[Sidenote: The second Crusade.]

Conrad III, then, never was crowned Emperor. It was no fault of his that he never visited Rome. Bernard's influence caused him to postpone his immediate duties for a work which every Christian of the time regarded as of paramount importance. The first Crusade had met with a measure of success only because the Mohammedan powers were divided. The Crusaders were organised into the kingdom of Jerusalem and the principalities of Tripoli, Antioch, and Edessa. But they quarrelled incessantly. Meanwhile Imad-ed-din Zangi, the Atabek or Sultan of Mosul on the Tigris, extended his arms over all Mesopotamia and Northern Syria, and in 1144 he conquered the Latin principality of Edessa. The whole of Europe was shocked at the disaster. Pope Eugenius delegated to Bernard the task of preaching a new crusade. The young King, Louis VII of France, had already taken the Crusader's vow, but so far the earnest entreaty of his minister, Suger, Abbot of St. Denys, had kept him from his purpose. But at the Council of Vezelai in 1146 the eloquence of Bernard bore down all considerations of prudence. Conrad III was much harder to persuade, for he felt the need of his presence at home. But Bernard was not to be denied, and by working upon Conrad's feelings at the moment of the celebration of the Mass he entirely overcame the better judgment of the German King.

Events proved in every way the mischievous nature of Bernard's influence. The Crusade was a total failure. Only a small remnant of the force which followed either King reached Palestine; and the only offensive operation undertaken—an attack upon Damascus—had to be abandoned. Nothing had been done to break the growing power of Zangi's son, Noureddin, the uncle and predecessor of the great Saladin.

[Sidenote: The divorce of Louis VII.]

The effects were scarcely less disastrous in Western Europe. Suger supplied Louis with money and defended his throne against plots, and ultimately persuaded him to return to France. But during the Crusade Louis and his wife Eleanor, the daughter and heiress of William X of Aquitaine, had quarrelled bitterly. Louis had disgusted his high-spirited wife by behaving more like a pilgrim than a warrior; while Eleanor had attempted to divert the French troops to the aid of her uncle, Raymond of Antioch. Suger alone preserved some sort of harmony between the ill-assorted pair; but he died in 1151, and Bernard, who had never approved of the marriage on canonical grounds, lent his support to Louis' desire for a declaration of its invalidity, though Louis and Eleanor had been married for thirteen years and there were two daughters. The dissolution of the marriage was pronounced by an ecclesiastical Council in 1152, and in the same year Eleanor, taking with her all her extensive lands, married the young Henry of Anjou and Normandy, who two years later became King of England.

[Sidenote: Bernard as defender of the Faith.]

Bernard and Suger were friends; but while the predominant work of Suger's life had been the supremacy of the House of Capet, it is vain to attempt to trace in Bernard any prejudice in favour of a growing French nationality. He represents the cosmopolitan Church of the Middle Ages; and his career is a supreme instance of the power which results from an absolutely single-minded devotion to a lofty cause. In masterful vehemence he challenges comparison with Hildebrand; but unlike the Pope, he never identified the Church with his own interests. He steadfastly refused all offers of advancement for himself, although he did not dissuade his own monks from accepting preferment. He would have preferred to live out his life as the obscure head of a poor and secluded community; and even if the political condition of the time had not brought constant appeals for help to him, his duty to the Church would have made him a public character. For the work of his life which was perhaps most congenial to him was the defence of the doctrine of the Church against heretical teachers. He has been called "the last of the Fathers," and his whole conception and methods were those of the great Christian writers of the early centuries. To the great saint self-discipline through obedience to the ordinances of the Church was the cure for all evil suggestions of the human heart; while as for the intellect, its duty was to believe the revealed faith as propounded by the authorities of the Church. Like St. Augustine, Bernard did not despise learning; but he would confine the term to the study of religion. Secular learning was for the most part not only a waste of precious time, but an actual snare of the devil. Thus Bernard stood for all that was most uncompromising in the theological attitude of the time. Speculative discussion was an abomination; for the end of conversation was spiritual edification, not the advancement of knowledge; and what to strong minds might be mental gymnastics, in the case of weaker brethren caused the undermining of their faith. Against heretics of the commoner sort, such as the Petrobrusians, who impugned the whole system of the Church and appealed to the mere words of Scripture, there was only one line to be taken. But Bernard was no persecutor. During his preaching of the Crusade a monk perverted the popular excitement to an attack upon the Jews in the cities of the Rhineland: Bernard peremptorily interfered and crushed the rival preacher. Similarly with heretics. He trusted to his preaching—attested, as it was commonly supposed, by miracles—to convince the people; while the leaders when captured were subjected to monastic discipline.

[Sidenote: Abailard.]

