MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK III.

HENRY VI—PHILIP—OTHO IV.

CHAPTER VI.

PHILIP . OTHO IV.

1197—1199

State of the Sicilies—Election of Innocent III—His Character — Views—Immediate measures—Death of Constance—Factions in Sicily—In Germany. [1197—1199

The Duke of Swabia was on his way to Jesi, thence to convey his little nephew to Germany, in order that an immediate coronation might confirm the boy’s previous election as King of the Romans, when, at Viterbo, he met the startling intelligence of his imperial brother’s death in the very prime of life. He paused to reflect upon the difficulties of his thus altered position, which were not lessened by the accompanying information, that he himself had been appointed, by the deceased Emperor, Imperial Vicar during the minority of Frederic II, in Italy and Sicily, as well as in Germany, where he already held the office. Philip, being invested, as Duke of Tuscany, with a considerable portion of the Matildan dominions, lay, like Henry VI, under sentence of excommunication; and he felt that, unless he renounced the duchy, his brother’s gift, papal enmity must greatly impede his measures for his nephew’s service. This consideration would strengthen his conviction, that Constance, both as hereditary Queen and as mother of the infant heir, would be better able than himself to conduct the Sicilian regency; whilst he knew his own presence in Germany indispensable, if the allegiance, of which he had so lately and so laboriously obtained the promise, was to be secured to Frederic II. To carry through the immediate coronation of the little King of the Romans, as arranged, would have been most desirable, but to convey so young a child so long a journey, with the despatch now requisite, and this through Italy, in the actual state of the country, he judged impossible. For the customary re-action upon the removal of a heavy pressure was already apparent. The news of Henry VI’s death had produced a sudden outbreak of tumult, sedition, and disorders of every description, all over Italy; the whole population seemed on the brink of insurgency. Philip determined, therefore, to leave the Sicilian kingdom to the widowed Empress, and hasten in person back to Germany, to secure, if possible, the fidelity of the German princes to their recent engagements with himself; but, perforce, deferring the journey and coronation of the infant monarch to a safer opportunity.

The Duke had good reason to rejoice at his determination, when he found even his unincumbered journey thick set with dangers and impediments. He had to make his way by actual force through mutinous rioters, through fierce broils, and, in effecting his passage, lost several of his attendants. He himself, however, got through, and found Germany much in the same state in which he had left central and northern Italy. Immediately after his own departure for the South, a false report of the Emperor’s death—the exaggeration most likely of his first seizure—had reached Germany; when the feuds and other disorders, then and there ever consequent upon the absence of a strong controlling hand, had instantly broken out. The falsehood of the report had been discovered, and tranquillity as suddenly restored; but the tidings, being only a little premature, had revived, as truth, reproducing the former consequences. The Duke of Swabia and Tuscany, on his arrival, found not only all his work to do over again, but more work to do; for cabals and factions were already forming for the exclusion of the almost unanimously elected, lineal heir from the succession. Vigorously Philip set himself to his task.

Before the Duke of Swabia and Tuscany had even reached the theatre upon which he was to contend for his nephew’s rights, the Empress had secured her own Kingdom to her son. Immediately upon the Emperor’s death she had sent for the child from Jesi, w here he had hitherto remained in the care of the Duchess of Spoleto; and in lieu of assuming the crown as hers by inheritance, caused him to be proclaimed King. The government she, however, took upon herself as Regent, in utter, and assuredly justifiable, disregard of Philip’s nomination by her deceased consort; but in consonance apparently with the wishes of Philip himself. Her task was not much easier than his. Henry VI’s tyranny had provoked, in her Italian and Sicilian subjects, a hatred of Germans so intense as to hamper all her measures. She found herself compelled to choose between the two nations, and naturally preferred her own compatriot and hereditary subjects. She, therefore, banished the Germans, including the Grand-Seneschal, Markwald von Anweiler, Duke of Ravenna, who thereupon retired to his domains in Romagna. But all the Germans had not duchies to which to retire; and numbers, endeavoured to make good their footing; distracting the Kingdom on both sides the Strait, with insurrection and bloodshed. Constance had, upon the Emperor’s death, solicited Celestin IIPs friendship and support; he required that she should preliminarily acknowledge his sovereignty, to which she had demurred; and a negotiation upon the subject was pending, when a new death complicated both her embarrassment and Philip’s.

In little more than three months, the aged Celestin III followed the prematurely cut off Henry VI to the grave, dying upon the 8th of January, 1198, and was succeeded by a pontiff who would have been a fitting antagonist for that able, ambitious, and little scrupulous monarch. Upon the assembling of the Conclave, a majority of voices declared in favour of Cardinal Giovanni di Salerno, whom the deceased Pope had recommended as his successor; but he, declining the arduous honour of the papacy, recommended Cardinal Lotario di SS. Bacco e Sergio, as better suited than himself to be the Spiritual Head of Christendom. Three doves are said to have hovered over the Conclave during its deliberations, one of which, a milk white bird, now settled upon the right hand of the designated candidate for the crown. The double recommendation by a Prince of the Church, and by a bird, the acknowledged emblem of the Holy Ghost, proved irresistible. Cardinal Lotario was unanimously elected, and, as Pope, received, in honour seemingly of the white dove, the name of Innocent; he was the third, who bore it. The first act of Innocent III was to entreat, by letter, the prayers of all Christian priests, imploring for him, from on High, enlightenment and strength adequate to the arduous duties of the exalted, important, and, above all, responsible office assigned him.

