rule the laity, both people and princes, in the name and in the interest of their salvation.

The first point was gained by the decree of Nicholas II the second by the many acts of Gregory VII for the reformation of the clergy, which were especially directed toward the celibacy of the priests and against simony; the third, by prohibiting the temporal princes from giving and the clergy from receiving from them the investiture of any ecclesiastical benefice; the fourth, by the intervention of the popes in the government of the kingdoms of Europe.

The kings of Germany and of France, Henry IV and Philip I, openly carried on a traffic in ecclesiastical dignities; Gregory threatened to excommunicate them, and further than that, to release their vassals from their oath of fealty. In England he forced William the Conqueror to pay him Peter's pence. He claimed the suzerainty over kingdoms of Hungary, Denmark, and Spain, which had been conquered from the pagans or infidels "by the grace of God", and he made the Duke of Croatia king of the Dalmatians, on the condition of his paying homage to the Holy See. Nevertheless, the Pope, though supreme in distant regions, was not so in Italy. In Rome, even, the prefect Censius seized Gregory VII in a church and kept him prisoner for some time. In Milan the citizens drove out Herlembald, who under the pretext of supporting the reforms of Gregory VII was exercising a genuine tyranny in the city, and demanded an archbishop of Henry IV who sent them a noble of Castiglione. This was the beginning of the struggle between the Papacy and the Empire, one of the greatest dramas in history.

All the circumstances of the times were very favorable to Gregory VII, and promised him support in Germany. Feudal rebellions had shaken that country during the whole of the minority of Henry Emperor, who was only six years old at the death of his father in 1056. The bishops and nobles had wrested the regency, and even the care of the young king, from the Empress Agnes. On his majority, Henry IV attempted to repress the revolt of which Saxony was always the center.

A great victory gained by him in Thuringia seemed to insure his success, when suddenly he heard the voice of the Pope resounding in his ears, who commanded him to suspend the war, to leave the decision of his quarrel with the Saxons to the Holy See, and to renounce his claims to all his ecclesiastical investiture under pain of excommunication; the legates added to this a summons to appear at Rome and there to justify his private misconduct. Henry IV was equally vigorous in his reply to this furious attack. In the synod of Worms (1076), which was composed of twenty-four bishops, partisans of his cause, the deposition of Gregory VII was solemnly pronounced.

Instead of being alarmed by this the Pope redoubled his attacks. Though only just rescued by a popular movement from his enemy Censius, he made use of all his weapons; he published against the Emperor a bull of excommunica­tion which declared him deposed for rebelling against the Holy See, and he released his subjects from their oath of fealty. Agents, to execute this bull without mercy, were easily found in the Saxons and the Swabians, who were both hostile to the house of Franconia. They had at their head Rudolf of Swabia, and Welf, an Italian, of the house of Este, whom Henry himself had made Duke of Bavaria. They convoked a diet at Tibur, suspended the Emperor from the exercise of his functions, and threatened to depose him if he did not get absolution from the anathemas of Rome. Henry consented to the humiliation, and a general diet was determined upon, to meet at Augsburg, at which the Pope was to appear to decide upon his absolution. But as he felt the danger of letting his enemies come together he resolved to anticipate the promised diet and go himself to Rome to implore the pardon of the Pope.

Gregory VII forced him to purchase his absolution at the price of humiliations such as no other sovereign has ever undergone. The Pope was then staying at the castle of Canossa, on the lands of the celebrated Countess Matilda, the most powerful suzerain in Italy, as the possessor of the Marquisate of Tuscany and of many other important feudal possessions in Central Italy, and who was a devoted adherent of the Holy See. Here Henry IV came to beg an audience, and waited during three days outside the wall, standing barefooted in the snow. On the fourth day he was admitted to the presence of the Pope, and his ban of excommunication removed. But Gregory was too wise to give up all his weapons at once, and made it a condition of his absolution that Henry should come to an agreement with his enemies in Germany. So that the Pope still reserved some means of embarrassing Henry's movements. It is not strange that Henry should have trembled before a man who was. recognized as the direct representative of the Deity, and who was so sure of the approval of Heaven, that, as it was said after taking half the Host and abjuring God to destroy him at once if he was guilty of the. crimes of which he was accused, he gave Henry the other half and proposed that he should make the same declaration; the latter drew back and refused the test (1077).