But such popular forms of unbelief were merely the outcome of the speculations of subtler minds, which it was necessary to stop at the fountain-head. The arch-heretic of the time was Peter Abailard, who routed in succession two great teachers—William of Champeaux in dialectic in the great cathedral school of Paris, and Anselm of Laon, a pupil of Anselm of Canterbury, in theology. He gathered round him on the Mount of Ste. Genevieve, just outside Paris, a large band of students, in whom he inculcated his rationalistic methods. For his was a definite attempt to obtain by reason a basis for his faith. How could such teaching be allowed to continue unreproved by Bernard, who held that the sole office of the reason was to lead the mind astray? But in the height of his fame Abailard, still quite young, loved the beautiful and erudite Heloise. He abused her trust, and when she in her infatuation for his genius refused to monopolise for herself by marriage the talents which were for the service of the world, she and he both entered the monastic life. Abailard passed through several phases of this—a monk at St. Denys; a hermit gradually gathering a band of admirers round a church which they built and he dedicated to the Third Person of the Trinity, the Paraclete; and finally the abbot of a poor monastery in his own native Brittany. While an inmate of St. Denys a work of his on the Trinity was condemned at a Council at Soissons presided over by the papal legate (1121). It was twenty years before he was again subjected to the censures of the Church. But, meanwhile, he had more than once fallen foul of Bernard, and had not hesitated to flout with his gibes the one man before whom the whole of Catholic Europe bent in awestruck reverence. But the time came when Bernard, noting the spread of the Petrobrusian heresy, determined to strike at the source of these errors. He appealed for assistance to the friends of orthodoxy from the Pope downwards. Abailard determined to anticipate attack and desired to be heard before an assembly to be held at Sens (1140). Bernard reluctantly consented to take part in a public controversy. But when they met, Abailard, probably feeling himself surrounded by an unsympathetic audience, suddenly refused to speak and appealed to the Pope. On his way to Rome he fell ill at Cluny, where the saintly abbot, Peter the Venerable, received him as a monk. He made a confession which chiefly amounted to a regret that he had used words open to misconstruction, and he died in 1142 the inmate of a Cluniac house.

Bernard remained upon the alert, intent on checking any further spread of the teaching of Abailard's followers. But he had pushed matters to an extreme, and there were many in high place who resented his efforts to dictate the doctrine of the Church. Thus Gilbert de la Porree, Bishop of Poictiers, a pupil of Abailard, was accused at the Council of Rheims (1148) of erroneous doctrines regarding the being of God and the Sacraments. Bernard tried to use his influence over Pope Eugenius in order to procure the bishop's condemnation, and stirred up the French clergy to assist him. The Cardinals addressed an indignant remonstrance to the Pope, pointing out that as he owed his elevation from a private position to the papacy to them, he belonged to them rather than to himself, that he was allowing private friendship to interfere with public duty, and that "that abbot of yours" and the Gallican Church were usurping the function of the See of Rome. Bernard had to explain away the action of his party, and the Council contented itself with exacting from the accused a general agreement with the faith of the Roman Church, and this was represented by Gilbert's friends as a triumph.

Bernard's death restored the leadership of Christendom to the official head, and the removal of several others of the chief actors of the time opened the way not only for new men, but for the emergence of new questions. In 1152 Conrad III ended his well-intentioned but somewhat ineffectual reign. In 1153 Pope Eugenius died at Rome, to which he had at length been restored a few months previously. Six weeks later St. Bernard followed him to the grave. It was not long before the papal act ratified the general opinion of Christendom, and in 1174 Alexander III placed his name among those which the Church desired to have in everlasting remembrance.



CHAPTER VII

THE SCHOOLMEN AND THEOLOGY

[Sidenote: Secular Studies.]

Mediaeval learning, whether sacred or secular, was founded upon authority. The Scholasticus, who took the place of the ancient Grammaticus, was not an investigator, but merely an interpreter. On the one side the books of the sacred Scriptures as interpreted by the Fathers were the rule of faith; on the other side as the guide of reason stood the works of the Philosopher, as Aristotle was called in the Middle Ages. But until the thirteenth century few of his works were known, and those only in Latin translations. Here were the materials, slight enough, on which hung future development. The secular knowledge taught in the ordinary schools was that represented by the division of the Seven Arts into the elementary Trivium of Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, followed by the Quadrivium of Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy. The scope of the Trivium was much wider than the terms denote. Thus Grammar included the study of the classical Latin authors, which never entirely ceased; Rhetoric comprised the practice of composition in prose and verse, and even a knowledge of the elements of Roman Law; Dialectic or Logic became the centre of the whole secular education, because it was the only intellectual exercise which was supposed to be independent of pagan writers. In the Quadrivium—the scientific education of the time—Arithmetic and Astronomy were taught for the purpose of calculating the times of the Christian festivals; Music consisted chiefly of the rules of plain-song. It was the subjects of the Quadrivium which were subsequently enlarged in scope by the discoveries of the twelfth century. Apart from these subjects little attempt was made at a systematic training in theology. In so far as any such existed it was purely doctrinal, and aimed merely at enabling those in Holy Orders to read the Bible and the Fathers for themselves and to expound them to others.

[Sidenote: Scholasticism.]

Now the speculative intellect trained in dialectic had no material to work upon save what could be got from the Scriptures, the Fathers, and the dogmas of the Church; and Scholasticism is the name given to the attempt to apply the processes of logic to the systematisation and the interpretation of the Catholic faith. The movement was one which, narrow as it seems to us, yet made for ultimate freedom of human thought; for it meant the exercise of the intellect on matters which for long were regarded as beyond the reach of rationalistic explanation. There was much difference of opinion among the thinkers as to the limits to be assigned to such freedom of speculation on the mysteries of the faith, some starting from the standpoint of idealists and endeavouring to avoid the logical consequences of their speculations; while others, adopting so far as possible a position of pure empiricism, set tradition at defiance, and hoped by the aid of reason to reach the conclusions of divine revelation.

[Sidenote: Realists and Nominalists.]

