MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK III.

HENRY VI—PHILIP—OTHO IV.

CHAPTER X.

PHILIP - OTHO IV. [1198—1213.

Papal Measures of Innocent III—In Church—In Spain—In France—In Fngland—In Denmark—In Scandinavia—Creation of Livonian Bishopric—Of Prussian— Conduct in Poland—In Hungary—In Servia and Bulgaria.

Amongst the remarkable mediaeval characters, whom it is one object of the present volumes to place before the British public, none was more widely influential, for good or for evil, upon his own times, none can still be more momentously interesting, alike to Protestant as to Romanist, to politician—he is called the founder of the Papal temporal sovereignty—as to psychologist, than Innocent III. To his exercise of that influence, and his endeavours to carry out his beautifully as loftily spiritual theory of the papal office our attention is now to be turned. And, as the discrepancies, ultimately apparent, between his opinions and his practice relative to heresy, at least to the heresy then prevalent in the south of France, are at once the result of that theory and the proof of its illusiveness, they must be reserved for the last: the present chapter being dedicated to the Pope’s intercourse with temporal rulers. But his views of church discipline forming part of his theory of the papacy, whence his whole conduct emanated, with those views it will be best to begin.

Innocent’s opinion of the absolute and entire supremacy of spiritual authority over temporal power, was, as before said, as complete as Gregory VII’s, probably more so, as being more developed. He held it to be indisputable as that of mind over body, but, like that, to be inforced solely by spiritual means ; a control analogous to a wise and revered father’s over rash and inexperienced, independent sons. Happy it might perhaps have been for his contemporaries, could such a parental control over violence and ambition have been practicable. But when did the merely moral control of a father, supply the place of bitter experience, with actually independent, headstrong sons? And could it have been efficient, who was to insure a succession of Innocent III? The use made of the portion of authority he bequeathed to his successors, will appear even in these volumes. The power and authority, which Innocent so nicely and carefully discriminated from each other, his successors, imitating Gregory VII, grasped at as identical; thus seeking despotism over the whole Church, even more than over the laity. The consequence of Gregory’s making the Pope all in all, and extinguishing intermediary, subordinate authorities, in order to render every relation direct with the Head, has been seen, in the relapse of the degraded prelacy, with some few memorable exceptions, into all the vices, the simony, violence, extortion, and other unclerical sins, that had, in time past, aroused the reforming zeal of Henry III, of Leo IX, and of Hildebrand himself.

Innocent, with a more enlarged horizon, saw and avoided this blunder. He, whilst he maintained his own absolute supremacy, sought to enhance the importance and respectability, internal as well as external, of the whole hierarchy, by leaving the regular business of church government entirely to the regular, intermediate authorities; thus providing all with duties, and the episcopal office, especially, with fitting and dignified occupation. He opposed all exemptions of monasteries from diocesan superintendence; and required from every bishop, the strict and uninterrupted discharge of his proper duties; the regular visitation of his diocese, and investigation of its condition, spiritual and temporal. He strove to rid the church quietly of objectionable prelates, by first denouncing certain offences and certain lines of conduct, even certain single actions, as incapacitating for the exercise of episcopal functions; amongst the last was named, witnessing an execution, probably as indicative of unapostolic hardness of heart, ill calculated to win the confidence of a flock. Next, by admonishing, and thus, as he hoped, correcting, the faulty prelate; or, should he prove incorrigible, by inducing him to resign his see without public scandal. He drew as close as possible the connexion between the bishop and his diocese, which he deemed an indissoluble spiritual marriage; condemning abdication of a see to take the cowl, as the desertion of high duties; setting his face against the translation of bishops, even against the promotion of a bishop to an archbishopric, which, without express papal licence, he held inadmissible. So strict was he in these points, that his early and valued friend, the Bishop of Hildesheim, having been elected to the wealthier and more important see of Wurzburg, he excommunicated him prospectively if within twenty days his new see were not resigned; and he deprived the archbishop who consecrated him, of the right to consecrate, the canons who had voted for him, of their suffrages at the next election. When appeased by the general submission, he, as an especial favour, permitted the Wurzburg Chapter to re-elect his friend.

Not only did Innocent exercise, as unquestionably his, all the rights respecting the nomination of prelates which his predecessors had wrested from temporal sovereigns, he went farther; he objected to the Emperor’s exercise even of those assured to him by the Calixtine Concordat, boldly averring, that no layman could, in any way, interfere in concerns of the Church. But these usurped rights he exercised wisely for the general, interest, authoritatively recommending, whether for bishoprics or inferior preferment, only good, pious, sensible, and often learned men, always persons well acquainted with the language of the country in which he committed Christian souls to their guidance; save, indeed, when he was deluded by the false reports of prejudiced, negligent, or corrupt legates. But, if Innocent resolutely maintained every papal right and privilege, he so tempered or modified them, as has been seen with respect to church discipline and the Greek Church, as materially to allay the inconveniences they were calculated to produce. For instance; he was particularly rigid in the matter of marriage within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity; inflexibly refusing a dispensation, unless required by some great political object, as in the case of Otho’s nuptials with Philip’s daughter; but he reduced the prohibited degrees, from seven, which they had originally been, to four. In like manner, whilst he resolutely maintained the Church privilege of asylum, he imposed various restrictions upon the protection afforded, as guards against the abuse of a right, designed to secure life and limb to the sheltered criminal, but not exemption from punishment. By his regulations the Church was to surrender great criminals, merely stipulating for commutation of the capital punishment they had incurred; fugitive villeins, on the other hand, she did not give up, until a full pardon was granted them. In divers ways he tempered the power of priests over their flocks, whilst confirming their salutary influence; and repressed the malpractices that were becoming daily more prevalent. He strictly prohibited the making either indulgences or masses a source of profit. He ordered Saints and Martyrs to be revered, and invoked as mediators, not worshipped, worship being due to God alone. He pronounced penitence indispensable to the validity of absolution; and so far was he from allowing enjoined penance to be regarded, either as evil to be bought off, or as means of extorting money in the shape of commutation that he treated permission to do penance, as a favour to be solicited, and conditionally granted. So, for example, a Parisian usurer, being suddenly struck with the sinfulness of usury, and seeking means of expiation, was ordered by Innocent, in the first place, to announce by the public crier, his wish to refund, whatever he might have unlawfully taken from any one; and only the residue of his hoards, thus purified, was he permitted to employ in penitential expiation, i, e., in works of charity. Innocent pronounced good works to be no substitute for faith, although indispensable to salvation; and compulsory sin, a nonentity. He reprobated the use of the Ordeal and Judicial Combat, as presumptuous calls upon God, for especial interposition.

The pleasure this Pope found in exercising his keen and dialectically-trained intellect in unravelling legal subtleties, he seems to have indulged in, till it became an actual passion for administering justice. It has already been said, that thrice every week he presided in his consistory; and his superior excellence as a judge brought appeals from all parts of Europe to Rome, in numbers altogether unprecedented. But not only did he occupy himself with these appeals, and with causes of importance, he suffered his time to be frequently wasted upon points of casuistry and church discipline, upon questions touching church property and incidents of priests’ lives, often frivolous, and yet oftener already decided in the Decretals. One instance of the strange cases brought before the consistory may be worth giving. A rich and childless dying man was asked by a monk, whether he would be a monk of his cloister, and answering “Yes,” was forthwith clad in the uniform of the Order. In this garb he died, and the monastery claimed his possessions as those of one of the fraternity. A collateral heir opposed the claim, upon the ground that the deceased, when he took the vows, as of infirm mind, was incapable of any act. In proof of which allegation he stated, that, immediately subsequent to the dialogue reported by the monk, he himself had asked the dying man, “Wilt be an ass?” and had received in answer, as earnest a “Yes.” Innocent—need it be said?—adjudged the heritage to the relations of the deceased.