By yielding, Henry had avoided the blow aimed at him by the enemies who were allied against him. As soon as this moment of danger had passed, he retrieved his losses. He certainly had no other alternative that again taking every risk, or else of renouncing his throne; for the German princes who were opposed to him had taken the final and decisive step. They elected as their king Rudolf of Swabia, who had bought the support of the legate by promising to give up his claims to the appointment of bishops (1077), but whose solemn recognition the Pope had wisely delayed. Henry IV, gathering together all his partisans, made war upon them with great success. A battle, not far from Merseburg, where Rudolf was killed, it is said, by Godfrey of Bouillon, afterwards duke of Lower Lorraine, made him master of Germany [1080.] He wished also to be supreme in Italy, and he met with varying success there in different expeditions. He seemed at one time about to destroy the power of the Countess Matilda; he took Rome and made the Archbishop of Ravenna Pope, under the name of Clement III, and was crowned Emperor by him. Gregory himself would have fallen into the hands of the man he had so insulted if Robert Guiscard and his Normans, the faithful allies of the Holy See, had not rescued him. He died among them (1085), saying : "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile." He seemed to think, to his last moment, that the universal dominion of the Holy See was her strict right, an idea which is certainly logical in many respects.

Gregory died too soon, for if he had lived a few years longer he would have seen his enemy dying in even greater misery than he had suffered at the gates of Canossa. Under Urban II who became Pope in 1088 the actual power of the Papacy reached a very high point. He renewed the decrees of Gregory VII against the Emperor. After a fleeting triumph, Henry IV. was successively attacked by his two sons whom the Church had armed against him, was taken prisoner by the younger and stripped of the imperial insignia, and though he recovered his liberty and again assumed the title of Emperor, he could not recover his power. He vainly besought the aid of the King of France, "the most faithful of his friends", who made no response. But few of the German princes gave him their support, and he died in 1106 at Liege, Emperor scarcely more than in name, but forgiving his enemies and sending his ring and his sword to his rebellious son. His body remained five years without a tomb, until finally the ban of the Church was removed by the Pope.

Nevertheless, it was this parricide son, Henry V, who brought the quarrel over investitures to a conclusion. The final decision was somewhat retarded by the discussion concerning the succession of the Countess Matilda, who had wished to bequeath her property to the Holy See. Henry claimed all she had left, the fiefs as head of the empire, the allodial lands as the acknowledged heir of the countess, and took possession of everything. This became a cause of new quarrels in the future, as we shall see. When this point of the inheritance had been settled for the time being, the two opposing parties, at last recognizing that the dispute over investitures served only to weaken themselves, agreed to conclude it by a just and nearly equal division of the disputed rights. The Concordat of Worms was drawn up in the following words (1122). From Pope Calistus II to the Emperor : "I agree that the elections of the bishops and the abbots, who hold immediately from the kingdom, shall be made in your presence, but without violence or simony ; so that if any dis­pute shall arise, you may give your assent and protection to the better side, following the opinion of the metropolitan and the bishops of that province. The one elected shall receive from you through investiture with the sceptre, the regalia, excepting those which belong to the Roman Church, and shall render to you all the services which you have a right to demand." The Emperor returns: "I leave to the Pope all investiture by the ring and staff; and I permit in the churches of my kingdom and empire, canonical elections and free consecrations." This wise compromise, assigning the temporal authority to the temporal sovereign and the spiritual to the spiritual sovereign, was accompanied by words of reconciliation. But Gregory VII's full plan had not been carried out. The vassal bond between the prince and the clergy was not broken; all the members of the Church, if not her head, were still subject to the State. The house of Franconia became extinct with Henry V (1125), who died after having temporarily settled the contest between the papacy and the empire. The reign of his successor, Lothar II (1125-1137), seemed like an interlude, during which the world's stage was being arranged for a new era of struggle.

CHAPTER XVIII.

STRUGGLE BETWEEN ITALY AND GERMANY (1152-1250).

Three Epochs in the struggle between the Papacy and the Empire.—Strength of German Feudalism; Weakness of Lothar II (1125); the Hohenstaufen (1138).—Division of Italy; Progress of the small Nobles and of the Republics.—Arnold of Brescia (1144).—Frederick I, Barbarossa (1152); Overthrow of Milan (1162); the Lombard League (1164); Peace of Constance (1183).—Emperor Henry VI (1190); Innocent III (1198); Guelfs and Ghibellines in Italy.— Frederick II (1212-1250). Second Lombard League (1226).—Inn­cent IV. (1243); Fall of German Power in Italy (1250).