The philosophical problem to which the mediaval thinkers addressed themselves is one that it is essential to the progress of human thought to solve. Whence do we derive general notions (Universals, as they were called), and do they correspond to anything which actually exists? Thus for the purpose of classifying our knowledge we use certain terms, such as genera, species, and others more technical. Do these in reality exist independently of particular individuals or substances? One school of philosophers, basing their reasoning upon Plato, maintained that such general ideas had a real existence of their own, and hence gained the name of Realists. But another school, who took Aristotle as their champion, held that reality can be asserted of the individual alone, that there is nothing real in the general idea except the name by which it is designated; while some of these Nominalists, as they came to be called, even proclaimed that the parts of an individual whole were mere words, and could not be considered as having an existence of their own. With the application of these definitions to theological dogmas we reach the beginning of Scholastic Theology. Here both sides were soon landed in difficulties. Nominalism, in its denial of reality to general notions, undermined the Catholic idea of the Church: in its recognition of none except individuals it destroyed the whole conception of the solidarity of original sin; while those of its professors who allowed no existence of their own to the parts of an individual whole, resolved the Trinity into three Gods. On the other hand, the danger of Realism was that, since individuals were regarded merely as forms or modes of some general idea, these philosophers were inclined to make no distinction between individuals and to fall into pantheism. As a result, the personality of man, and with it the immortality of the soul, disappeared, and even the personality of God threatened to lose itself in the universe which He had created. These tendencies will be clear from a short account of the chief schoolmen or writers on Scholastic Philosophy.

[Sidenote: Roscelin and Anselm.]

The first great names are those of Roscelin and Anselm of Canterbury. Roscelin (between 1050 and 1125), primarily a dialectician, rigidly applied his logic to theological dogmas. If we may judge from the accounts of his opponents, Anselm and Abailard, he took up a position of extreme individualism and denied reality alike to a whole and to the parts of which any whole is commonly said to be composed. The application of this principle to the doctrine of the Trinity landed him in tritheism, and he did not shrink from the reproach. Roscelin, a theologian by accident, was answered by Anselm who was primarily a theologian, and a dialectician by accident. If Roscelin was the founder of Nominalism Anselm identified Realism with the doctrine of the Church. But Anselm's Realism is not the result of independent thought. In his methods he has been rightly styled the "last of the Fathers." His keynote was Belief in the Christian faith as the road to understanding it. Thus his object was to give to the dogmas accepted by the Church a philosophical demonstration. To him Realism was the orthodox philosophical doctrine because it was the one most in harmony with Christian theology. He applied philosophical arguments to the explanation of those tenets of the faith which later scholastic writers placed among the mysteries to be accepted without question.

[Sidenote: Abailard.]

The reputed founder of definite Realism was William of Champeaux (1060-1121), a pupil of Roscelin himself, a teacher at Paris, and ultimately Bishop of Chalons. By the account of his enemy Abailard, he held an uncompromising Realism which maintained that the Universal was a substance or thing which was present in its entirety in each individual. It was the presence of such crude Realism as this which gave his opportunity to the greatest teacher of this early period of Scholasticism, Peter Abailard (1079-1142). A pupil of both Roscelin and William of Champeaux—the two extremes of Nominalism and Realism—he aimed in his teaching at arriving at a via media to which subsequent writers have given the name Conceptualism. According to him the individual is the only true substance, and the genus is that which is asserted of a number of individuals; it is therefore a name used as a sign—a concept, although he does not use the word. Thus he does not condemn the Realistic theory borrowed from Plato, of Universals as having an existence of their own; he regards them as ideas or exemplars which existed in the divine mind before the creation of things. But he opposes the tendency in Realism to treat as identical the qualities which resemble each other in different individuals, since that abolishes the personality of the individual which to him is the only reality. Like Roscelin he did not hesitate to apply his dialectic to theology. Here, while repudiating the tritheism of his master, he practically reproduced the old heresy of Sabellius which reduced the Trinity to three aspects or attributes of the Divine Being—power, wisdom, and love. "A doctrine is to be believed," he held, "not because God has said it, but because we are convinced by reason that it is so." His whole attitude was that of the free, if reverent, enquirer. "By doubt," he says, "we come to enquiry; by enquiry we reach the truth." His book Sic et Non, a collection of conflicting opinions of the Christian Fathers on the chief tenets of the faith, was to be the first step towards arriving at the truth.

[Sidenote: Mysticism.]

He was condemned twice—his doctrine of the Trinity at Soissons in 1121, his whole position at Sens in 1141. The leaders of orthodoxy met him not with argument but with a demand for recantation. St. Norbert during the early part of his life, and St. Bernard both early and late, pursued him with their enmity. Their objection was not to his particular views, but to his whole attitude towards divine revelation; and the conclusions in which the use of the scholastic method landed its advocates perhaps justified the rigid theologians in the general distrust of the exercise of reason on such subjects. St. Bernard did not hesitate to attack even Gilbert de la Porree, Bishop of Poictiers, an avowed Realist, who attempted to explain the Trinity. In fact, St. Bernard represents the reaction from Scholasticism, which took the form of Mysticism, that is, the purely contemplative attitude towards the verities of the Christian creed. In this he was followed with much greater extravagance by the school which found its home in the great abbey of St. Victor—Hugh (1097-1143), who formulated the sentence "Knowledge is belief, and belief is love," and Richard (died in 1173), who applied to the intuitive perception of spiritual things and to the love of them the same dialectical and metaphysical methods as the Schoolmen applied to reason.