In reviewing Innocent’s conduct relative to sovereigns, it may be convenient to adopt a geographical, rather than chronological order, and begin with the western European peninsula. Here he had to deal, in the first place, with a case of wedlock within the prohibited degrees, contracted as a mean of reconciliation between Christian states, but without a papal dispensation. The marriage of the King of Leon to Berengaria, eldest daughter of the King of Castile, was the pledge of peace between the long-hostile monarchs, who were first cousins: and besides answering this political purpose, proved fruitful and happy. Had a dispensation been solicited when the idea occurred, there can be no doubt that any Pope, acting upon Innocent’s avowed principles, would have granted it. But the nuptials having been celebrated in defiance of the canon law, Innocent, upon assuming the papacy, pronounced the union incestuous and sinful, therefore null; and its off­spring illegitimate. He commanded the wedded pair to separate. Both kings resisted; the Castilian refused to give up the places he held in trust as his daughter’s dower, the Leonese to sacrifice his domestic happiness and the rights of his children. Innocent excommunicated all parties; and when that failed to compel obedience, laid Leon under an interdict: Castile escaped this infliction, by the King’s so far yielding, as to profess his readiness to take back his daughter. Alfonso now tried to negotiate, and alleviate the threatened evil, by making the recognition of his children’s legitimacy the price of compliance: but Innocent would listen to no conditions, insisting upon implicit obedience. The struggle lasted until 1204, when the high-minded Berengaria, grieved by the distress and the immorality, consequent upon the privation of the rites of religion throughout the kingdom, sacrificed herself to the public good. She left the court of Leon, left her husband and her five children, and, retiring to her father’s dominions, calmly exchanged the title of queen, for the ignominious designation of an unmarried mother. Innocent rewarded her submission, by freely granting what he had refused to her husband’s diplomacy; he immediately pronounced her children legitimate. The Estates of Leon then prospectively swore allegiance to her eldest son, who afterwards, upon her only brothers death, permanently united Leon and Castile, and was canonized as Saint Ferdinand.

Tw o other royal marriages in the peninsula, within the prohibited degrees, and for which no such need existed, Innocent authoritatively prevented. One of these, occurring at a somewhat later period, was between Berengaria’s brother, Henry I of Castile, and a Portuguese princess, to whom he w as affianced, and who was already on her way to his court, as his bride; the other, between Pedro II of Aragon and Blanche of Navarre, both of whom were bound by oath to complete their engagement. In both cases the Pope’s command was implicitly obeyed.

Pedro, upon this derangement of his matrimonial scheme, turned his thoughts to the aggrandizement of his dominions. He projected conquests from the Spanish Moors, but he was too small a potentate to attack them single handed, and, for the moment, a peninsular confederacy against them was impracticable. He then conceived a strange idea, inspired perhaps by his devotion, great, after the fashion of an age that held devotion quite consistent with reckless profligacy and ambition. This idea was that he could raise the dignity, whilst insuring the safety of his kingdom, and even increase his royal authority, which the rights and privileges of nobles and municipalities mortifyingly fettered, by holding his crown in vassalage of the Pope. To this end he set out for Rome, taking his way through the south of France. There he mediated a peace between his kinsman the Earl of Provence—the Earl of Barcelona who married the heiress of Provence had bequeathed her county to their younger son—and the hostile members of his family; and there he fell in love with Mary, only child and heiress of the Earl of Montpellier. The obstacles to the King’s marriage with this lady, appeared to be at least as insuperable as those which had caused the rupture of his contract to Blanche of Navarre, Mary of Montpellier being the wife of the Earl of Comminges, and mother, by him, of two children. But her marriage would seem not to have been a happy one; both parties wished to break their matrimonial shackles—in order, he to be free, she to be a Queen—and a sufficient degree of consanguinity being made out, Innocent annulled the marriage. The King espoused the enfranchised heiress, and prosecuted his journey to Rome, with a greatly augmented train of vassals. He embarked at Marseilles for Genoa; whence five of the republic’s galleys conveyed him and his suite to Ostia. Innocent, who well knew the purpose of his visit, and was prompt to encourage what coincided so happily with his own, of exalting the Roman See, had prepared an honourable reception for his royal guest. Two hundred saddle-horses, with suitable baggage-cattle and attendants, awaited the King of Aragon’s landing; cardinals, with nobles headed by the Senator, went forth in procession to meet and escort him into Rome, as far as St. Peter’s, where the Pope in person received him.

But if received in the grand Roman Basilica, not there was Pedro crowned; only emperors, or perhaps those already esteemed vassals of St. Peter, being, apparently, so honoured. Upon the 11th of November, 1204, the Pope, attended by all the cardinals then in Rome, and by all his officers, ecclesiastic and lay, repaired to the church of San Pancrazio. There, in presence of the whole papal court, of the Roman nobility, and of as much of the Roman people as could crowd in, the Bishop of Porto anointed Pedro, King of Aragon; after which the Pope placed a crown upon his head, and gave him the various ensigns of royalty, enumerated as, the colocium, (according to Ducange a tunic without sleeves), mantle, sceptre, globe, and mitre; all of which, together with the crown, were the magnificent present of Innocent, as suzerain. Then the King thus pledged himself: “I, Pedro King of Aragon, promise and vow to be ever loyal and obedient to my Lord Pope Innocent, and his Catholic Christian successors in the Roman Church; to preserve my kingdom in fealty and obedience to them; to defend the Catholic faith, and extirpate heretical wickedness; to protect the rights and liberties of the Church, and to maintain peace and justice, in all lands subject to my authority. So help me God and his Holy Gospel”

From the church of San Pancrazio the King, in his royal array, accompanied the Pope to the Basilica of St. Peter. There, in the presence of the same assembly, he laid aside his crown and sceptre, as surrendering his kingdom to the Prince of the Apostles; and the Pope, as successor and representative of St. Peter, by the delivery of a sword, restored it to him, as a fief of the Roman See. A picture in the Vatican, commemorates the transaction, as does a document, laid upon the altar by the King, in which he details his religious motives for this surrender, binds himself and his successors to pay a yearly tribute of 250 massemutlnes (a Moorish coin, oddly enough selected for a Christian King’s tribute to the Pope); and renounces, for himself and successors, all right of interference in ecclesiastical elections. Innocent rewarded him, by promising to make one of his sisters Queen of Sicily.

Upon his return home, Pedro found nobility and people alike indignant, at this degradation of their free and independent monarchy to tributary vassalage. The Cortesof Aragon solemnly protested against the transaction, and so little power did Aragonese monarchs possess, that this act, attributed to mistaken piety, was never deemed valid. Its only result was securing Innocent’s personal good will and indulgence to Pedro; even inducing him to overlook subsequent deviations from his engagements relative to ecclesiastical elections, and his interference in behalf of his heresy or heretic-tolerating, brother-in-law,—of which hereafter—though not to sanction his divorcing his Queen when tired of her.

In Portugal and Navarre, with the exception of the above-mentioned inadmissible matrimonial contracts, nothing had occurred to require especial papal intervention. But the former kingdom was indebted to Innocent for the decision of a long-standing contest between the Archbishops of Braga and of Compostella, for the primacy of Portugal. He decided, according to reason and justice, in favour of the Portuguese prelate; thus giving Portugal a national Primate.