WHILE the Pope and the Emperor were contending for the mastery of the world, France, which had kept out of the great debate, was carrying on the first crusade. There are, as it were, two parallel series of events taking place at this period of the world's history, both of which began at the same time, toward the end of the eleventh century, and ended in the middle of the thirteenth century. A chronological order of events would demand that the two histories should be carried on together, while a good understanding of them requires that they should be treated separately. We shall, accordingly, continue our description of the struggle between Italy and Germany, up to the time of the final solution of the difficulties, then we shall return to the crusades. This method will disturb the sequence of time, but it will be to the advantage of logical sequence.

The quarrel between the Papacy and the Empire is a drama in three acts. In the first the Pope and the Emperor dispute for the supremacy over Christian Europe; the Concordat of Worms (1122) requires mutual concessions and a division which modern times have kept sacred though at the same time seeking the solution of the problem in another direction, namely, a free church within a free state. In the second act of the great debate, the action centers around the struggle for independence in Italy, which the emperors of the Swabian house wish to make subject to their power, and which is freed by the peace of Constance (1183); in the third act, the independence of the Holy See is in peril, the death of Frederic II saves it (1250). The first struggle has already been described, the second and third now follow.

The Franconian dynasty had felt the power of German feudalism growing under its sway and had made vain efforts to arrest its progress. It was in vain that, in the midst of the duchies, a host of smaller immediate lordships and imperial cities were created, holding directly of the Emperor; it was in vain that the right of heredity was granted to the smaller nobles, a policy followed in Italy, too, and embodied in the edict of 1037; the great vassals, who had long had the right of hereditary succession, had preserved or recovered their advantage over the elective royalty by continual revolts. Even the Emperor's agents, the palatine counts, sent by him to the great fiefs or to his own domains, there to represent his authority, even the burggrafen holding the same trust in the cities, began to imitate the royal officers of the time of the Carolingian emperors, in making themselves independent and their offices hereditary. The result of these continued efforts was that feudalism, on the accession of Lothar, was a very formidable force, and became more so during his reign. He was a weak prince and bowed his head low before the Holy See. Innocent II gave him the imperial crown, while presuming to call himself master of it, to dispose of it at will; he went so far as to commemorate his claim in a picture where the Emperor was represented on his knees in the attitude of one doing homage to the pontiff. Underneath is written in Latin verse : "The King becomes the man of the Pope, who bestows the crown upon him". Lothar humbled himself again on a question fully as important; he consented to hold in fief of the Holy See the lands of the Countess Matilda.

Within the empire Lothar was hard pressed by two powerful houses : the house of Swabia, which he fought, but was not able to put down; and that of Bavaria, whose power he increased by marrying his daughter to the duke, Henry the Proud, who, on the death of Lothar, inherited all his domains, the duchy of Saxony in Germany, and in Italy the fiefs of the great countess. The power of Henry the Proud extended then from the Baltic to the Tiber, but his fiefs were separated and the division was fatal to his strength. The Hohenstaufen lands, on the other hand, were more closely united; they consisted of the duchy of Swabia, and large possessions in Franconia.

When Lothar died in 1137, it was evident that the crown would pass to one of these two great houses. Saxony seemed sure of obtaining it, but many of the German vassals began to think it unwise to put too strong a master over them, and they elected, almost surreptitiously, in a diet convoked at Coblenz, in the absence of the Saxon and Bavarian princes, Conrad of Hohenstaufen, lord of Waiblingen. Henry the Proud protested. He was the head of the Welf house, and their respective partisans adopted party cries from these names, which also crossed the Alps and became fixed in Italy as Guelfs and Ghibellines. As the house of Swabia was hostile to the Holy See, the Ghibelline party was favorable to the Emperor, while the Guelfs were friends of Italian independence and the papacy.

Henry the Proud, who was placed by Conrad under the ban of the empire, was despoiled of his duchies; his son, Henry the Lion, recovered Saxony it is true, but it was Saxony curtailed of the mark of Brandenburg, which was converted into a fief direct of the empire, for the benefit of Albert the Bear of the Ascanian house, while Bavaria was given to the markgraf of Austria, and kept by him until 1156. It reverted then to Henry the Lion, with the exception of Austria, which was raised to the rank of an immediate duchy. The brilliant dynasty of the Hohenstaufen began with Conrad III. His reign in a manner was dedicated to establishing his family upon the throne which they held for more than a century with great glory; accordingly he was not able to visit Italy. But when, on the return of the second crusade, his death gave the crown to his son, Germany began to interest itself in Italy again, and the struggle which had been suspended since 1122 broke out more violently than ever.