Innocent III, a younger son of the Conte di Segni, had studied scholastic theology and civil law at the most celebrated schools of those sciences, the Universities of Paris and Bologna. He had been much employed in the conduct of the temporal affairs of the Church by his predecessors, Lucius III, Gregory VIII, and his own uncle Clement III, and upon every occasion had been distinguished for diligence, ability, and success. These worldly occupations had not, however, so engrossed his time or thoughts, as to prevent his equally distinguishing himself by writings upon religious and theological subjects, and upon points of canon law. Thus trained and prepared, Innocent assumed the Tiara in the very vigour of manhood; at the age of thirty-seven.

This remarkable Pope has naturally been much compared to his remarkable predecessor, Gregory VII; by some with decided preference, by others with comparative contempt; whilst others, Luden being one, can see no resemblance between these two really master minds. In point of fact, the resemblance may be termed essential, the difference being the fruit of casual, external circumstances acting upon and modifying the original mental conformation of either; and a few words touching this difference may fitly introduce the statement of Innocent’s views, which must supply the key to his conduct throughout his pontificate. Commandingly powerful intellect, austere, as submissively uninquiring, piety, pure morality, firm self-reliance, and intense pride, seem to have been common to both. But the pride of the low-born Gregory was fiercely, impetuously aggressive, though capable of bending when expedient, that of the high-born Innocent—besides being probably the least intense of the two—was calm, unbending, supercilious, and conservative. Both were deeply imbued with the great papal objects of establishing the supremacy of the Pope over all lay sovereigns, and his absolute authority over the Church. The celebrated metaphorical illustration of the relative character and position of the Papal and the Imperial authority, by those of the sun and moon, was Gregory’s, developed by Innocent. But even these objects, which to Gregory had been a scheme of real, if not, avowed encroachment, had for Innocent become the maintenance and inforcement of an avowed though contested claim. Even their intellectual cultivation had been different, Gregory’s education having been, probably, somewhat limited, and, certainly, completed before the full prevalence of scholasticism. He had passed early from the school or cloister into active life, had felt the evils of indigence, had risen slowly from an inferior condition, and looked at all things in a practical light. He aspired to actual temporal sovereignty over the Emperor, whom, even whilst no doubt revelling in the humiliation of the Emperor Henry IV, he wished to see the Sovereign of all other European Princes, inasmuch as the greater the servant, the greater his master. Innocent, on the contrary, educated to the very highest degree then conceivable, was an erudite Divine, a subtly reasoning, scholastic theologian, whose peculiar views and opinions of the world, and of the papacy, are to be gathered from his writings, in which they are distinctly enunciated; and they have been so gathered and collected with careful diligence, by his admiring and conscientious, if not very eloquent biographer, Hurter—the authority here chiefly relied upon respecting this great Pope.

Innocent’s view’s of the world are characterized, if not by gloomy asceticism, yet by a natural inborn melancholy, tempering pride, and by enthusiasm. Man, physically and morally,—in the origin, structure, and wants of his body, in his desires and pursuits, his love, his ambition, his avarice,—he thoroughly disdained. He took the various sufferings of humanity as so many demonstrations of the worthlessness of life; and he saw, in religion, which, like St. Bernard, he reverently accepted as it presented itself, the sole object deserving a thought. Of the papal office he had conceived a beautifully sublime theory, the main defect of which is its utter impracticability. He considered the whole mass of mankind as constituting, or designed to constitute, one Church, over which the Pope, as the Vicar of the Redeemer, should preside. It was in this character of the Vicegerent of Christ, appointed to see His divine will executed, rather than as the successor of St. Peter, that Innocent claimed for the Pope su­periority to all worldly sovereignty; a superiority, through which the immutable Church and her Head would be a secure anchor to those needing succour, a terror to the wicked, a purifier of temporal sovereignty, a comfort in earth’s slavery. The Pope, without an atom of temporal power, was to exercise authority—Innocent always thus distinguishes power from authority—over all monarchs, even as the soul rules the body. With these views, and upon these principles, Innocent required the princes of the earth, not indeed to obey his commands in matters of government, but yet to be swayed by him therein, because the priest, unbiassed by selfish objects, whilst trained by study and holy pursuits, must needs be wiser than the rude warrior; and the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, the best judge of what is good for Christ’s flock.

This was Innocent’s theory of the papacy; and who shall say that, in days of so much lawless violence and rude ignorance, such a benevolently controlling, spiritual authority, partially supplying the place of public opinion, might not, could it have been exercised as conceived, have acted most beneficially? But, not to speak of his successors, often weak, narrow-minded, or inordinately am­bitious or rapacious men, Innocent himself could exercise such awfully immense authority only vicariously, or according to information received from his emissaries; and the course of the narrative will show that, with what anxious care soever he selected both emissaries and spiritual lieutenants, otherwise Legates, they were acces­sible, if not to corruption, yet some to seduction, and very many to prejudice; few acting up to, or even comprehending, his lofty views; and thus necessarily misleading him. Ay, and yet more, it will finally appear, that even he himself, by aiming at too much, often foiled his own principal object. Innocent strove to mark the difference between the authority he claimed, and temporal power, by the clerically humble character he gave his Court. He substituted sheepskin for ermine in the furrier’s department; wood and glass for gold and silver in the service of his table; and, in the attendance, monks for noble pages, who had formed part of preceding Papal Courts: but, on dismissing these last, he presented each with a sum sufficient to equip him for attaining knighthood. His meals were limited to three dishes; and from this frugal simplicity he deviated only upon great festivals, when noble household officers performed their proper functions, and the Spiritual Head of Christendom appeared in due splendour.