In France, Innocent found the King in actual rebellion against papal authority. Celestin III had, as before said, required Philip II to prove his allegations of consanguinity between his deceased wife and Ingeborg, before he presumed to disown his second marriage. In utter disregard of which reasonable requisition, no proof of that which did not exist being offered, Ingeborg was still pining in a convent, and Philip had wedded the German Duke of Meran’s daughter, Agnes, whose beauty fascinated him, and who was generally acknowledged as his Queen. Innocent, immediately after his election, despatched Cardinal Octavian, as Legate, to France, with instructions to insist upon the monarch’s obeying the papal mandate, dismissing the highborn, deluded, and idolized Agnes, as a mere concubine, and taking back Ingeborg as his consort. By laying the kingdom under an interdict, the Legate excited such resentment against the sovereign whose conduct had provoked the sentence, that the powerful and self-willed Philip Augustus, deemed it expedient to submit, at least in appearance; and he adroitly averted the pronunciation of a more formally legal sentence, and of a formal yielding to the Pope’s decision. He removed Agnes from court, making her advanced state of pregnancy an excuse for her not undertaking a journey, so long as that to her native home. Then Philip ordered his horse, rode unattended to Ingeborg’s convent, bade her mount behind him, and so brought her to the palace, with little appearance of a royal entry. She was, however, acknowledged and treated as Queen; her brother, the King of Denmark, was appeased; and Cardinal Octavian, well satisfied that he had subdued the refractory King, and redressed the wrongs of the ill-used Queen, took off the interdict, and proceeded to Germany. There, in virtue of the second part of his commission, he was to investigate the conflicting claims of the Swabian Philip and the Welf Otho. 

But no sooner was the Cardinal-Legate gone, than Ingeborg was again imprisoned, this time in a royal castle, for yet stricter custody, and Philip had rejoined Agnes. It was only the early death—consequent, probably, upon mental anguish—of the illegal wife, in giving birth to her child, that prevented her being again proclaimed Queen. Ingeborg, friendless and insulated as she was, found means to transmit her complaint to Rome; and Innocent renewed his admonitions, commands, and threats. Long Philip continued obstinate, kept Ingeborg in confinement, and sought the hand of one princess after another, whilst striving to win the Pope’s indulgence for his connubial lawlessness, by submitting to his assumption of the sole authority in all ecclesiastical concerns, and by persecuting heretics—one, said to have been a painter, he burnt in 1204; and others later. But Innocent listened to no compromise; no concession in other matters diverted him from his straightforward course; and during this struggle, the Pope became more averse to Philip of Germany, from his alliance with Philip of France. In the end, the French King, finding that no Prince would expose his daughter or sister, either to suffer such ill usage as Ingeborg had endured, or to incur the disgrace of Agnes von Andechs, submitted. He, like Berengaria, obtained as his reward, the legitimation of his offspring by the cancelled marriage, even including the right of succession to the crown; and now he seems to have really reconciled himself to the ever-placable Danish princess, with whom he passed the remainder of his life, in apparent conjugal harmony. Danish writers, indeed, affirm that the harmony was only apparent, Ingeborg never being kindly treated—but the public and the Pope were satisfied.

Philip’s docility in church matters has been mentioned. With his alternate toleration and persecution of the Jews, who then possessed half Paris, or with his constant extortion from them, Innocent had no concern; and his intervention between France and England, requiring to be told in connexion with both countries, must be deferred till the earlier papal transactions with the latter kingdom, shall have been related.

Innocent, at his accession, found the lion-hearted royal troubadour occupied with broils amongst his French vassals, and schemes for the recovery of the French districts stolen during his captivity. Some larger scheme, possibly for punishing the French King’s aggressions by the conquest of France, is thought to have led Richard, in 1196 into negotiations with Henry VI, who, then in possession of Sicily and Apulia, was at leisure to entertain projects of the kind. Giving reality to the grant of the Arelat, was not unlikely to be a material step towards the execution of such a scheme; which may therefore have been Richard’s chief motive for bestowing, about the same time, his sister, the Queen-dowager of Sicily, upon Raymond Comte de St. Gilles et Toulouse, due de Narbonne, and Marquis de Provence,—in the last capacity a vassal of the Empire. In favour of this marriage, the English King and his mother not only resigned their claim to Toulouse, but restored, as Joanna’s portion, some provinces conquered from the bridegroom. The scheme, whatever its nature, was dropped. Innocent deemed the persevering and wronged, royal Crusader, entitled to especial favour and protection from the Church; and, both by argument, and by menacing with all her thunders, laboured, not always successfully, in his behalf. He indeed compelled Sancho VII of Navarre, to deliver up the lands and castles assigned his sister Berengaria as her wedding portion, by her father, Sancho VI, and withheld by Sancho VII. But he strove in vain to wring from Philip of France, either the peaceable restitution of his unjust conquests, or even apologies for his inexcusable aggression; or from the heirs of Henry VI and Duke Leopold, the repayment of the illegally extorted ransom. With respect to the last, indeed, it is evident that Henryks brother Philip, had he been ever so willing, was in no position to refund money, which Henry had spent in the conquest of Sicily; the release of the hostage, was the utmost that really could be expected.

But the papal favour enjoyed by Richard, did not extend to sanctioning or overlooking royal interference with the rights, claimed by a member of the Church. He obliged him to reinstall his illegitimate brother Geoffrey, in the archbishopric of York, of which Longchamp had deprived him for turbulence. But neither would Innocent, steadily as he asserted the dignity of prelates, tolerate their oppression of inferior ecclesiastics. The Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral was one of those which had become actually monastic, and potent in unity of purpose; where­fore two successive archbishops had endeavoured to transfer its prescriptive right of election, to a new Chapter of Regular Augustinian Canons, which, in connexion with a new Cathedral, they proposed to found. Archbishop Baldwin had obtained the sanction of Urban III, and begun to build at Hackington; but the complaints and representations of the old Chapter shewing the Pope that he had been misled, he recalled his sanction, and obliged the prelate to destroy what he had erected. Baldwin began again at Lambeth, and had installed his new canons, when the Canterbury monks attacked the mass of building, violently expelled their rivals, and utterly de­molished their dwellings. The Archbishop, favoured by the King, persevered; so did the monks, and Clement III confirmed Urban’s last decision; but Celestin III, yielding to the solicitations of Baldwin’s successor, Archbishop Hubert, revoked it. Upon Innocent’s election the monks again appealed to Rome; the Pope ordered a careful inquiry into the case; and upon receiving the report, revoked Celestin’s permission, ratifying the second decision that Urban, upon better information, had pronounced and Clement confirmed, in their favour. He ordered the Archbishop to raze his new Lambeth Cathedral and Chapter-house, and by his firmness compelled obedience.

But Richard’s qualities, good and bad, were not calculated to insure length of days; and with his death the scene changed. His end must be familiar to the English reader; yet characteristic as it is of the man and the age, and depreciated as is the Lion-heart by French and German writers, the inclination to relate it succinctly is irresistible.

Viscount Adhemar de Limoges, one of Richard’s French vassals, having found a treasure, sent, as in duty bound, a portion thereof to his liege Lord. But Fame, with her multitudinous tongues, had magnified this store of hidden wealth into something so incredibly splendid as to excite the fancy. Images of an emperor and empress, with their sons and daughters, all large as life, of molten gold, seated in golden chairs round a golden table, were spoken of as a small part of the treasure. That this was exaggeration there cannot be a doubt, there may as to how much. At all events, such a description enkindled alike the imagina­tion of the troubadour and the rapacity of the profuse and needy sovereign, still oppressed at every move by the burthen of his ransom. He demanded, if not the w hole treasure, at least the golden imperial family; and when the Viscount refused compliance, besieged his strong castle of Chaluz, where the object of his desire was understood to be preserved. The Viscount being absent, the garrison offered to evacuate the castle if allowed to carry away their private property; but Richard, apprehensive of some plot for smuggling away the images, refused the permission, bidding them defend themselves, for he would take the castle, and hang them all.