Italy's aspect had entirely changed. The edict of 1037 had borne its fruit. Dukes, margraves, counts, bishops, lost their sovereignty and their jurisdiction. The last representative of the great feudal nobles had disappeared, on the Countess Matilda's death. Nothing but a mixture of little independent lords and republican cities was to be seen from the Alps to Benevento, where the Norman monarchy began, renowned not only for the brilliancy of its victories but also for the poetry which the troubadours, attracted from the south of France, sang at the court of its kings. Just at that time the Italian republics were taking shape and giving a new life to the ruins of Roman municipal government. They had each their consuls, varying in number : twelve at Milan, six at Genoa, four at Florence, six at Pisa, etc., usually invested with executive and judiciary powers. Generally, also, a kind of senate (credenza) assisted them. The general assembly of free citizens, or parliament, gathering by wards at the sound of the bell from the belfry tower on the public square, was the only sovereign power and judge in the last resort. The nobles of the neighboring castles were admitted to it as citizens, though they continued to hold their domains and their serfs outside the walls.

Rome had as yet been saved the revolution which had changed the other Italian cities, by the influence of her bishop, the sovereign pontiff; but her turn came in the middle of the twelfth century. A monk named Arnold of Brescia, a disciple of Abelard, the doctor who preached the distinction between reason and faith, was the first to demand the separation of church and state, the suppression of government by priests and the re-establishment of the Roman Republic. In 1143, a republican government was organized for Rome in opposition to the Pope, Innocent II. A senate of 56 members was formed, the four sacred letters, S. P. Q. R., reappeared in the public documents, and the date was reckoned "from the restoration of the sacred senate". Lucius II, successor to Innocent, who tried to use force in resistance, was thrown down from the steps of the capitol, and the revolution triumphed. Throughout the peninsula, except for the Kingdom of Naples, from Rome to the least and smallest city, the republican form of government prevailed. The nobility considered themselves fortunate if they were included within this organization, Everything had worked together toward this end, the force of arms, the prosperity born of commerce, affection for past memories and the power of new ideas. St. Bernard resigned himself to the position accorded to the Pope, and wrote to his disciple Eugenius to leave the Romans alone, that stiff-necked generation, and to exchange Rome for the world. (Urbam pro orbe mutatam).

But Frederick I, called Barbarossa, was not disposed to give up Italy so easily; no emperor yet had shown such energy of character joined to so much obstinacy in his claims to the peninsula. It is very hard to say what he did not claim. Royal rights over a1ll the towns, imperial rights at Rome, the heritage of the Countess Matilda, Naples, Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia. He crossed the Alps; Italy welcomed him with a naive confidence which had more than once delivered her into the hands of a stranger. But the sky was soon over­cast. He burned Chieri and razed Tortona to the ground, because the one refused to submit to the Marquis of Montferrat and the other to break its alliance with Milan, which city was the head and front of Lombard independence. He advanced toward Rome, whither Hadrian IV called him; seized and delivered into the hands of the Pope, Arnold of Brescia, who was burned at the stake; and on the same day on which he received the imperial crown his soldiers killed 1000 men in defending him against the revolted city. He showed such harshness in the exercise of his authority in Italy, that soon the whole country rose in revolt. Hadrian, whose power the Emperor had restored, quarreled with him for the sake of reconciling himself with his subjects.