In order to exercise the papal office with such full authority, Innocent felt, that, to be master at home, and possessed of territory sufficient to insure perfect independence, w as necessary and this was far from having been his predecessor’s position. Clement III had purchased his admission into Rome by signing a convention that nearly annihilated his sovereignty. He afterwards managed, by intrigue and a liberal distribution of money, very considerably to enlarge his power; and, taking advantage of the known instability of the modern Romans, he seized the opportunity, when they were momentarily angry at the Senate, to persuade them to substitute a more pliable single Senator for that body; which he pensioned off, and thus freed himself from a really controlling magistracy. This increased power Celestin III had suffered to be gradually pilfered away by the governed, and the government really to be varied and modified at their discretion. Since 1191, Rome had been nominally ruled, like other Italian cities, by a Podesta, though called a Senator. This Senator was always a stranger to the city: but, in lieu of being papally appointed, was elected for a year or more; and, at the expiration of his term, re-elected, or superseded, and even imprisoned, as was Benedetto Carasomi, at the popular pleasure; whilst the Imperial Prefect tried to conceal his own nullity by concurring with, in lieu of opposing, all these proceedings.

Innocent’s first measures were directed towards remedying this state of public affairs. Circumstances, of which he ably took advantage, favoured him. And, if his measures were not always consonant to the expectations that might be entertained from so really high a character, it must again be recollected that popes, as well as emperors and kings, are to be measured by a mediaeval standard, not by the opinions of the 19th century; and that Innocent must have felt, yet more vividly in respect to the Papacy, than Frederic did in respect to the Empire, the preservation of its every right as his supreme duty, the duty being, not to his successors, but to Christendom.

The consecration and enthronement of a pope was ordinarily accompanied by a distribution of money. The treasure that Innocent found accumulated by Celestin, combined with his own simple and abstemious habits, enabled him to make this distribution ample, beyond all expectation. Hence, although by another act of unusual liberality he ordered that the Jews, who, according to custom, as part of the ceremonial, had presented him with their Book of the Law, should be included in the official distribution, the amount of the gifts received, won him, for the moment at least, all hearts. The whole population of Rome swore fealty to him, and, in this ebullition of loyalty, he obtained the acknowledgment of the papal claim to appoint the Senator. He immediately deposed the popularly elected Senator, then holding the chief magistracy in the Eternal City, substituting for him a Senator of his own choice. Innocent next sent for the Imperial Prefect, granted him a dispensation from his oath of allegiance to the Emperor—fortunately for the Pope there was no emperor at the moment—and alternately exhorted, ad­monished, persuaded, and threatened, until he prevailed upon him to renounce that allegiance, transferring it to himself, as supreme over all sovereigns. He then regu­lated the several administrative duties of these papal officers, reserving to himself the judicial decision of important causes and appeals, temporal as well as spiritual, which to receive, investigate, and judge, he three times every week presided in the consistory.

Secure at Rome, Innocent turned his thoughts to the domains claimed by the Holy See, and, as imperial fiefs, granted by Henry VI to his German followers. The principal of these grantees were the Dukes of Ravenna and Spoleto, the possessions of the former extending well-nigh to the gates of Rome. To him Innocent despatched two Cardinals, to demand in his name the immediate restitution of the property of the Church, usurpingly seized and bestowed upon him, by the late Emperor. Markwald, cunning as he was bold, endeavoured to elude the demand, and gain time; looking probably to assistance from the Duke of Swabia and Tuscany, when that Prince should be in full and undisputed possession of power as Regent; perhaps from the Empress also, who, though no German, must feel it desirable to support a vassal of her son’s, against the ex-officio enemy of his family and of all hereditary claims. But Innocent was not a sovereign, temporal or spiritual, to be trifled with. He excommunicated Markwald, released his vassals from their oath of fealty, and without much difficulty prevailed upon them, noble vassals and townsmen alike, to prefer the proverbi­ally easy yoke of the Church, to that of a rude, oppressive, and extortionate foreigner. Deserted by all, the ex-Duke of Ravenna returned to his Apulian county of Molise, of which, or of his office of Grand-Seneschal, Constance had not attempted to deprive him; and now, despoiled of his duchy, he saw in the Sicilian kingdom his best chance of fishing in troubled waters. The Duke of Spoleto, taking a different course, strove to retain his duchy by professing the most entire submission to the Holy Father’s commands, and his willingness to hold it of the Pope instead of the Emperor. But Innocent, who, as though imbued with the modern passion for exclusive nationalities, would have no German vassals, scared him away from Spoleto and across the Alps.