Upon the 24th of March, 1199, Richard, heedless as usual of danger, approaching the castle unarmed, to examine its defences, was hit in the shoulder with an arrow. In the first attempt to draw the weapon out, the shaft broke, leaving the barbed head in the wound. The rage of the army was unbounded. Whilst the King was in the surgeons’ hands, the castle was stormed and the whole garrison hanged, with the exception of the unluckily successful archer, one Gourdon, who was reserved for more painful expiation of his feat.

The unskilful surgery of those days terribly mangled the shoulder in cutting out the arrow head. Richard’s full habit of body, and total disregard of medical injunctions, naturally increased the inflammation consequent upon such treatment; and mortification ensued. When informed that there was no hope, he sent for the archer, and all anticipated the immediate infliction of the most frightful torments upon the prisoner, concluding that the dying King wished to enjoy the vengeance of his own death. These anticipations were confirmed by the words with which Richard received the dealer of the fatal wound, and which, it must be owned, sound unreasonable from a besieger, even if the suzerain, to one of the besieged. They were : “Scoundrel, what have I done to thee, that thou shouldst seek my life?” The unabashed archer replied: “You have slain my father, you have slain my two brothers, and would have hanged me. I am now in your hands; revenge yourself! I am content to suffer for having freed the world from a monster!’’ The frank boldness of the answer touched a responsive chord in the Lion-heart; and the dying King gave orders for the prisoner’s instant release. But the loyal affection of the army, and of Mercade,—the leader of a company of Brabançons in his service,—for their hero, and consequent abhorrence of him who slew that hero, were too passionate for obedience to what was thought extravagant generosity. Gourdon was detained, and after Richard’s death, hanged.

Meanwhile Richard, who during the last few years had, on account of his inveterate detestation of Philip Augustus, judged himself unworthy to take the sacrament, confessed to Abbot Milo, his almoner, and submitted to the penance enjoined him, nothing less than a scourging. Having thus expiated his sins, he was absolved, received the communion, and the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church were administered to him. He then gave directions touching both the affairs of the kingdom, and his own funeral, and on the 4th of April, expired, in the thirty-fourth year of his age.

That Innocent should entertain for the worthless John the same regard as for the lion-hearted Crusader, was impossible; but his desire to support Otho in Germany, and his dissatisfaction with the then still intractable, Philip Augustus, induced him, for a while, to look favourably upon the new King. John’s usurpation of the kingdom,—the heritage of his elder brother Geoffrey’s son Arthur, Duke of Britany, in right of his mother Constance,—passed uncensured, in virtue of the unsettled state of the law, respecting the relative claims of a younger brother and the son of an elder brother. His matrimonial delin­quencies escaped punishment: his divorce of his first wife, Havoise, heiress of the Earls of Gloucester, upon the always ready plea of consanguinity, was confirmed; and he was permitted to expiate his violent abduction of Isabella, heiress of Angouleme, the affianced bride of the Comte de la Marche, by building a monastery, and equipping, and for a year maintaining, one hundred horse­men in the Holy Land. The Pope mediated peace between England and France, and endeavoured to insure the loyalty of John’s French vassals, by menaces of excommunication and interdict in case of failure. He did not even alter this line of conduct upon the reported, though unproved, murder of Arthur, and the imprisonment of Elinor, Arthur’s sister and natural heir. Still less was he likely so to do, when Philip Augustus took upon himself to pronounce all John’s French dominions forfeited by his non-appearance before the Court of French Peers, summoned to inquire into the suspicious death of the young Duke of Britany. Even when the Pope’s zeal in behalf of Otho, or against Philip of Swabia, cooled, another motive induced him to persevere in this course of lenity. Innocent was then endeavouring to organize a new crusade for the recovery of Jerusalem, in lieu of that which had been diverted to Constantinople; and to accomplish this, peace throughout Europe was he knew indispensable. Again, therefore, he proffered his mediation between France and England, which Philip Augustus haughtily rejected, observing that he was not accountable to his Holiness in his feudal relations with his vassals. Innocent calmly replied, that he claimed no authority in feudal questions; it was with the crime alleged to have been committed, that he had to deal, the Christians not the Kings he had to judge. But notwithstanding the mild forbearance of this, perhaps somewhat Jesuitical answer, this new display of stubbornness in Philip—still sore at his inforced submission relative to Ingeborg,—would materially increase the Pope’s bias towards England.

This bias John did his best to counteract. He broke the agreement, concluded through papal mediation and under papal sanction, with Richard’s widow, Berengaria, touching her dower; withheld her allotted income, and left her so destitute, that the Queen-dowager of England w as driven to seek food and shelter under the roof of her sister, the Countess of Champagne. He withheld the Peter’s pence, paid ever since the Heptarchy, by England to Rome; he interfered with all ecclesiastical elections in a manner which, if only what the most devout Roman Catholic kings would now esteem their duty as well as their prerogative, was then generally held an invasion of Church privileges. And he oppressed the clergy high and low, even as he despoiled the proudest barons of their rights and possessions. As if bent upon alienating Innocent, when Philip, to avert the Legate’s decision against him, appealed to the Pope in person, John neglected to depute any embassador to Rome, where French bishops were waiting for his representative, whilst Philip was completing his conquest of the English portion of France, and then, as the price of peace, demanded the hand of John’s niece Elinor, the lawful heiress of England and nearly half France, for his son and heir. Still was Innocent lenient towards John; still did John more and more try that leniency. At last the cup overflowed. John violently expelled his illegitimate brother Geoffrey from the see of York; and, resisting papal intervention in episcopal elections, positively refused to admit, as Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Stephen Langton, elected, at Innocent’s authoritative recommendation, by the Monk-Canons of Canterbury, who were then in attendance at Rome, on account of preceding irregular elections, as such, disallowed by the Pope. This case, a double irregular election, was one of those in which the Pope claimed the nomination; and Innocent’s choice was, as usual, a good one.

Innocent’s patience was exhausted; and the murder of Philip of Germany, leaving his protege in that country without a rival, annihilated John’s strongest hold on his favour. Need the English reader be reminded how completely John had managed to change Innocent’s kindly disposition towards him; had provoked not only the laying England under an interdict in 1209, but a papal sanction of Philip Il’s claiming the kingdom for his son Lewis, in virtue of Lewis’s marriage with, not Elinor of Britany, but Blanche of Castile, daughter of John’s younger sister, though his elder brother’s daughter, Elinor, and his eldest sister’s sons, Palsgrave Henry, Duke or Emperor Otho, and Duke William of Lünenberg, with a brother and elder sister of Blanche herself, stood before her in the line of succession? In fact, Innocent’s warmest admirers must unite with the fiercest anti-Romanists in condemning his conduct in regard to England, his not only first supporting, but instigating the insurrection, caused by John’s silly tyranny; then, when propitiated by the King’s dastardly submission, and exaggeration of his father’s acknowledgment of vassalage to the Holy See, withdrawing his authorization of Lewis’s pretensions, and abandoning the insurgent barons to their fate. Philip regarded not the withdrawal, and Innocent died before the French pretender was expelled the kingdom. The difficulty of imagining any such deception by legates as could justify or extenuate this conduct, generates the fear that even with Innocent III, the object, establishing papal supremacy, ultimately hallowed the means.