[Sidenote: After Abailard.]

The results of Abailard's work are seen in two directions. His Sic et Non became the foundation of the work of the "Summists," who, in the place of Abailard's purely critical work, occupied themselves in systematising authorities with a view to the reconciliation of their conflicting opinions. The greatest of these was Peter the Lombard (died 1160), who became Bishop of Paris, and whose Sententiae was taken as the accredited text-book of theology for the next three hundred years. With the Summists theology returned to its attitude of unquestioning obedience to the conclusions of the early Fathers. But in the second place, Abailard was indirectly responsible for "the troubling of the Realistic waters," which resulted in many modifications of the original position.

[Sidenote: Classical revival.]

A justification for the attitude of the Church towards the followers of Abailard is to be found in the apparent exhaustion of the speculative movement which had started at the end of the eleventh century, and the consequent degeneracy of logical studies. It was a result of this that in the second half of the twelfth century many of the best minds were directing their energies into the channel of classical learning which was to prepare the way for the next phase of Scholasticism. Besides being a philosopher and a theologian, Abailard was also a scholar well read in classical literature. The cathedral school of Chartres, founded by Fulbert at the beginning of the eleventh century, was the centre of this classical Renaissance, and it rose to the height of its fame under Bernard Sylvester and his pupil, William of Conches; while the greatest representative of this learning was a pupil of William of Conches, John of Salisbury, an historian of philosophy rather than himself a philosopher or theologian.

[Sidenote: Origin of universities.]

It was in the twelfth century and out of the cathedral schools that the medieval universities arose. The monastic schools had spent their intellectual force, and during this century they almost ceased to educate the secular clergy. St. Anselm, when Abbot of Bec in Normandy, was the last of the great monastic teachers. But it was not from the school of Chartres but from that of Paris that the greatest University of the Middle Ages took its origin. Paris was identified with the scholastic studies of dialectic and theology, and it was the fame of William of Champeaux, and still more that of Abailard, which drew students in crowds to the cathedral school of Paris. But no university immediately resulted. Indeed, the Guild of Masters, from which it originated, is not traceable before 1170, and the four Nations and the Rector did not exist until the following century. Its recognition as a corporation dates from a bull of Innocent III about 1210. Its development starts from the close of its struggle with the Chancellor and cathedral school of Paris, in which contest it obtained the papal help. Before the middle of the thirteenth century the University had acquired its full constitution. But its great fame as a place of education dates from the teaching of the two great Dominicans, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas in the convent of their Order in Paris during the middle years of the century. This new outburst of philosophical studies was due to the recovery of many hitherto unknown works of Aristotle, and as a consequence classical studies were completely neglected and Chartres was deserted for Paris.

[Sidenote: Aristotle in the East.]

We have seen that the contemporaries of Abailard knew none but Aristotle's logical works, and these only in part and in Latin translations. So far nothing had interfered with the development of thought along "purely Western, purely Latin, purely Christian" lines. Churchmen who did not disapprove of dialectic altogether, had accepted and used Aristotle so far as they understood what they had of his works. Heretics there had been, but hitherto none had questioned the authority of the Bible or the Church. Meanwhile in the east a completer knowledge of Aristotle's works had been communicated by the Nestorian Christians to their Mohammedan masters. Greek books were translated into Arabic, and Arabian philosophy, already monotheistic, became permeated with Aristotelian ideas. Moreover, the union of philosophical and medical studies among the Arabs caused them to attach a special value to Aristotle's treatises on natural science. In Spain the Arabs handed on their knowledge of Aristotle to the Jews, and it was from the Jews of Andalusia, Marseilles, and Montpellier that the works of the Greek philosopher and his Arabian commentators became known in the west.

[Sidenote: Revival in the west.]

By the middle of the twelfth century the chief of these works—texts, paraphrases, commentaries—had, at the instance of Raymond, Archbishop of Toledo, been rendered into Latin by Archdeacon Dominic Gondisalvi, assisted by a band of translators. But the translations of Aristotle's own works were not from the original Greek, but from the Arabic, which laid stress upon the most anti-Christian side of Aristotle's thought, such as the eternity of the world and the denial of immortality. The result was an outbreak of heretical speculation along pantheistic lines. Swift steps were taken: the heretics were hunted down, and in 1209 the Council of Paris forbade the study of Aristotle's own works or those of his commentators which dealt with natural philosophy; while in 1215 the statutes of the University renewed the prohibition. But such prohibition did not include any of the logical works; and in 1231 a bull of Gregory IX only excepted any of Aristotle's works until they had been examined and purged of all heresy. Finally, in 1254, a statute of the University actually prescribed nearly all the works of Aristotle, including even the most suspected, as text-books for the lectures. Meanwhile fresh translations were made from the Arabic by Michael Scot and others at the instance of Frederick II, so that by 1225 the whole body of his works was to be found in Latin form. Further still, the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204 had brought back to the west a knowledge of a large part of Aristotle's writings in their original form. Translations were now made into Latin straight from the Greek; and Thomas Aquinas, seconded by Pope Urban IV, took especial pains to encourage such scholarship.

[Sidenote: The later Scholasticism.]