The new Pontiff, having thus recovered one portion of the Matildan dominions, turned his thoughts towards the principal part which has given its name to the whole, Tuscany. As a first step towards wresting it from Duke Philip, he excited the Tuscan towns to emulate those of Lombardy, assert their independence, and form a League for mutual defence, under Papal protection; further pledging themselves never to acknowledge any Emperor not approved by the Pope.

Not less resolutely than over Ravenna and Spoleto did the Pope assert the Papal suzerainty over the Sicilian kingdom. He required from Constance, as had Celestin, the acknowledgment of this suzerainty, and immediate attendance to do homage in person, or a solemn pledge so to do it for herself and her son at the earliest convenient opportunity; he required further the renunciation of the legatine authority conferred by the original investiture, the reception of a legate appointed by him in proof of such renunciation, and the additional renunciation of the extraordinarily liberal subsequent concessions, touching ecclesiastical nominations; all this he required as the price of his sanction of her son’s accession. Constance was very reluctant to transmit her ancestral crown to her son, denuded of any of its proud prerogatives; but her position was embarrassing, and she attempted a compromise. She now frankly acknowledged the suzerainty, and negotiated as to the rest. In the month of May, pending the negotiation, she had her child, the infant Frederic Roger, crowned, and most of the great vassals swore allegiance to him. This was a material point gained: nevertheless she still felt the Pope’s sanction and support indispensable to a safe and prosperous regency; and, in the end, she agreed to pay a yearly tribute of 1000 gold pieces, to do homage in person, with her son, taking the oath of allegiance, and to make the renunciations required. The triumphant Pope sent her, for her son, the investiture with her own birthright.

Constance did not live to see the result of her concessions, dying the 27th of November of this same year 1198; and although she was only in the forty-third year of her age, wonderful to say, in her case no suspicion of poison occurs. By her will, she appointed Innocent Guardian to her son and Regent of his kingdom; partly, it may be supposed, to avert his assumption of both offices as Lord Paramount, and partly from the same sense of difficulties, which his hostility must render inextricable, that had induced her submission to demands so revolting to her queenly spirit. She named the Archbishops of Palermo, Capua, and Monreale, and Gualtiero della Pugliera, Bishop of Troja, then Grand-Chancellor, a Council of Regency under the Pope, committing to them the care of the infant King’s person and education. Innocent accepted the trust, or rather left it doubtful whether he did so, or assumed the authority as Lord Paramount, not admitting the Empress-Queen’s right to give it. And upon this occasion he declared, that when the Vicar of the Redeemer of mankind and the Holy Roman Church undertook the parental office, every earthly loss was more than compensated. He discharged his duties as guardian and regent faithfully, and as zealously as might be compatible with his multifarious important avocations, and his constant absence from the realms he had to govern. For his royal ward he really seems to have conceived a sincere regard, and for his education he sedulously provided. He selected for him the ablest instructors to be procured, and he appointed a conscientious superintendant of their proceedings in Cardinal Cencio, afterwards Pope Honorius III.

In this posture of affairs ambition extinguished in Markwald every sentiment of attachment, or fidelity to the grandchild of the warrior Emperor, who first distinguished him, and whose death he had wept amidst a weeping host of Crusaders; the only child, moreover, of the Imperial giver of his lost duchy and retained county. He appears to have now projected the appropriation of the infant heir’s southern kingdom, though his first attempt was only upon the regency. He produced a document, which he asserted to be the duly signed and witnessed will of the deceased Emperor, Henry VI, appointing Markwald Duke of Ravenna, Regent of the Sicilies and Guardian of the minor King—in which appointment the Duke of Swabia and Tuscany had, he asserted, concurred—and further ordering the restitution of the Matildan heritage to the Pope, for whom the testator professed the profoundest veneration. This will, genuine or forged. Markwald exhibited to the Germans in Sicily and Apulia, who, despite all internal evidence of forgery, influenced probably by compatriot feelings, professed their belief in the genuineness of this testamentary paper, as really Henry VI’s, and supported their countryman, Markwald’s cause as their own. He now communicated it likewise to the Pope, soliciting His Holiness’s sanction of the appointment, and promising all submission to his supreme sovereignty. But Innocent at once pronounced the will spurious, and rejected Markwald’s pretensions. The ex-Duke, thus disappointed, varied his plan of operations. Letting the will drop, he now declared the already acknowledged and crowned Frederic Roger, a supposititious child, purchased by the deceased Empress of a miller or other person of mean condition; and, as a lapsed fief, he solicited of the Pope, the kingdom, for himself, offering in return 20,000 ounces of gold down upon the nail, and as much more when he should be master of Palermo, with double the annual tribute that Constance had covenanted to pay. These offers Innocent repulsed as execrable, refusing even to relieve Markwald from the excommunication under which he lay, save upon his entire and unconditional submission. Even whilst carrying on these negotiations with the Pope, Markwald had been intriguing at Palermo, to wrest the person of the infant King and the authority attached to its possession, from the Council to which the dying Empress had committed him. He had been intriguing at the same time with the Sicilian Saracens, naturally opposed to papal sovereignty, as likely to be intolerant of their religion. In the first of these attempts he failed, but so far succeeded in the last, that the Saracens con­cluded an alliance with him against the sovereignty of the Pope. This done, and unwillingly convinced that Innocent was not to be bribed, Markwald again changed his plan ; he abandoned the idea of rejecting Frederic Roger as a supposititious child, which was not likely to take with the Germans; resumed his claim to the regency upon Henry VPs supposed will; and actually sought assistance from the Duke of Swabia and Tuscany, upon the plea that, for supporting his right to the regency was he persecuted. He now left the care of raising a rebellion in Sicily to the Mohammedans, and returned to Apulia, where he began the civil war at the head of the Germans.