Proceeding northward, the Danish monarchs will be found enjoying the same degree of forbearance on the part of Innocent as John; for which they, like him, were indebted to their close connexion with the Welf prince, whose pretensions to the Empire Rome supported. The troubles that gave occasion for both his intervention and his forbearance were created by a turbulent, natural son of Canute V, named Waldemar. He had been educated for the Church, ordained, and made Bishop of Schleswig: but upon the death of Waldemar I, rebelled against his cousin, Canute VI, claiming the crown as of the elder royal line. The Emperor, Henry VI, had favoured Waldemar’s pretensions, thus, by troubles at home, to prevent Canute’s supporting his father-in-law, Henry the Lion; and the Kings of Sweden and Norway, generally inimical to Denmark, had taken the same course. Ultimately, however, the rebel had been betrayed into the King’s hands, and thrown into prison.

Innocent, at his accession, protested against the captivity of a prelate, whose offence, according to papal principles, ought to have been submitted to the Pope. But he protested in vain; and he continued to protest, remonstrate, and threaten, without proceeding to harsher measures against the brother-in-law and supporter of Otho. In 1203, Canute, dying childless, was succeeded by his brother, Waldemar II, to whom Innocent renewed his protestations and remonstrances; again in vain. Waldemar, like Canute, deemed the Bishop's freedom incompatible with his own safety, and the kingdom’s peace. Still was Innocent forbearing.

In 1205, Waldemar, having lost his Welf consort, married Princess Margaret of Bohemia, whose beauty and goodness won her from the Danes the name of Dagmar or Dagmo,—literally Day virgin, but intended to signify virgin like the Day—under which she was long celebrated in popular song, as the tutelary spirit of Denmark, and is said, even at the present day, to be so in primitive districts. Both the piety and the kindly feelings of Margaret were wounded, by the prolonged imprisonment of a prelate and a kinsman. She joined her entreaties to those of the clergy, in support of the Pope’s remonstrances, and Waldemar could not say his beloved Day-Starnay. He endeavoured to guard against the evils he foresaw, by arrangements with Innocent touching the Bishop’s release. The Holy Father sent a priest to receive the prelate at the door of his prison, and—after obtaining from him, as the condition of his liberation, an oath to live quietly, and never visit Denmark, or any place whence he could endanger the tranquillity of the kingdom—conduct him safely to Rome. As a further security, the Pope solemnly denounced a prospective excommunication against the distrusted Bishop,  should he ever violate this oath. It was settled that his Danish diocese should, in his absence, be managed by the Archbishop of Lund, and his necessary expenses be defrayed out of its revenue. Bishop Waldemar took the oath required, quietly accompanied his appointed clerical guard to Rome, and, in obedience to the Pope’s command, fixed his residence at Bologna. But there he found means to open a communication with King Philip, as the enemy of his enemies, and watched the course of events.

Early in 1208, the Archbishop of Bremen died. Bishop Waldemar had, during his first rebellion, been nominated to that archbishopric by Henry VI, who had deposed the prelate occupying the see for confederacy with the insurgent Duke of Brunswick, and saw the advantage of supplying his place with a rebel against the ally of his own revolted vassal; but neither deposal nor nomination had taken effect. Upon the Archbishop’s death, however, the Bremen Chapter, whether in respect to that nomination, or in ill will to an often troublesome neighbour, the Danish monarch, elected the Bishop of Schleswig. But even this was not decisive. An internal feud, ever threatening to break out, had long been smouldering in the see. The two original metropolitan sees of Bremen and Hamburg had been joined, not amalgamated; and the latter, which as the older claimed superiority, being placed in a somewhat subordinate position, the Hamburg Chapter was in a constant state of irritation. Upon the present occasion, the Bremen Chapter had not delayed operations, even to communicate with the sister Chapter; which took fire, and, under the influence of King Waldemar, then master of Hamburg, both protested against the Bremen election, and elected an anti-archbishop, in the person of its Dean, Burkhard. The Bremen Canons despatched messengers to Bishop Waldemar, with the tidings of his election, whilst the Hamburgers and the King of Denmark appealed to the Pope, laying before him their protest against the Bremen act, and their counter-election.

It might be supposed, that the mere fact of Waldemar’s translation from another see, would have determined Innocent to annul his election. But he seems to have been kindly disposed towards a prelate who had suffered lay imprisonment. He deliberated with the College of Cardinals upon the validity or invalidity of the Bremen election, upon the compatibility or incompatibility of Bishop Waldemar’s accepting the see, with his oath, and King Waldemar’s safety. But whilst they deliberated the Archbishop-elect acted. Regardless alike of their deci­sion, of his own oath, and of his contingent excommunication, he escaped from Bologna by night, and fled to Philip’s court. At this juncture Philip was almost reconciled to Innocent, almost acknowledged by him; but he would not desert his brother’s protege. He wrote earnestly to the Pope on behalf of the fugitive prelate, whom he forwarded safely to Bremen. Archbishop Waldemar was well received there, and took possession of that half of the see, which, although the murderous sword of Otho of Wittelsbach soon deprived him of his protector, and the Pope pronounced that by his contumacy, he had forfeited his old, as well as his new see, whilst at Hamburg King Waldemar actively supported his rival, Archbishop Burkhard—with whom he was always at war—he managed to retain.

The interest that the yet ruder nations, lying further to the north, awoke in Innocent, greatly assisted to introduce them into the then scarcely more than nascent, European republic. Norway and Sweden, though each had an archbishop, had been jointly subjected to the government of the Archbishop of Lund, as a sort of Scandinavian patriarch. But he, engrossed by the concerns, spiritual and temporal, of Denmark, very imperfectly supplied to them the place of either an especial head or a legate; and no legate had visited them since Adrian IV, as Cardinal Nicolas Breakspear, was sent amongst them. In Sweden, though nominally Roman Catholic, though fully provided with ecclesiastics of all ranks, not only were the great body of the clergy, contrary to the discipline of the last 150 years, married, but the people still hankered after their old idolatry, neglected to have their children baptized, cared little for any church rites, and divorced their wives when tired of them. This was a state of things not to be tolerated by Innocent; but he saw the necessity of proceeding gently in the attempt to inforce the observance of church discipline. In the first instance he merely directed the Archbishop of Lund to exert his authority and everywhere exact conformity to church law and ritual.

Nor did he neglect the opportunity there offering, for the interposition of spiritual control, in important temporal interests. The Kings of Sweden had, by law and custom, been for some generations taken alternately from two royal houses, known by the designations of Bonde and Swerker, respectively the Christian names of the first king of each line. In the year 1205, the Swerker, then reigning, charged the four sons of his Bonde predecessor with plotting against his life; upon which accusation three were executed. The fourth, Eric, escaping to Norway, declared the inculpation false; a calumnious device of the Swerker monarch, to keep the crown in his own family, by the death of all Bonde heirs. In 1208, Eric returned to Sweden, to head an insurrection of his friends, reinforced by malcontents; whom, according to report, the king’s tyranny had alienated; and, although the Swerker was supported by his maternal relation, Waldemar of Denmark, they drove him and his creature, the Archbishop of Upsala, out of the country. The dethroned monarch appealed to the Pope, who sought information touching the merits of the case from the Danish king and prelacy. Whichever were really the aggressor, and the balance of probabilities is against the Swerker, the Danes answered that Waldemar’s exiled kinsman was both the rightful king and the injured party; whereupon Inno­cent, naturally prejudiced against Eric by his expulsion of a prelate, ordered Sweden to invite the Swerker back, re­inthrone him, and implore his pardon. The command was, of course, unheeded, and civil war raged. Two years later Eric defeated and slew his rival in battle, when, being rightful king, he propitiated Waldemar by asking his sister in marriage, and reigned in peace, recognised, upon due explanation, by the Pope.