By this medium there was developed the great system of orthodox Aristotelianism which was the form taken by Scholasticism in the later Middle Ages. This was the work of the Friars, who, for the purpose of giving to their own students the best procurable training in theology, established houses of residence in Paris and elsewhere. The quarrels between the University of Paris and the municipality in the first half of the thirteenth century gave their opportunity to the Friars, and even after the settlement of the quarrels they remained and became formidable rivals to the teachers drawn from the secular clergy. It was only in 1255 that, after a severe struggle, the University was forced by a bull of Alexander IV to admit the Friars to its privileges, although it succeeded in imposing upon them an oath of obedience to its statutes.

[Sidenote: The change of position.]

It was the Franciscans who began this new intellectual movement in the persons of the Englishman, Alexander of Hales (died 1245), who was the first to be able to use the whole of the Aristotelian writings, and his pupil, the mystic Bonaventura (died 1274). But the scholastic philosophy as it is taught to this day was the work of the two great Dominicans, Albert of Bollstadt, a Suabian, known as Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), and his even greater pupil, Thomas of Aquino, an Italian (1227-74). The endeavour of these writers was to take over into the service of the Church the whole Aristotelian philosophy. It was a consequence of this that the old question of the nature of Universals was not so all-important, or that at any rate it ceased to be treated from a purely logical standpoint. The great Dominicans were very moderate Realists; but they treated Logic as only one among a number of subjects. Albert wrote works which in print fill twenty-one folio volumes (whence his name Magnus); but his fame has been somewhat obscured by the more methodical, if almost equally voluminous (in seventeen folio volumes) works of his successor. The result of their labours was a wonderfully complete harmonisation of philosophy and theology as these subjects were understood by their respective champions. This was brought about by the use of two methods. In the first place, the works of Aristotle on the one side, and the Bible and the writings of the Fathers on the other side, were treated as of equal authority in their respective spheres The ingenuity of the theologians was to be employed in harmonising them. It is, in fact, only from this period that "the Scholastic Philosophy became distinguished by that servile deference to authority" which we ordinarily attribute to it.

[Sidenote: Reason and faith.]

But, in the second place, any such harmonisation could only be carried out by some demarcation of territory. The earlier orthodox writers like Anselm, as we have seen, did not hesitate to attempt a philosophical explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity. But Aristotle and his Arabian commentators were monotheistic, and consequently the reconciliation between the Aristotelian philosophy and the Christian faith could only be effected by distinguishing between natural and revealed religion. The truths of the former were demonstrable by reason, of which Aristotle was the supreme guide. The truths of the latter were mysteries to be accepted on an equally good though different authority. By such methods these later schoolmen excepted and accepted the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, though they allowed the doctrine of the existence of God to be susceptible of logical proof. But notwithstanding these exceptions, the teaching of the Dominicans was a wonderful attempt to abolish the inevitable dualism between faith and reason.

[Sidenote: Thomists and Scotists.]

The history of Scholasticism after Thomas Aquinas is largely occupied by an account of the quarrel between the rival schools of Thomists and Scotists. The great teacher of the generation after St. Thomas was a Franciscan, Duns Scotus, the "Subtle Doctor," who taught at Oxford and Paris and died in 1308. His teaching differed in two ways from that of his Dominican predecessor. In the first place he excepted a larger number of theological doctrines as not being capable of philosophic proof, so that his teaching tended to bring back and to emphasise the dualism between faith and reason. It is for this reason that his system has been considered as the beginning of the decline of Scholasticism. In the second place, the real quarrel between Thomists and Scotists centred round the question of the freedom of the will. The followers of St. Thomas maintained that although the will is to some extent subordinate to the reason, yet it is free to determine its own course of action after a process of rational comparison, by contrast with the animals which act on the impulse of the moment. The Scotists, on the other hand, taught that what is called the will is merely a name for the possibility of determining without motive in either of two opposite directions. The importance of this difference of view consisted in this—that whereas the Thomists held that God subjects His will to a rational determination and therefore commands what is good because it is good, the Scotist taught that good is so because God wills it; if He chose to will the exact opposite, that would be equally good—in other words, he attributed to God an entirely arbitrary will. The two greatest disciples of St. Thomas were Dante and the Franciscan Roger Bacon (1214-92), the latter of whom fell into disfavour with the superiors of his own Order in consequence of his scientific studies, and spent many years at the end of his life in prison.

[Sidenote: Results of Scholasticism.]

The Scholastic philosophy failed to justify the doctrines of the Church to a rapidly expanding world. But it is unjust and ungrateful to stigmatise its results as barren. In the first place it gave a most valuable training in logical method to the keenest intellects of the time. Moreover, the very attempt to establish the Christian faith by argument was an unconscious homage to the supremacy of reason as the ultimate guide; while, finally, in the philosophy of St. Thomas, all nature was regarded as a fit subject for enquiry, and some of the greatest Schoolmen, as we have just seen, were noted for their investigations into natural phenomena.



CHAPTER VIII

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. (I)

[Sidenote: Hadrian IV.]

Hadrian IV is interesting to us as the only Englishman who has ever sat upon the throne of St. Peter. As Nicholas Brakespeare he had led the life of a wandering scholar, chiefly in France. He entered the house of Canons Regular of St. Rufus near Avignon, and when Abbot of this monastery attracted the attention of Eugenius III, who made him Cardinal Bishop of Albano, and employed him as papal legate in freeing the Church in Scandinavia from its dependence on the Bishops in Germany. The prestige which he acquired in this work marked him out as the successor of the shortlived Anastasius. Hadrian was a much abler man than either of his predecessors, and, while fully conscious of the difficulties of his office, he did not let these deter him from the fulfilment of its obvious duties. We have seen how he drove Arnold from Rome. He found, however, a new danger in Sicily. Roger's son William, known as "the Bad," took up an attitude of hostility, and when the Pope asserted his overlordship, William's troops overran the Campagna. The Pope retorted by excommunicating his refractory vassals and looking for help from the new German King.