Nothing is more curious than the dialogues carried on by those three great historical personages, the Emperor of Germany, the Pope, and the Roman People, all three invoking in their defense the mere memories of the past; all three reproaching each other and revealing only the decay of their power to the world. The Romans had sent ambassadors to Barbarossa to say that the empire belonged to them, and that they would offer it to him provided he would swear to respect their rights and customs and give them 5000 marks of silver. The Emperor replied : "You exalt the ancient glory of your city, and I can well appreciate it; but, as one of your writers has said, 'Rome was  fuit. Your Rome is ours... Your senate, your consuls, your knights, are now reckoned among the Germans. Charles the Great and Otto have conquered your empire. . . . Your duty is to obey". The Pope claimed the lands of Matilda, and desired that no Imperial envoy should enter Rome without his consent; the Emperor wrote to him: "What did the Church possess at the time of Constantine, before the donations of the emperors? The demon of pride is stealing into the chair of St. Peter". And the Pope replied : "The Emperor is pretending to equal power with ourselves, as if we were restrained to a little corner of the earth, like Germany, the smallest of kingdoms until the moment when the popes raised her to eminence. Did not the Frankish kings ride in carts drawn by oxen before Charlemagne was consecrated by Zacharias? Just as Rome is superior to Aix-la-Chapelle, in the forests of Gaul, so we are superior to this king". And he promised him, if he would be obedient toward the Church, that he would confer still greater benefits upon him. Those words, majora beneficia, which might be understood as meaning benefice in the technical sense, and seemed to indicate that the imperial crown was held by a feudal tenure, roused the indignation of the German diet where they were pronounced. The legate, who was present, raised their wrath to the highest pitch when he cried out, "From whom then does the Emperor hold his crown if not from the Pope?"

The claim of the Roman people was the merest shadow ; the other two were still living forces, powerful and absolute.

Frederick came back in 1158. The reaction against him was general, and he punished it with cruelty. Milan was the chief victim. After raising up the rival of that city, Lodi, which they had destroyed, he imposed upon them a tribute of 9000 marks of silver. Then, in the diet of Roncalia, near Piacenza, he had his pretensions to absolute power confirmed by the doctors of the Roman law, in the school of Bologna : "Know that all power of the people to enact laws", said their spokesman, the Archbishop of Milan, "has been accorded to you. Your will is law, according to the words of the text : Everything that pleases the prince has the force of law". In virtue of those principles of a former age, Frederick played the master, and tried to place imperial podestas over the Italian towns. Milan, Brescia, Piacenza, and Cremona rebelled. Hadrian IV was dead, and the cardinals were divided : there was an imperialist pope Victor IV, and a patriot pope Alexander III. The ensuing struggle, involving, as it did, all interests, was terrible, especially at Milan. That heroic city held out against a two years' siege, and yielded only to famine. The Milanese were forced to break their carroccio which carried the standard of independence; they were scattered among four villages. All the neighboring cities, who were filled with deadly hatred toward this town, were allowed to exercise their vengeance upon it, and it was totally destroyed (1162). Alexander III, driven from Italy, took refuge in France, where he was recognized by Louis VII and by Henry II of England.

After having learned by cruel experience that division is fatal, Italy tried to unite while Frederick was away seeking new forces in Germany. The Lombard league was formed, and rapidly increased, gaining over to its cause the whole valley of the Po, little by little, from Venice to Piedmont, including even cities that had been hostile to Milan. That city was restored; Alexander III took his place at the head of Italy to resist the German domination which was continually raising new rivals against him. A city called by his name, Alexandria, was built at the confluence of the Tanaro and Bormida rivers, to threaten the Marquis of Montferrat and the imperial town of Pavia. The Ghibellines named it, in derision, Alexandria of Straw; but it proved the rock on which they split. In 1174 Frederick returned to Italy with only one-half of Germany's forces; Henry the Lion, chief of the Welfs, had refused to follow the Emperor, who had thrown himself on his knees before him in vain. From this moment the Welfs were beloved by Italy, which was in fact their native country. Alexandria of Straw stopped Frederick for four months; during that time the army of the confederates assembled. He attacked it near Legnano to the northwest of Milan (1176). Two Milanese corps, the battalion of the Great Flag and the battalion of Death, led by the gigantic Albert Giussano, gave the victory to the Italians. Frederick was thrown from his horse and for many days he was reported as dead. It was fortunate for him that he could obtain a truce by recognizing Alexander III, whom he went to meet at Venice.

Six years after (1183), the treaty of Constance definitely determined the quarrel between the empire and Italian independence, as the concordat of Worms had decided that between the empire and the papacy. The Pope practically recovered the freehold lands of the Countess Matilda. The cities preserved the regal rights which they had formerly possessed : the right to raise armies, to fortify themselves with walls, to administer civil as well as criminal jurisdiction within their walls, and to form alliances among themselves. The Emperor kept only the right of confirming their consuls by his legates, and of establishing a judge of appeals in each town for certain cases. The imperial authority had again lost ground as in the year 1122, and the spirit of Gregory VII might rejoice in this two-fold triumph.