In Norway, a different mode of insuring civil war upon the death of every reigning monarch, had been adopted. Neither right of primogeniture, nor preference of legitimate over illegitimate sons, nor even—though daughters were absolutely excluded—the right of son’s sons before daughter’s sons, being acknowledged, all the progeny of the deceased sovereign contended in arms for the crown. And licentiousness being often in rude, as in corruptly polished times, deemed a royal prerogative, the number of such pretenders was occasionally large. Late in the twelfth century, upon the death of King Magnus, such a contest had occurred; when the list of competitors for the crown was unexpectedly increased by the appearance amongst them of one Swerrir, an ordained priest, the reputed son of a blacksmith. Swerrir, disowning his father to brand his mother with infamy, announced himself as the fruit of her adultery with a former king. But Sigurd, one of the sons of Magnus, proved an overmatch for this child of two fathers, and possessed himself of the throne. Swerrir, unvanquished, if defeated, sought to strengthen himself against the next contest, especially amongst a class called the Birkbeiners, from wearing bark sandals. He had not long to wait. Sigurd was accidentally drowned, and now Swerrir, triumphing, by the aid of his Birkbeiners, over fifteen competitors, was King.

But Eric, Archbishop of Drontheim, refused to crown the apostate priest; Swerrir attempted to reduce the wealth and power of his see, and the prelate fled, taking refuge with the Archbishop of Lund. Personally safe under his protection, he had appealed to Celestin III against the new king, Whom he taxed with desertion from Holy Orders, and with bigamy. The Pope excommunicated Swerrir, who sent an embassy to Rome to vindicate his conduct, and his pretensions. The envoys are reported to have set out upon their return, accompanied by a Cardinal, as Legate, when the whole party died, poisoned, as Swerrir affirmed, by a priest, who had offered them hospitality. A Danish stranger brought Swerrir the papers of the mission, intrusted to him, he asserted, by the dying Envoy, as security for money he, the Dane, had lent him. From amongst these papers Swerrir produced one, that he styled a papal bull, revoking the excommunication and pronouncing him, Swerrir, rightful king, as the son of a king.

Swerrir now tyrannised uncontrolled, especially oppressing the clergy, and authorising every illegal act, by the production of a new papal bull; whilst Celestin interfered no further with Norway. But Innocent, upon his accession, if he did not precisely accuse Swerrir of murder and forgery, pronounced all the bulls he produced fictitious, the excommunication in force, and himself, the usurper, whether a smith’s legitimate, or a king’s illegitimate son, incapable of inheriting the crown, or, in the last case, of receiving Holy Orders. He armed the fugitive Archbishop of Drontheim with all his own spiritual weapons; he called upon the Kings of Denmark and Sweden to arm against the oppressor of the Church, and he exhorted the Norwegians to abandon a lawlessly intrusive tyrant. A bishop of the royal blood brought forward a son of King Magnus, as a rival to Swerrir, and again Norway was a prey to civil war until 1203, when Swerrir died. He had managed to secure the succession to his son, Hakon, whom, on his death-bed, he charged to redress all his sins against the Church; and, what is more remarkable, than a dying sinner’s wish to atone for his offences at the expense of his heir, Hakon, upon the throne, made every restitution enjoined him. The aged and now blind Archbishop Eric, was so charmed with the young King’s conduct, that he hastened to relieve him from inherited excommunication. But in this the prelate exceeded the limits of his authority. Excommunication denounced by a Pope, could only by a Pope be revoked; and Innocent commanded the rash old man publicly to declare his revocation of the sentence invalid, and the King still under the anathema. He further commanded the sending an embassy to Rome, to testify that Hakon’s conduct merited readmission into the Church, and to solicit, as a favour, such readmission. He was obeyed, and immediately granted the petition.

Innocent flattered himself that the honour of bringing Russia into the fold of the Roman Church was reserved for him. Alexander III had, indeed, failed in such an attempt; but the establishment of the Latin empire of Constantinople having given him sacerdotal possession of the head quarters of the Greek Church, he enjoyed, as he conceived, a great advantage over his predecessor. He therefore addressed an epistle to the Russian prelates, in which he argued against their views of the dogmatic differences between the two Churches; and implored them to return to the true Faith. He sent a Cardinal as Legate to Moscow, now the sovereign principality, to inforce his arguments and exhortations. But the Russians were immovably attached to the Greek ritual: rejecting all communion with the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople, they sought consecration of the former Constantinopolitan, now the Nicene Patriarch; and Innocent, like Alexander, was foiled.

But in the very provinces, that, now giving Russia almost the command of the Baltic, then hostilely severed her from its shore, an independent Roman Catholic power was growing up, which, besides originating in German zeal, afterwards became intimately connected with Germany, and had already attained consequence and stability that claim attention. The origin of this growing power must be sought some fifty years back. About the middle of the twelfth century a company of merchants, citizens of Bremen and other Saxon towns, seeking traffic with the Heathen Livonians, Esthonians, and Lithuanians, suffered shipwreck at the mouth of the Dwina. They had to defend their lives, as well as their property, against their intended customers, the adjacent Livonians. They defeated their assailants and then, establishing a good understanding, drove a profitable trade with them ; for the future protection of which they built a fortress, the first rudiment of Riga. To this fortress-factory, in 1186, a zealous and judicious monk, named Meinhard, accompanied a commercial expedition, in order to attempt the conversion of the natives. He built a chapel in the embryo town, and there remained, seemingly inactive, until he had acquired the Livonian language. When thus prepared, he applied to the Russian Prince Wladimir of Polotzk, who claimed, though he could seldom exercise, sovereignty over Livonia, for permission to preach. It was granted, and so great was his success that the Archbishop of Bremen judged it sufficient to justify him in founding a bishopric of Riga, or Livonia, of which he consecrated Meinhard the first bishop. The new prelate dedicated his church to the Virgin, placed the whole country under her protection, and continued his missionary labours, delegating to one of his ecclesiastics, the discharge of the same Christian duty in Esthonia.

But however satisfactory to Bishop Meinhard and his Metropolitan the success of his teaching, the bulk of the Livonians were still idolaters; and even amongst the neophytes, the faith of many rested more upon veneration for the teacher than upon comprehension of his doctrine. Under his successor, Berthold, many relapsed into idolatry. This second Bishop tried to bribe converts by a distribution of meat and drink to all proselytes; and creditable is it to the Livonians, that bribery proved no equivalent for Meinhard’s virtues; the attempt failed. Bishop Berthold then had recourse to arms, to coerce these obstinate idolaters into receiving baptism, when the exasperated Heathen, in some measure countenanced, if not positively assisted, by the Russian Prince Wladimir, attacked his little flock of Germans and staunch converts. In the first instance they were evidently successful; but the Bishop placed himself at the head of the Christians, and repulsed the assailants. Berthold himself fell in the action.

The Archbishop of Bremen now appointed a Canon of his Cathedral, named Albert, Berthold’s successor; and the Abbot of Loccum accompanied him to his see, for the purpose of visiting the obdurate Heathen, partly as a missionary, partly to ransom or otherwise obtain the release of their Christian prisoners. Bishop Albert maintained possession of Riga, of which he has been called the founder because he greatly enlarged it, changing the fortress-factory into a fortified city. But on his arrival he found the condition of his church so critical, that he applied to Innocent III for support; whilst he, at the same time, sought, by presents, to conciliate the Prince of Polotzk, without acknowledging any dependence upon him as vassal or tributary. Innocent committed the Livonian bishopric to the protection of King Waldemar, who thereupon despatched a fleet under Andreas, Archbishop of Lund, to Bishop Albert’s assistance. The Pope felt this to be insufficient; and adopted for the support and advancement of Christianity upon the Baltic, a measure which helped to foil the grand object of his pontificate, to wit, the recovery of Jerusalem; thus more than renewing a hazardous example, promptly followed, and, by some of his successors, abused to merely temporal and selfish ends. Eugenius III had suffered the Duke of Saxony to vary the locality of his crusade. Innocent III almost invited Crusaders—who, having taken the Cross for the service of the Holy Land, found an expedition, necessarily so expensive, too heavy a burthen—to discharge their vow by serving the Christian cause nearer home. The permission was welcome to many classes of Crusaders. The indolent preferred an easier, the avaricious a cheaper, enterprise; the ambitious, one where conquests might be retained, without such an absence from all hereditary possessions, as risked their loss. Numbers flocked to Livonia, and this Crusade, the second avowing any less object than the recovery or the defence of the Holy Land, answered the intended purpose.