[Sidenote: The new contest.]

With the accession of Frederick I the quarrel between Empire and Papacy enters on a new phase. On the death of Henry V the natural candidate of the papal party for the German throne was Henry the Black Duke of Bavaria, the head of the family of Welf or Guelf. But he was old, and related by marriage to the Hohenstaufen. He was, however, bribed to acquiesce in the election of Lothair by the offer of Lothair's daughter and heiress, Gertrude, as a wife for his son Henry the Proud. This marriage determined the whole course of German history. Henry the Proud obtained the duchy of Bavaria from his father and the duchy of Saxony from his father-in-law. Thus, if the Hohenstaufen family were the heirs of the Franconian Emperors, the Guelfs became the representatives of the opposition to that line which had centred in Saxony; and for the old contest between Papacy and Empire, Saxon and Franconian, there was now substituted a dynastic struggle between Weiblingen or Ghibelline and Guelf. The Guelfs were the papal party only in the sense that, like the Saxons, they were in opposition to the dynasty which occupied the German throne and claimed the imperial title. The name, however, was extended to Italy: it was applied to the collective opposition to the imperial power, and therefore came to denote the friends of the Papacy.

[Sidenote: Frederick I.]

So far the contest had been confined to Germany; for Lothair had sacrificed the claims of the empire to his own immediate interests, while Conrad had never set foot in Italy after his accession to the German throne. But as the attempt of Lothair to crush the acknowledged Ghibelline leaders had been thwarted, so Conrad had failed to render the Guelf harmless; and it was the pretensions of Henry the Lion, the son of Henry the Proud, which determined Conrad to waive the claims of his young son to the succession, and to recommend to the nobles the choice of his nephew Frederick. But Conrad's nomination would have been of little account. Frederick's claims were largely personal. Already before he succeeded his father as Duke of Suabia he had shown a combination of boldness in action with a conciliatory disposition which marked him out as a leader and a statesman. To this was added, as with Conrad, the prestige of a crusader; while in view of the bitter rivalries of the last two reigns, it was a recommendation that Frederick united in his person the two families whose strife had divided the kingdom. Two years elapsed from his accession before Frederick was free to set out for Italy. As the heir of the Franconians his probable attitude was a matter of some anxiety at Rome and in Italy generally. He was no enemy of the Church. His first act after his coronation at Aachen (March 9th, 1152) was to announce his accession to the Pope, who sent him a return message of goodwill. But from the outset Frederick showed his intention of taking a high line, for, in a disputed election at Magdeburg he obtained a party for a nominee of his own who was already a bishop, and therefore ineligible, and by virtue of the Concordat he decided for his own candidate in defiance of all ecclesiastical laws, and straightway invested him with the regalia.

[Sidenote: Imperial rights.]

Moreover, he had a high idea of the imperial mission. It was seventeen years since any emperor had crossed the Alps; and it is difficult to say whether the selfish policy of Lothair or the non-appearance of Conrad must have been the more detrimental to the maintenance of imperial interests. But during the first few months of his reign appeals poured in from the Pope against his various enemies, from some barons of Apulia against the great Roger of Sicily, from the citizens of Lodi against the tyranny of Milan. These, together with the ridiculous proffer of the imperial crown from the lately formed Republic of Rome, seemed to open an opportunity for the successful recovery of imperial rights. And, much as the Italians resented the spasmodic interferences of the Emperor, they were proud of their imperial connection. The commerce of the East, largely increased by the Crusades, flowed into Western Europe chiefly through Italy. As a result, the north and centre of the peninsula were studded with a number of compact, self-governing communities inclined to resent any outside interference, however lawful in origin. But the larger cities were ever trying to group the smaller round them as satellites; and the constant quarrels which resulted, often produced a party which was ready to welcome the interposition of the Emperor. There was this common ground, then, between these cities and the Papacy that, whereas they found it equally necessary to invoke the aid of the Emperor as an outside power against their foes, each was threatened by the assertion of those imperial rights which it was the sole object of Frederick's journey to Italy to assert.

But the results of Frederick's first expedition to Italy were of a very doubtful kind. It is true that he was crowned at Rome, that he asserted his imperial rights both positively in a great assembly on the plains of Roncaglia and, as it were, negatively by the destruction of three refractory towns, and that he got rid of Arnold of Brescia. But, on the other hand, his assertion of power provoked hatred instead of fear; and although, despite some sharp differences, he parted amicably from the Pope, his return to Germany left Hadrian in an impossible position. The republican party in Rome remained untouched: William of Sicily was unsubdued.

[Sidenote: Papal defiance.]