The kingdom was still distracted by three parties, contending for possession of the royal child’s person—which, enabling the possessor to act in the royal name, seemed to convey more real power than any appointment as regent could give—and by two other parties, yet more rebellious, attacking them. The Pope, occupied with the affairs of all Christendom, as well as with securing his authority over the papal dominions, could, of course, execute his office of Regent of the Sicilies only through the legates, whom he sent thither to act as his deputies; and they often displayed more zeal to augment his power, than wisdom or discretion, even if they are to be acquitted of worse faults. They early offended the prelates whom Constance had selected for the guardians of her son’s person, by demand­ing from them an oath of allegiance to the Papal See, and endeavouring to remove the little monarch from their custody. The Grand-Chancellor and his colleagues, exas­perated by this attempt, retaliated by striving to assume the government wholly to themselves, as the Council of Regency; whilst Markwald accused the Grand-Chancellor of designing to place Frederic’s crown upon the head of his own brother, the Conte di Monopello, and the Grand­Chancellor, with more apparent grounds, Markwald, of designing to usurp it himself. Two of these factions, the German and that of the Sicilian prelates, either alternately tore the royal child and the government from each other, or again, holding different towns and forts, ruled simultaneously over different provinces; and again, alternately submitted, when defeated, to the Pope, in order, through an easily duped Legate, to use his authority against a more hated adversary. Whilst the Papal party disowned the authority of both the others; and the Saracens joined either Markwald or the prelates against the Pope, or carried on a guerilla warfare against all three, ravaging and plundering the whole island. To the Baronage, both insular and continental, this state of anarchy seemed to offer another opportunity, too favourable to be neglected, of breaking the rod of iron of the early Norman kings, which, half broken in the hands of William II and Tancred, had in Henry VI’s grasp, if not controlled, at least cruelly annoyed them; nor were they neglectful. And as if these broils and civil wars were insufficient to ruin any kingdom, the Genoese and Pisans at Syracuse were fighting for possession of that city, one of those alleged to be promised them by Henry VI. This state of things lasted for some years well-nigh uninterruptedly, creating confusion and disorders indescribable. Farmers of tolls and receivers of taxes refused to pay rent, or cash in hand, to any party, upon the plea of not knowing to whom it was justly due; and all the contending parties were driven to raising money by violent means. Loans were extorted from merchants, from municipalities, even from churches; grants of land, fiefs, mills, privileges of butchery, and the like, were recklessly sold, or given as bribes, by the contending factions; and only the Pope had the moderation to limit his remunerative grants, his mortgages of tolls, &c.—his sanction was indispensable to such acts of his legates—to the duration of his own regency, submitting their further continuance to the pleasure of the young King, when of age.

Germany, meanwhile, was in a condition somewhat similar to that of Sicily and Apulia, though so far better off as to be a prey to two only, instead of a complication of factions. The Duke of Swabia and Tuscany, upon his arrival, made the most vigorous exertions on behalf of his nephew. That nephew’s election he treated as a complete and irrevocable fact; wherefore, instead of desiring the Archbishop of Mainz, or his substitute during his crusade, to summon an Electoral Diet, he simply convoked an ordinary Imperial Diet, to renew the oath of allegiance to the acknowledged sovereign, to fix a time for bis coronation, making all requisite preliminary arrangements; and, further, to confirm the regency to himself during the monarch’s nonage, according to the deceased Emperor’s appointment. But the professions and promises of co-operation that he had so recently obtained from the ambitious and restless Adolf von Altenau, the new Archbishop of Cologne, “made themselves air” when the pressure that had extorted them was taken off. That the see of Cologne owed an immense accession of territory to Frederic Barbarossa proved no tie upon the prelate’s gratitude. He had feared Henry VI, and promised to crown his infant son; he saw nothing to fear in the royal boy’s young and nearly untried uncle, the Duke of Swabia and Tuscany; and, without actually revoking or denying his promise, he alleged that the Emperor’s death, wholly altering the posture of affairs, rendered an Electoral Diet indispensable, the convoking of which, in the absence of the Archbishop of Mainz, in command of the crusade, devolved upon him­self and the Archbishop of Treves conjointly. The concurrence of this prelate he is said to have purchased, at the price of not less than 4000 marks; and, in their joint names, a Diet was summoned to meet at Cologne, not Frankfurt, upon the 1st of March, 1198, for the purpose of electing a sovereign.