But Bishop Albert saw that this could only be a temporary or casual relief, whilst a permanent crusade, or an analogous army, was essential to the existence of his little flock. He therefore, with Innocent’s approbation, founded a new Order of military monks, upon the model of the Templars, save that, in his great need of champions, he appears not to have excluded plebeians from its duties and its honours. He designated them Ensisferarum, or Sword-bearers, (they were more commonly called Brothers of the Sword) signifying that the red cross upon their mantles was formed of two bloody swords; endowed them with one third of the revenue of his see, and became a member. Nobles and men of inferior condition entered the Order; it acquired strength, and the Sword-bearing Brothers preserved tranquillity in Livonia. By their victories over the heathen Esthonians and Lithuanians they protected the missionaries, who were labouring to diffuse Christianity along the eastern shores of the Baltic; and they were sometimes at war, sometimes in alliance, with the neighbouring schismatic Russians, whom Albert strove to win by presents such as his predecessor offered the Livonians.

A little further to the south, a new bishopric was not long afterwards founded. In the very opening of the thirteenth century a monk of the Pomerelian monastery of Oliva, named Christian, distinguished alike for learning, piety, morality, and meekness, a native of Pomerania and familiar with the language of the neighbouring Heathen tribes, had undertaken a mission amongst the Prussians; who appear to have, already, made considerable pro­gress in civilization. They are described as agricul­tural and commercial, acquainted with the use of letters, possessed of small towns and strong castles; and governed much after the manner of Highland clans, but with no supreme prince or king. Christian as preaching was as successful as his peculiar fitness for the task promised. In proof of this success, and partly in compliment to his Prussian catechumens, he, in 1214, conducted two converted chiefs to Rome, to be presented to the Pope; and by him, in person, baptized. Innocent was so highly pleased with the zeal of the good monk, and with the discretion by which his success proved it to be guided, that he at once instituted a bishopric of, or rather in, Prussia, and conferred it upon Christian, as really its creator.

In Poland the sovereignty of the Grand-Duke, over his brother and cousin Dukes, had sunk to a mere name. They all ruled as independent princes; separately invaded and were invaded by the several Russian princes, their neighbours; and, through their disunion, were too weak to retain their authority over Pomerelia, or to obtain any in Prussia. The name of sovereignty was nevertheless still an object of ambition, though a cynic would, perhaps, attribute the traits of self-denial about to be recorded, as much to the real insignificance of the contested object, as to patriotism or conscientiousness. The sovereignty had, it may be remembered, been attached to the duchy of Cracow, and, notwithstanding the diminution of this duchy’s power and consequence by the loss of Silesia, so remaining, was held by Lesco, Duke of Cracow. Vladislas, Duke of Great Poland, coveted this nominal sovereignty, and demanded its surrender; when Lesco, rather than shed Polish or kindred blood in civil war, or purchase a titular pre-eminence by the sacrifice of any of its, even nominal, rights, at once resigned it to him. But Vladislas, when possessed of the object of his desire, was touched with remorse for the injustice of his conduct, restored the sovereignty to Lesco, and swore allegiance to him. In a spiritual point of view, Poland very much resembled Scandinavia. The clergy were very generally married; in Chapters, sons inherited their father’s canonry, and church patronage, for the most part in lay hands, was by prince or noble used arbitrarily, with little regard to the fitness of those upon whom ecclesiastical offices and dignities were, it may be surmised, simoniacally, conferred; and who, or their heirs, were afterwards recklessly plundered. The higher clergy oppressed the inferior, who, on their part, revolted against the higher. Henry, Archbishop of Gnesen, an able and pious man, attempted to correct some of these abuses; and the result may be anticipated. The clergy, supported by princes and nobles, rebelled against him; even the conscientious Duke Vladislas, to whose duchy Gnesen belongs, persecuted the reforming Metropolitan. Henry fled to Rome, and Innocent, from personal intercourse with him, became better acquainted with the state of the Polish Church than his predecessors or he himself had previously been. He addressed an epistolary remonstrance to Duke Vladislas, the Archbishop’s persecutor, which, being in all material points just what a papal admonition should be, is curiously characteristic rather of the times than of the Pope, by opening with a play upon the words Dux and seduco, as untranslateable as puns usually are. He, moreover, invested the Polish Metropolitan with legatine authority, and, thus armed, sent him home to prosecute bis reforms more potentially. These measures were so far successful, that Archbishop Henry did not again encounter persecution; but he made little progress in inforcing the discipline of the Roman Church, which could not, till long after his and Innocent’s death, be said to be really established in Poland.

In Hungary, just prior to Innocent’s election, one of the cases then thought to call for papal intervention, occurred. Bela III, after being stirred by the remonstrances of popes and crusading princes upon his indifference to the interests of Christendom in the East, to take the Cross, and collecting funds to defray the expenses of a crusade, had died. His eldest son, Emmeric, was already crowned as his colleague and successor; and Bela, upon his deathbed, commanded his younger son, Andreas, to fulfil his crusading vow, Emmeric to give his brother the crusading funds provided. The heir more than obeyed his father ; he gave Andreas not only the treasure specified, but the bannat of Croatia and the duchy of Dalmatia, which he had himself held as heir-apparent.

Andreas received all, and diligently equipped himself, professedly for the crusade to which he was pledged. But his ambition grudged his brother the rights of primogeniture, and it was against him that, in concert with Leopold of Austria, he employed the means, for which, to him he was indebted. In vain had Celestin III, interposing, exhorted Andreas to redeem his own and his father’s plighted word, and set forward upon his crusade. In vain had Innocent more energetically inforced these exhortations. Andreas attacked his brother: civil war distracted Hungary; and Emmeric, whose filial duty had divested him of his father’s hoards, in his pecuniary straits, was tempted to seize church treasures.

The Saxon colonists in Hungary, a considerable part of the population, adhered loyally to the rightful King; and a number of the Marians or Teutonic knights—now first appearing actively in Europe,—who chanced to be in Hungary or the adjacent states, joined him. He therefore took the field, at the head of, what was then esteemed, a considerable army. Andreas encountered him at the head of another; when, according to some of the old chronicler a striking scene interrupted, if it did not end the contest. The two hosts confronted each other in battle array; but ere a blow was struck, the King, anxious to spare his people’s blood, stepped forward, clad in the regal dalmatica, crown on head, and sceptre in hand. There he stood, alone between the hostile armies, audibly and solemnly asking:—“Where is the audacious rebel who will dare to stain his soul with his sovereign’s blood?’’ And the rebel army, overawed by “the majesty that hedges in a king,” and charmed by the frank, fearless demeanour of him to whom all had sworn allegiance, threw down their arms. Andreas had no choice but submission, and Emmeric carried him off a prisoner. Critical modern writers substitute a more commonplace termination of the rebellion, asserting that a battle was fought, in which Andreas was defeated and taken. According to both accounts he was, soon afterwards, pardoned and liberated, as a reconciled friend. Emmeric was now master of Hungary, and free to chastise his meddling neighbour, the Duke of Austria.