Shortly after his accession Frederick had made an agreement with the then Pope that neither should make peace with the Romans or the Sicilian King without consent of the other. But now Hadrian, deserted, accepted the Commune as the civil authority in Rome, and even came to a treaty with William of Sicily, who engaged to hold all his lands as a vassal of the Pope. Frederick was naturally angry at the repudiation of the mutual obligation with regard to peace and of the imperial suzerainty of William's duchy of Apulia. But he was too much occupied in Germany to do more than protest. And before he was able to assert his power in Italy again Pope Hadrian had, as it were, thrown down a challenge to him. At the Diet of Besancon in Burgundy in 1157 two papal envoys appeared with a complaint of Frederick's conduct in some particular. The letter which they bore spoke of the late coronation of the Emperor by the Pope and used the equivocal word beneficia to describe the papal act. When the assembled nobles resented the expression as implying a feudal relation between Pope and Emperor, the papal representative, the Chancellor Roland, boldly asked, "From whom, then, does the emperor hold the empire if not from the Pope?" Frederick's authority alone saved the envoys from violence, and Hadrian found himself obliged to explain away the objectionable expressions.

[Sidenote: The breach.]

But the papal position had been formulated, and that before a German assembly. The Pope was no longer a suppliant: he claimed to be more than an equal. He had thrown down a challenge. Frederick proceeded to pick it up. In fact, it was this second expedition of Frederick to Italy which opened the long contest between Ghibelline and Guelf, a contest only to be ended by the practical destruction of one or other of the parties. It was the complaints of the other cities against the oppression of Milan, which were the immediate cause of Frederick's appearance in Italy in 1158; and the reduction of the Milanese was followed by the holding of an assembly on the plain of Roncaglia, to which Frederick summoned the most famous lawyers of Italy. By their decision rights and powers were given to him, which placed all the communes at his mercy. Moreover, these were not compatible with the rights asserted since the time of Gregory VII by the papal supporters: the regalia were given to the Emperor at the expense of ecclesiastical as well as lay landowners and corporations. If the papal investiture of Apulia infringed the imperial rights, the investiture of Frederick's uncle, Welf VI of Bavaria, with the inheritance of the Countess Matilda openly ignored the oft-repeated claim of the Papacy. Neither side seemed to take especial pains to avoid a breach. The acrimonious correspondence which ensued centred round the relations of the Italian bishops to the Emperor, the respective claims of each party to Rome, and the restoration of the Tuscan inheritance and all the other lands which it claimed, to the Papacy. The excommunication of the Emperor—the open declaration of war—was prevented by Hadrian's death on September 1, 1159.

[Sidenote: The papal schism.]

A schism was inevitable. The majority of the Cardinals elected the papal Chancellor Roland who had defied Frederick at Besancon, and who would be likely to maintain Hadrian's high claims: he was afterwards consecrated as Alexander III. The minority got possession of St. Peter's and proclaimed an imperialist Cardinal as Victor IV. Neither Pope could be consecrated or could remain in Rome: both appealed by legates and letters for the recognition of Christendom. Frederick as Emperor summoned both candidates to submit their claims to the decision of a Council at Pavia. Alexander entirely repudiated the Emperor's implied claim to be the arbiter of Christendom in a spiritual matter, and found support in the fact that only fifty bishops, almost entirely from Germany and Lombardy, assembled at Pavia. The Council, of course, decided in favour of Victor IV. Alexander, however, excommunicated the Emperor, and bent all his energies to gain the adherence of France and England. Not only was he successful in this, but he was also recognised by the Latins of the East and the lessor Christian kingdoms. Victor IV's only supporter was the Emperor.

Nor did Frederick gain anything by his successes in Lombardy. It cost him seven months to subdue the little town of Crema; while it was three years (1159-62) before Milan surrendered and was destroyed. It is true, Alexander could no longer maintain himself in Italy, but in 1162 sought refuge in France. Frederick's attempts to drive him from his new asylum failed. Alexander carried on skilful negotiations with Louis VII of France and Henry II of England; and at Whitsuntide, 1163, a Council assembled at Tours, composed of a large number of cardinals, bishops, and clergy, and acknowledged Alexander with the utmost solemnity, while at the joint invitation of the two Kings the Pope took up his abode at the city of Sens.

[Sidenote: Fredericks's chance.]

The death of the anti-Pope was a further blow to Frederick's cause, for the action of his representative in Italy committed him to recognise a second anti-Pope and laid him open to the accusation of desiring to perpetuate the schism. It seemed, however, as if his chance had come when the quarrel between Henry II and Thomas Becket drove the English Archbishop to take refuge with the Pope at Sens. Alexander was in a difficulty. Henry was perhaps the most powerful monarch in Europe, and his support was of the utmost importance to the Pope. But the rights for which Thomas was contending were part of the rights which Alexander himself was claiming against the Emperor—the right of the Church to manage her own concerns without lay interference. While, therefore, prudence forbade him to throw down a distinct challenge to the English King, it was impossible that he should comply with Henry's demand for the condemnation of the refractory Archbishop. Frederick took advantage of Henry's ill-humour to propose a marriage alliance between the royal houses and to sound Henry on the question of a change of alliance. The marriage thus arranged—of Frederick's cousin, Henry the Lion, to Henry II's daughter—ultimately took place. But both clergy and people in England were for the most part in sympathy with Becket and unwilling to prolong the schism. The altars used by Frederick's envoys in England were purified after their departure; and although Henry's representatives appeared at the Diet of Wurzburg in May, 1165, and even took an oath to acknowledge the anti-Pope, the English King did not dare to ratify their action.

[Sidenote: Frederick's momentary triumph.]