Beyond the mountains, however, Frederick was all-powerful. Henry the Lion was put down, despoiled of his fiefs, the duchies of Saxony, and Bavaria, and reduced to his patrimonial lands of Luneburg and Brunswick, where he founded a house which still reigns in England; the kings of Denmark and Poland acknowledged the sovereignty of Frederick, and foreign ambassadors came to take part in his diets. The most celebrated of these assemblies was held at Mainz (1184); from 40,000 to 70,000 knights were gathered together in an immense field bordering the Rhine on a beautiful plain; the feudal lords of Germany, Italy, and the Slavic countries all repaired thither. The Emperor himself broke a lance in a brilliant tournament in spite of his sixty-three years. Soon after the glorious old man was drowned in the Seleph (Calycadnus) while going to the conquest of Jerusalem (1190).

The northern part of Italy had escaped the Emperor, but he had got possession of the south. By marrying his son to Constance, daughter of Roger II, king of Sicily, Barbarossa had gained for him a right to this kingdom. Henry VI (1190-1197) spent his reign in making good his claims, and his efforts were crowned with success. He conquered the Norman kingdom (1194), displaying great cruelty, and he tried to exalt again throughout Italy the feudalism which his predecessors had made a point of lowering. His death, the minority of his son, aged four years, and the accession of Innocent III in 1198, changed the aspect of affairs.

Innocent II was of the family of the Counts of Segna, and only thirty-seven years old when he was elected pope, in spite of his resistance and even tears. But when the power he had not sought was put into his hand, he conducted himself from the first like another Gregory VII.

The question, what should be the limits of the two powers, spiritual and temporal, was a difficult one for the ardent believers of those times. The head of the Church, who held the keys of St. Peter, had jurisdiction over the actions of the faithful, and could decide whether they were righteous or sinful. But the question arises at once, what actions performed by kings fall or do not fall under this jurisdiction? What actions are those which do not lead to the eternal safety or destruction of the princes themselves and of their subjects? Thus it was not wrong ambition but the force of doctrine and a sort of obligation imposed upon the shepherd of all souls which led to the interference of the popes in the state government of those times.

The new Pope, who was going to show such haughtiness of spirit, was not even master of his own episcopal city. He had to reduce the senate of the city to subjection, to abolish its consulate, and to oblige the prefect of Rome to acknowledge that he received his authority from the Pope and not from the Emperor. In order to give back to the Holy See the prestige of the time of Urban II, Innocent had a crusade preached, the fourth in number, which the Venetians turned off upon Constantinople. Finally, on the strength of his being entrusted with the moral direction of the world, as he claimed that he was, he interfered in all the quarrels of the sovereigns of his day, and hurled his thunder­bolts upon the heads of all the kings, threatening some and striking others.

By his anathemas he forced the King of France to take back his wife, Ingeborg, and the kings of Castile and Portugal to make peace, and unite against the Moors; he excommunicated a usurping king in Norway; and in Aragon a king who was guilty of false coinage. In England he humbled John Lackland and exalted him by turns. The King of Hungary detained one of the Pope's legates; he was threatened with seeing his son dispossessed of the throne. In Germany two powerful princes were disputing the empire, Philip, brother of Henry VI, and Otto of Brunswick, son of Henry the Lion of the Guelf family; he claimed the decision of this question, having the right "to examine, approve, anoint, consecrate, and crown, if he be found worthy, the emperor elect; to reject him if unworthy". It is terrible to think what would have happened if such pretensions as these had been made good, if all the kingdoms of Europe had become fiefs of the Holy See, and Christianity a sacerdotal autocracy where all liberty would have been dead and all life extinguished.

In the German conflict Innocent declared for Otto, who had no possessions in Italy, and against Philip, a member of that Hohenstaufen family which had tried to get the mastery of the Peninsula and which was still in possession of the kingdom of Sicily. It was then that the famous quarrel between the Guelfs (Welfs) and the Ghibellines (Waiblinger) began. In the struggle which followed, and which was first confined to the two German houses, but afterwards included all Italy, the peninsula no longer retained the unity which had been enjoyed for a brief space under Frederick Barbarossa. The towns were divided among themselves and were each of them torn by factions. Innocent III had nothing on his side but his genius and the great influence he had over Europe. The Guelf Emperor chosen by him, and who since the assassination of Philip in 1208 had no rival in power, was not slow in showing himself as self-willed in his pretensions as the emperors of the Swabian house. Though the name had changed, yet the same crown brought the same ambition with it to all heads alike. Otto refused to give back the freehold lands of Matilda which the popes had not ceased to claim, and he clearly indicated his determination to maintain all imperial rights. The danger grew on this side : Innocent excommunicated his former favorite (1210), and, raising the Ghibelline family which he had before overthrown, he presented young Frederick to the Germans as their future emperor. Nevertheless he stipulated that Frederick should abandon all claim to the two Sicilies so soon as he should have the imperial crown, for he felt how great was the peril for Italy, and especially for the Holy See, in allowing both Germany and the southern part of the Peninsula to remain in the same hands.