Upon the 1st of March, the two Archbishops opened their Electoral Diet, and were unpleasantly surprised by the very small number of the Estates of the Empire, even of the spiritual Estates, present. But, how much soever disappointed as to the support upon which they had calculated, they did not relinquish their hope of now wrench­ing the sceptre from the Swabian dynasty of Emperors, and proceeded to look out for a competitor who might be successfully opposed to the already elected infant King of the Romans. The Welfs no longer appearing strong enough for this purpose, their choice fell upon Bertold, the opulent and powerful Duke of Zäringen, who had so lately been in arms against the young claimant’s deceased father. Him they invited to come forward, as a candidate for the vacant throne, with assurances of almost certain success; and, whilst awaiting his grateful acceptance of the proposal,—the Duke had not obeyed their summons to the Diet,—they hoped to see the numbers of the assembly increase.

But Philip, if disappointed, had not been daunted, by the opposition of the two mighty Archbishops, and was even then holding the Diet he had previously summoned at Arnstadt, or Erfurt, in Thuringia—for his Diet, not being electoral, might be held wherever convenience dictated, and appears to have moved from place to place in Saxony, so as to render it difficult accurately to mark the locality of every transaction. But, wherever it were, around Philip were gathered all the adherents of his family, all the princes who felt gratitude to Frederic I or Henry VI for fiefs granted them; all who respected their plighted word. Upon this numerous assemblage of the Estates of the Empire, Philip was even then calling to take anew the oath of allegiance to his nephew, as Frederic II, and to confirm his own nomination as Vicar of the Empire. But to his demand even this Ghibeline Diet hesitated to accede. They remonstrated that the child had been elected in reliance upon the prolonged life of a father, then in the very prime of manhood, at least until the son should have attained to years of discretion; that the Emperor’s untimely death in frustrating this expectation, really annulled the election by rendering it nugatory as to its object, namely, the providing the Empire with an efficient Head. Hence they inferred that Philip himself, as the only surviving son of Frederic Barbarossa was now the only person who could, as the representative of his family, be seated on the throne. Philip, virulently as he has been accused by Guelph writers of selfish ambition, of usurpation, and of treachery to the nephew committed by a dying brother to his care, appears to have honestly and resolutely opposed these arguments, pledging himself to exert, as Regent for that nephew, all the zeal and energy expected from him as Emperor. It was not until he was convinced of the absolute hopelessness of his efforts to obtain the recognition of the lawful heir, that, at last yielding, he accepted the proffered suffrages for himself. Upon the 6th of March, 1198, Philip was elected and proclaimed King, by the Dukes of Saxony, Bavaria, and Austria, the Margraves of the northern, eastern, and southern Marches, the Archbishops of Salzburg, Magdeburg, and Bremen, and several princes, bishops, and immediate nobles of inferior dignity. The Duke of Bohemia does not appear to have been present; but more faithful to his word, at least to its spirit as modified by his brother princes, than their reverend graces of Cologne and Treves, he instantly acknowledged Philip as King, and received from him, according to his promise, the royal title hereditarily conferred.

The two Archbishops, having by this time learned how much more numerous than their own was Philip’s Diet, despatched the Bishop of Munster to the anti-diet, as they deemed it, to warn the princes there assembled, against proceeding to an election which, through the absence of themselves, the principal ecclesiastical electors, must be irregular, and therefore, as illegal, void. He was likewise commissioned to invite them to a meeting at which all might deliberate in common upon their common interests. The Bishop found the election over, and returned with the tidings to Cologne. The Archbishops and their party were indignant; they pronounced the election void, as well from the absence of the three Prince-Archbishops of Mainz, Treves, and Cologne, as because no Electoral Diet had ever sat in Saxony; and they sent to press their previous proposal upon the Duke of Zäringen, who had not as yet returned any answer. Bertold had now apparently made up his mind; he accepted the offered crown; bound himself by oath to appear at Cologne, at the head of an army of Zäringen vassals and allies, upon an appointed day; gave two nephews, the youthful Earls of Urach, as hostages for his keeping his oath; and paid down the sum of 6000 marks of silver to defray past or future expenses.

But Bertold’s ambition, it has been seen, was of a cautious rather than an enterprising character, and at least equalled by his economy. He quickly took alarm at the number of princes who had acknowledged Philip; and he shrank from seeing his dominions, so flourishing under his judicious policy, again devastated by civil war. He did not appear at Cologne upon the appointed day: and finally, accepting from Philip a sum of 11,000 marks, as compensation for his expenses and pretensions, acknowledged the election of his successful rival as valid, and did homage to him for his duchy. It is added, that the frugal Duke, after irritating those whose hopes he had excited but to disappoint them by rejecting their offers, exasperated them further by the insulting message, that he desired not a purchased crown, and finally neglected to redeem his hostage nephews. They not only had to pay their own ransom, but were constrained by the angry prelates to swear to take the cowl. They kept their oath, and rose high in the church, Earl Conrad becoming a Cardinal.

The Archbishops, not disheartened by the failure of their first candidate for the Empire, sought for a substitute. They invited the Duke of Saxony to join them, with assurances that upon so doing he should be elected. Duke Bernard was a prudent elderly man, who, even had he been less attached by gratitude, inclination, and interest to the race of the Emperor from whom he had received his duchy, had he not just concurred in electing, just done homage and sworn allegiance to, the son of his benefactor, would hardly have risked his still contested duchy by grasping at a crown. Unhesitatingly as positively, he re­jected the invitation and the offers of the Cologne Diet.