Still Andreas did not proceed upon his Crusade, and, if not in open rebellion, was more than suspected of plotting his kind liberator’s overthrow. Innocent, who eagerly as fondly hoped to see the recovery of Jerusalem gild and sanctify the dawn of his pontificate, was anxious to secure the Hungarian contingent to the Crusade then organizing; and employed the Archbishop of Mainz, as stated in the preceding volume, to mediate a sincere reconciliation between the brothers, and urge forward Andreas with his Crusaders: further, obliging Emmeric to atone for his seizure of church treasure. But when, as the result of his mission, both Emmeric and Andreas—who had previously only been acting for his dead father—had taken the Cross, the seizure of Zara, in 1202, naturally indisposed Emmeric to any cooperation with Crusaders who had just robbed him of a city; feelings with which Andreas sympathised. In the summer of 1203, upon the occurrence of some new grounds for mistrust, the King again imprisoned his brother; caused his own infant son, Ladislas, to be crowned as his colleague and successor; and petitioned the Holy Father to inforce upon the Hungarian clergy the duty of supporting the royal child, and the regents to whom he should commit that child, and the government of his kingdom, during his Crusade. Innocent approved and assented: but in the summer of 1204, when upon the point of starting for the Holy Land, Emmeric was seized with one of the many diseases, then deemed incurable, and had to prepare for death instead of the expedition insuring his salvation. He caused Ladislas to be again proclaimed King; he released Andreas; saw him take the oath of allegiance to the infant monarch, and then, with an unsuspicious credulousness resembling infatuation, appointed him regent during the boy’s minority. He ordered, as a substitute for the immediate performance of the accumulated crusading vows, which existing circumstances rendered hazardously inconvenient, the payment of two thirds of the sum he had provided to defray his own crusade, to the Templars, for the service of the Holy Land. In August, 1204, Emmeric died.

Innocent solemnly exhorted Andreas to discharge the duties of the guardianship he had undertaken faithfully, and obey his deceased brother’s injunctions, touching the money destined for Palestine. But the ambition of Andreas was uncured by the checks it had endured. He was so evidently preparing to seize his nephew’s crown, that the widowed Queen, Constance of Aragon, trembling for her child’s life, carried off the baby King to Vienna. If she thus, perhaps, prevented the commission of a crime, she did not save her son. At Vienna a sudden illness ended his existence a few weeks after his father’s death; and Andreas was lawfully King of Hungary.

He governed better than might have been anticipated from his antecedents, to adopt a convenient Gallicism, and though he long evaded the fulfilment of his crusading vow, managed to keep upon good terms with Innocent. He married Gertrude, sister to the Duke of Meran, and it was at his court that the Bishop of Bamberg sought refuge, when, guilty or innocent of complicity in the murder of Philip, he fled from his see upon its perpetration. A part of Transylvania being at this time so habitually ravaged by the Kumans, as to be nearly depopulated, Andreas offered to endow the Teutonic Order with the province, in vassalage, upon their undertaking its defence against these Tartars. The new Order gladly accepted the proposal, and a number of the knights repaired to their estate, which, under their protection, was speedily repeopled. The Church of Hungary during this period appears to have been so orderly and obedient, that what irregularities did occur, Innocent remedied through the national prelacy.

Servia and Bulgaria were, at Innocent’s accession, really independent states, belonging to the Greek Church. Bosnia, on the other hand, though vassal to Servia, was Roman Catholic. This last country is said, notwithstanding some troubles relative to heresy, which belong to the next chapter, to have enjoyed such prosperity during the long reign of Ban (the title of the Bosnian ruler) Kulin, that even to the present day his times are referred to, as the ideal of good government. In the dominant state, Servia, the Grand-Zupan, or Zupan (the title of the Servian prince) Stephen, was at variance with his younger brother Vulcan; thus offering ambitious neighbours an opportunity for invasion, of which Andreas, whilst only Duke of Dalmatia and Croatia, failed not to avail himself. He first compelled Ban Kulin to transfer his vassal-allegiance from the Grand-Zupan to himself. Then he formed an alliance with Vulcan, whose principality he enlarged by a conquest from Stephen; and Vulcan, most likely in order thus to secure Hungarian support, professed a desire to exchange the Greek for the Latin ritual. Stephen, to guard against such consequences from his brother’s conversion, professing a similar desire, at once solicited of the Pope, admission into the pale of the Roman Catholic Church, and the title of king. The latter part of this petition was opposed by Emmeric, and Innocent hesitated. But in the year 1202, Emmeric, whether offended by Stephen, or tempted by his own ambition, listened to Vulcan’s offers, suddenly invaded Servia, expelled the elder brother, and installed the younger Grand-Zupan in his stead; but as a Hungarian vassal. He then, withdrawing his opposition to the regal title, requested the Pope to confer it upon Vulcan; which, not a little to the surprise of his admirers, Innocent did. It must, however, be recollected before condemning him, that the whole transaction, the brothers’ quarrel included, is very imperfectly known; that Stephen may, possibly, have deserved his fate; and that, in the Pope’s eyes, Vulcan had the great merit of being the first Servian convert from the Greek Church. The Servian clergy appear to have readily followed the example of their Grand-Zupan, and the Church of Servia, including the Bosnian, was subjected to the Hungarian Archbishop of Koloczk.

Innocent, at his accession to St. Peter’s Chair, received the similar request and offer of the Bulgarian chief, Johannice,—who, oddly enough, while soliciting regal dignity, entitles himself Imperator—and felt the value of Bulgarian friendship and cooperation to crusaders proceeding by land. But neither this consideration, nor that of reuniting schismatics to the Church, induced him rashly to sanction apparent revolt. He ordered the Roman archives to be searched, to ascertain whether Bulgaria ever had formed an independent Christian state, so as to be justified in rising against conquerors. He sent a priest, seemingly John of Matha, the charitable founder of the Trinitarians, into the country, to investigate the religious opinions and political condition of prince and people. Upon receiving satisfactory assurances, whether true or false, as to all these points, he pronounced Johannice, King of Bulgaria and Walachia  and, appointing Cardinal Leo della Santa Croce, Legate, sent him to crown the new monarch and regulate the affairs of the reconciled Church.

But Emmeric of Hungary, disliking such a multiplication of kings, and being upon indifferent terms with the new candidate for royalty, would not, until he received the Pope’s reply to his remonstrances, suffer Cardinal Leo to cross the Hungarian frontier into Bulgaria. Innocent was firm to a resolution deliberately adopted; and the now dying King well knew the importance of the Pope’s protecting friendship to his infant heir. He gave way; and one of the last acts of his life was granting the Cardinal permission to prosecute his journey. In September 1204, the Legate reached Ternovo in the Balkan, the fortified capital of Bulgaria, bringing with him crown and sceptre for the new King, and palls for the Archbishops of Ternovo and Zagora. He anointed and crowned Johannice; appointed the first of the two metropolitans, primate of Bulgaria and Walachia, and gave strict injunctions touching the observance of the discipline of the Latin Church, and the maintenance of peace with the Latin empire of Constantinople as well as with Hungary. How well the last injunction was obeyed has been seen.

CHAPTER XI.

PHILIP - OTHO IV. 1198—1208

Heresy in Western Europe—Variety of Doctrines—Innocent’s plan of Depression—Purification of Clergy—Zealous Teaching—St. Dominic—Murder of Castelnau—Consequences — Submission of the Earl of Toulouse.