The third and last struggle between the empire and the papacy and Italy began with the accession of Frederick II (1212-1250), and assumed an entirely new character. Frederick II, who was a Sicilian through his mother and through the place of his birth, had been entrusted in his youth to the care of Innocent III. He had, accordingly, an Italian and ecclesiastical education. Otto of Brunswick called him the priests' king, and he was, in fact, very different from such men as Henry IV and Barbarossa. He was as active and energetic as they, but he had none of their German roughness; his mind was fastidious and cultivated, and full of cunning, sharpness, and incredulity. He preferred to gain his ends by diplomacy and was very skillful at it. It was no longer the north but the south that threatened the Holy See and Italian independence. Frederick had indeed pledged himself to live in Germany and to give the two Sicilies to his son; but he very much preferred the sky, the customs, and the poets of Italy, and very soon appointed his son regent of Germany in his place, while he returned to dwell in Sicily or Naples, which latter place he endowed with a university. The struggle was slow in beginning, because Frederick was not really emperor until 1218, after the death of his rival Otto, of Brunswick, who had been conquered four years previously by Philip Augustus at Bouvines. That same year Frederick renewed his vow to go to the Holy Land, and in 1220 Pope Honorius III (1216-1227) crowned him emperor. His marriage to Yolande, daughter of John of Brienne, the lately dispossessed King of Jerusalem, was a new incentive to a crusade. But Frederick found fresh excuses for remaining at home whenever he was urged to set out. Instead of proceeding to Jerusalem, he delivered Sicily from the hands of a certain Mourad-bey who had stirred up the Saracens on the island, and he transported 20,000 of the infidels to the fortified town of Lucera, in Apulia, feeling sure that the excommunications of the Church would not unsettle their allegiance, which he had secured by means of great benefits conferred. At the same time he, in conjunction with the lawyer Peter of Vinea, was at work organizing his kingdom of Sicily, which had never yet been well organized under Norman sway.

Honorius III was succeeded in 1227 by an imperious and inflexible old man, Gregory IX, who reached his hundredth year while on the pontifical throne. He did not feel satisfied with Frederick's excuses, and he obliged him to embark in order to rid Italy of his presence. The Emperor departed, but returned a few days after, giving as his excuse a serious illness, which had made it impossible for him to go farther. Gregory anathematized him, and Frederick thought it more prudent this time to make the journey to Jerusalem (1228). When he arrived in the Holy City, which had been offered and granted to him by a treaty with the Sultan of Egypt, he took in his own hands the crown which no priest dared to place upon his excommunicated head. He soon found out why his absence had been so much desired in Italy.

The second Lombard league, formed about the year 1226, was quietly gaining strength, and his father-in-law, John of Brienne, a soldier in the employ of the Holy See, was leading his forces into the kingdom of Sicily. Frederick, on his return, gathered his Saracens together, drove out John of Brienne, and held a diet at Ravenna, in which he won over to his party Eccelino da Romano, lord of Verona and the most dreaded of the nobles of the Mark Treviso. He thought then that he had restored peace to the north, and he caused it to be preached by the monk John of Vicenza. All he asked for was the repose which would allow him to dwell in his palaces at Naples, Messina, and the "trilingual" Palermo, in the midst of his people, who were made up of Greeks, Germans, Normans, and Saracens, and in the midst of his court of artists, poets, astrologers, and lawyers. He was himself a poet, and wrote verses in a new language, the so-called lingua cortigiana, which was the language of his court.