Whilst these negotiations were in progress Philip’s position was daily improving. More Estates of the Empire, with many towns, successively acknowledged him, and hopes of his recognition, even by the Pope, arose. The Bishop of Sutri, a German by birth, crossed the Alps as Papal Legate, bearing letters from the Holy Father to the German prelates, charging them to obtain from the Diet and the Duke of Swabia—the Pope did not admit Philip’s right to his Tuscan duchy—the freedom of the Archbishop of Salerno, of Tancred’s family, and of the other Sicilian pri­soners of Henry VI. The Bishop had a separate commission to the Duke of Swabia; he was empowered to exempt him from the necessity of repairing to Rome, not only in person to solicit relief from the sentence of excommunication under which he lay, but even to take off the sentence, so soon as the captive Sicilian prelate should be at liberty, and Philip should have solemnly sworn to obey the Pope in all those points, disobedience in which had incurred the doom—an engagement evidently importing the surrender of the Matildan heritage. The family of Tancred, Philip had already released, in compliance with the earnest entreaties of his sister-in-law, the widowed Empress, in behalf of those so nearly allied to her, supported by the influence of his wife Irene, daughter in-law and sister-in-law to the captive Queen and Princesses. Upon their liberation they had retired to France, where the daughters married. The ex­King William is not mentioned upon the occasion, whence it is generally inferred that he had died at an early period of his captivity, unless by such as believed the tale reporting him to have vanished into an Alpine hermitage. His disappearance in one way or another from the scene, is confirmed by the claim to the principality of Tarento and  the county of Lecce, which was soon afterwards advanced in the name of his eldest sister Albina, as his heir, by her husband the Comte de Brienne.

The portion of the Legate’s commission relating to Tancred’s family was therefore forestalled. To negotiate touching the remainder, Philip met him at Worms, and at once promised to dismiss all the remaining Sicilian prisoners. So much did Philip, by his virtues and amiable disposition, gain upon the Legate at this interview, that, exceeding certainly the letter, though not, as he might presume, the spirit of his instructions, upon receiving this promise, without awaiting its fulfilment, he at once relieved the new monarch from excommunication, readmitting him into the bosom of the Church. Philip immediately released the eyeless Archbishop, and gradually the other prisoners, enjoining them all to present themselves to Innocent, in proof of his obedience. But the liberated captives thought more of one brother’s harshness than of the other’s clemency; and throughout Italy endeavoured, by the exhibition of their blindness and mutilations, to excite compatriot hatred against the family of Henry VI. Whether the Legate exacted, and, if he exacted, whether he received from Philip, any specific promise of obedience beyond the customary subjectionem debitam is another of the many disputed questions in the history of this period.

Philip flattered himself that the revocation of his excommunication, joined to his adversaries’ second disappointment in an opposition candidate, would produce a general peaceable acknowledgment of his election. He therefore abstained from hostilities; and though he caused Achen to be garrisoned for him by Prince Walram, son of the Duke of Limburg, he made no attempt to proceed thither for his coronation, waiting probably till the Archbishop of Cologne should, as he hoped, be disposed to officiate. This hope bid fair, as it seemed, to be realized, when the Archbishop of Treves, weary of unsuccessful manoeuvres, withdrew from the adverse faction; he did not, however, acknowledge Philip, merely remaining neutral.

But not so was Adolf of Cologne to be turned from his purpose. When he found that no really powerful German prince would stand forward against Philip, he listened to the proposals of Richard of England, in behalf of his favourite nephew, Otho of Brunswick, who, having been one of the hostages for his ransom, had upon his liberation hurried over to the English Court, and been invested with the duchies of York and Aquitaine, and the county of Poitou. The Archbishop now seems to have felt that his last chance of success against the representative of the Swabian dynasty, was to oppose him with a Welf; reduced as that family then was from its pristine preponderance. Palsgrave Henry, who would have been preferable as the elder brother, the most powerful prince, and a tried warrior, and through his marriage with Frederic Barbarossa’s niece, less repugnant to the Ghibelines, was absent upon the Crusade. The impatient prelate therefore accepted the younger brother, who had scarcely completed his twentieth year, praying King Richard to support them at the election with his presence; whether as a member of the Empire, in his character of vassal King of the Arelat, or having made himself such in that of King of England, by pleading in vindication of his conduct before the Diet, or simply as a powerful foreign friend of the candidate, is not clear. But the lion-hearted monarch’s reminiscences of Germany were the reverse of agreeable; and he judged it sufficient to send his nephew, accompanied by embassadors well supplied with money, to assist the Archbishop’s operations. Even thus reinforced, Adolf gained very few partisans east of the Rhine, but was more successful amongst the Lotharingians upon the left bank. The Duke of Brabant, in some measure the representative of the once potent Dukes of undivided Lorrain, and, at all events, the chief of the Lotharingian princes, was won by Otho’s affiancing himself prospectively to his daughter, Maria; the Earl of Flanders, next in consequence, was personally attached to the royal Crusader; and even the Duke of Limburg, whose son was then Governor of Achen for Philip, repaired to Archbishop Adolf’s Diet, to vote for Otho. At Cologne, this young Welf Prince was elected and proclaimed King; the Cologne Metropolitan being the only prince present, whose right of suffrage was indisputable, whose principality was finally and permanently established as an electorate. From Cologne, Otho, whom English money had provided with an army, hastened to besiege Achen, in order to compensate, by the perfect regularity of his coronation, the irregularity of his election.