He suddenly learned that his son Henry, King of the Romans, had revolted against him at the instigation of the Holy See. His indignation was roused, and he marched toward Lombardy with his Saracens, defeated his son, and gained the great victory of Cortenuova (1237), over the Lombard league. Ten thousand Lombards were killed or taken prisoners, and the carroccio was sent in derision to the Pope and the people of Rome. Frederick was now master of Italy, and he appointed his second son, Enzio, King of Sardinia, drove out from Sicily the Dominicans and Franciscans who had conspired against him, and was pronounced by his lawyers the living law upon the earth (lex animata in terris).

That the Emperor should make such a claim exasperated the Pope, who spoke of him as the "beast full of names and blasphemies," mentioned by St. John. Frederick, replying, used the names of anti-Christ and of the great dragon of the Apocalypse, and the struggle between the Church and the Empire broke out again with the same violence that it had shown on two previous occasions—due less to the passions of the two adversaries than to the irreconcilable opposition of the great principles represented by them. Gregory IX proclaimed Frederick deposed, roused up the towns of Tuscany and the Romagna against him, and offered the imperial crown to Robert d'Artois, the brother of St. Louis. The latter refused for his brother, and even reproached the Pope for "wishing, in the person of the Emperor, to trample all kings beneath his feet". The war brought success to Frederick. He conquered the Tuscans and the Romagna. The Pope aroused Genoa and Venice , in vain. Most of the towns tendered their submission. Gregory IX then built his hopes upon a council which he convoked for the year 1241 at the Lateran. But Frederick blockaded Rome, and ordered his ships, joined with those of Pisa, to attack the Genoese fleet which bore the council. The Genoese were conquered at Meloria, and lost twenty- four ships; two cardinals and a host of bishops, abbots, and deputies from the Lombard towns fell into the hands of Frederick, who had the prelates bound with silver chains. Gregory died of grief.

The Holy See was left vacant for two years. Finally the Cardinals appointed in 1243, Sinibald Fieschi of Genoa, under the name of Innocent IV. Frederick had divined what he might expect of him; "Simbald was my friend", he said, "the Pope will be my enemy". Innocent IV did not try, like Gregory, to convoke a council at Rome, but made his escape from that city and sent out from Genoa a demand to St. Louis, and then to the kings of England and Aragon for a refuge in their states. The man, before whom the whole world trembled, had not where to lay his head; one proof among many that his strength was neither in soldiers nor in fortresses. He decided to retreat to the town of Lyons, which was at that time practically independent under its archbishop. He charged the prelates to meet him there. The council opened on the 26th of June, 1245. Frederick had been condemned before, nevertheless he sent his chancellor, Peter of Vinea, and Thaddeus of Suessa, to present his justification. Peter maintained a silence that looked very much like treason, and let his master be deposed. Thaddeus, after a long and useless defense, vigorously protested against the sentence. "I have done my duty", said the Pope, "the rest is with God."

When Frederick heard that his crown had been disposed of he took it in his hands and placed it more firmly on his head, crying, "It shall not fall from my head until blood has flowed in streams". He called upon the sovereigns of Europe for assistance : "If I perish, you will all perish". He sent his Saracens out into Italy, while Innocent IV stirred up Lombardy and Sicily through his monks, appointed a new King of the Romans, and preached a new crusade against Frederick II. St. Louis vainly interposed in the furious contest. The event was at first uncertain; but when Enzio, Frederick's beloved son, was taken prisoner, betrayed in his flight by a lock of his beautiful hair, and kept in confinement by the Bolognese until he died, the Emperor's spirit was broken. He saw all his friends falling around him, like Thaddeus of Suessa and Enzio, or else becoming traitors like Peter of Vinea, who tried to poison him, and who, when his eyes were put out by the Emperor's order, dashed his brains out against a wall. He thought of submitting, and begged St. Louis to intercede for him with the Pope; he offered to abdicate, to go and die in the Holy Land; he consented to the division of Germany and Sicily provided they should be given to his legitimate children. Innocent did not swerve from his course of annihilating that "race of vipers" and conquering Sicily; he was inexorable. The Emperor, broken in spirit and sick with rage, summoned more Saracens from Africa to avenge himself on Rome; he almost called upon the Mongolians and Turks. Ec- celino da Romano, tyrant of Padua, tried to force his way through to Frederick with fearful carnage, but the sudden death of the Emperor at Fiorentino, in Apulia (December 13, 1250), spared Italy a last struggle, which would have reached a paroxysm of fury. It also brought about the fall of the German power and imperial authority in Italy. A new era began for the Peninsula, an era of independence.

BOOK VII

THE CRUSADES (1095-1250)