Philip now saw that he must needs oppose force to force, and he assembled an army to relieve Achen. Ottocar of Bohemia brought his Czech troops to his support; and Philip Augustus of France, alarmed at the immense accession of power that his abhorred rival and vassal, King Richard, must derive from the possession of the Empire by a nephew, and of the Arelat by himself, eagerly con­cluded an alliance offensive and defensive with his name­sake of Germany. Thus strengthened, the Swabian Philip led his army with all convenient speed down the Rhine to relieve Achen, that, when it should be relieved, he might there receive the crown; but whilst he was upon the march, Prince Walram, influenced by his father, and by Otho’s lavish gifts or promises, surrendered the important city intrusted to him. Otho being now in possession of the ancient seat of the Carolingian empire, was crowned by the Archbishop of Cologne in Charlemagne’s cathedral. Perfectly regular, nevertheless, his coronation was not; the proper regalia being in Philip’s hands, his crown, sceptre, &c., were merely substitutes provided for the occasion.

Philip, finding himself thus foiled in his principal object, desisted from his expedition into Lower Lorrain, and determined to solemnize his own coronation. He had hitherto delayed the ceremony, in the hope of inducing Archbishop Adolf to perform his proper office; but now felt it could no longer be postponed without ceding an advantage to his rival; and, treachery having closed its established theatre against him, he resolved that the celebration should take place in that, which, except as the scene of coronation, ranked highest of all in public veneration as the metropolitan church of Germany, the Mainz Cathedral. The Archbishop being still absent upon his crusade, Philip tried to prevail upon the Archbishop of Treves to officiate; but this prelate, although he had refused to take any part in electing or crowning Otbo, would not so far commit himself against his former confederate as actually to place the crown upon the head of the Swabian Prince. Why one of the other German prince­archbishops, who had concurred in electing Philip, did not undertake the office of the refractory Cologner, is not stated; but it may possibly have been thought, either that the usurpation of his functions by one of them would yet more exasperate the mighty spiritual prince, whom it was so desirable to conciliate; or that it was desirable thus to implicate one yet a stranger to the transaction. What­ever the motive, the Archbishop of Tarentaise, in Savoy, a princely prelate of the Empire, though hardly one of the chief of the class, was chosen as his substitute; and, in the Mainz Cathedral, in the presence of almost all the German Princes, spiritual and temporal, east of the Rhine, and of the Bishop of Sutri, Papal Legate, he placed upon Philip’s head the genuine crown of his ancestors and predecessors.

The rival Kings now waged war on each other, with little result beyond inflicting great sufferings upon the subjects they desired to govern. Philip, indeed, endeavoured by rigorously punishing every act of violence to repress the licentiousness of his army. For instance, whilst he was besieging Andernach, a town that had declared for Otho, some of his troops broke into a nunnery of that vicinity, plundered it, outraged the nuns, and stripping one of them of all clothing, smeared her with honey, rolled her in feathers, seated her backwards upon an ass, and thus, amidst the grossest insults, paraded her about the camp. Philip ordered the offenders to be drowned in boiling water. His strict administration of justice, his protection of the weak against the strong, against even his own par­tisans, is said to have gained many to his side; but this gain was heavily counterbalanced by the defection of the potent supporter upon whom he had hoped he might rely.

Innocent III had not, indeed, declared himself for either King, both of whom he deemed irregularly elected; whilst he held himself, unless appealed to by one of the parties, not authorized to interfere in a matter so purely temporal, until a demand to be crowned Emperor, should make it his duty to satisfy himself that the applicant for the Imperial crown was the duly elected monarch entitled to receive it. But his bias was evidently against Philip, on account partly of that prince’s claim, as Duke of Tuscany, to the Matildan dominions; partly of the protection, however trifling, which Markwald’s misrepresentations had obtained from Philip—though that was little more than a prayer to the Holy Father for justice to him—and partly of his alliance with Philip Augustus; who, in contempt of Celestin’s injunctions, not only refused to live with Ingeborg as his wife, but had publicly married the beautiful Agnes von Andechs, daughter of the Duke of Meran; and resisted even his, Innocent’s, threat of laying the kingdom under an interdict. But most of all, perhaps, was he strongly, if unconsciously, influenced by the desire almost instinctive in the papacy, to prevent hereditary succession in the Empire. He taxed the Bishop of Sutri with having, through partiality, transgressed his instructions; and recalling, degraded and imprisoned him in an island monastery. He pronounced Philip to be still under excommunication, inasmuch as the revocation of the sentence, being contrary to his will and commands, was unlawful and invalid. And he courteously received, and answered, an address from King Richard, Otho, and Otho’s German and Lombard partisans, at the head of which last stood Milan. But, however courteous, the Pope’s answer was nothing more; it expressed good-will towards Richard’s nephew, but did not recognise him as King. No trifling proof of Innocent’s desire to act fairly between the parties, when all the anti-Philip influences, and the Pope’s high value for the lion-hearted champion of the Cross, are considered.