Nor was this the only time when success seemed possible to Frederick. This failure to move the English allegiance and the defection of a number even of the German clergy emboldened Alexander to assume the aggressive, and he ventured to leave France and to take up his abode at Rome. (December, 1165.) Again the discontents of Lombardy were the occasion for the Emperor's visit. In the autumn of 1166 he crossed the Alps, and after spending some months in Lombardy he forced an entrance into Rome, enthroned his own Pope in St. Peter's, and himself wore his imperial crown. Frederick refused to treat with Alexander except on the basis of the resignation of both existing Popes and the election of a third. Alexander's position was unbearable and he fled to Benevento. The Romans accepted Frederick as their lord. The Emperor's triumph seemed complete: Charlemagne's successor had indeed arrived. But the triumph was short-lived. The summer pestilence, which so often attacked a German army in Italy, fell more fiercely than ever before. Frederick fled northwards before it, and found so much hostility in Lombardy that it was only by bypaths and in disguise that he was able to make his way out of Italy.

[Sidenote: The Lombard League.]

It was seven years (1167-74) before Frederick was able to return to Italy; and although by that time his position in Germany was unquestioned and the mutual relations of Louis VII and Henry II precluded any likelihood of interference from France or England, the Italian foes of the Emperor had gathered strength and combined their forces. Chief among these were the cities of Lombardy. Divided as they were into imperialist and anti-imperialist, or, to use the terms coming into vogue, Ghibelline and Guelf, they at first followed no common policy. Milan had taken the lead of the anti-imperialists. After the destruction of Milan a league formed by the cities of the Veronese March helped to force Frederick for a time to abandon his designs upon Italy (1164). During his expedition of 1166-7 a Lombard League sprang up and coalesced with the Veronese League; a common organisation was set up, Milan was restored, many of the staunchest imperial towns were forced to become members, and the crowning work of the League was the foundation of a common stronghold which in compliment to the Pope was named Alessandria.

[Sidenote: Alliance with the Pope.]

The real danger to the Emperor came from alliance of this League with the Pope. The Lombard cities were the Pope's natural enemies. Some of them were the rivals of Rome—Pavia as the capital of the kingdom of Italy; Milan the quondam champion of the cause of the married clergy; Ravenna as the rival patriarchate in Italy. Strong local feeling made them resent all outside interference, of Pope no less than of Emperor.

It was among these free, self-governing communities that heresy found its chief adherents. But for the moment the common danger from the Emperor overshadowed all other differences. The old imperial rights which Frederick designed to recover included the power of appointing local officers whether consuls or bishops. Alone, neither Pope nor Lombard cities could look for success. In 1162, when all the cities fell before Frederick, Alexander remained practically untouched. But although his position was immensely strengthened since then, experience had shown that the Pope could not hold his own in Italy or Rome without the help of some secular power. At the same time, in Europe at large he had proved a most potent force, since he wielded weapons which were independent of time and place for their action, and such as the most powerful secular prince had found it impossible to ignore. It was under direct encouragement from Alexander that the cities concluded their League in 1167. Before the next imperial expedition it had become all-powerful in Northern Italy; not only the chief Ghibelline cities, including Pavia itself, had joined, but even the remaining feudal nobles had found it impossible to stand outside.

[Sidenote: Submission of Henry II.]

Nor was this Alexander's only triumph. So long as Archbishop Thomas Becket remained unreconciled to Henry II, the English King had done all in his power to influence Alexander. A marriage alliance was carried out between the royal families of England and Sicily, solely with the object on Henry's side of neutralising one of the chief papal supporters, and Henry scattered his bribes among the Lombard cities with the same intent. But the reconciliation to which the attitude of his own people forced Henry in 1170 robbed him of all excuse for harassing the Pope, and the murder of the Archbishop by four of the King's knights in Canterbury Cathedral isolated Henry and forced him to a humiliating treaty with Alexander.

[Sidenote: Final failure of Frederick.]

Frederick entered Italy in 1174 with small chance of success, for his army was composed of mercenaries, and many of the leading German nobles, notably his cousin Henry the Lion, refused to accompany him. He exhausted all the resources of his military art in a vain attempt to take the new fortress of Alessandria. The jealousies within the League made negotiations possible, but these broke down because Frederick refused to recognise Alessandria as a member of the League or to include Pope Alexander in any peace made with the cities. But the end was at hand. When at length the forces met at Legnano on May 29, 1176, the militia of the League won a decisive victory. All possibility of direct coercion was gone, and Frederick was forced to consider seriously a change of policy. His only chance of good terms lay in dividing his enemies. He applied to Alexander, who refused to separate his cause from that of his allies, though he allowed that the terms might be arranged in secret. This was done. Frederick undertook to recognise Alexander and to restore all the papal possessions. For the allies, peace would be made with Sicily for fifteen years; the Lombards should have a truce for six years. After much negotiation Venice was agreed upon for a general congress of all the parties to the contest, and Frederick was forced to promise that he would not enter the city without the Pope's consent. Up to the last he hoped that mutual suspicion would divide his allies. But the terms of peace were agreed upon among the allies on the bases already mentioned; then Frederick was admitted into Venice, and a dramatic reconciliation between Pope and Emperor was enacted (July 25, 1177). Frederick returned to Germany at the end of the year.

[Sidenote: Triumph of Alexander.]

The schism was over, the anti-Pope submitted, and Alexander's conciliatory policy opened the way for his return to Rome. The Pope signalised the close of the long schism of eighteen years by gathering in 1179 a General Council, distinguished as the Third Lateran Council, to which came nearly a thousand ecclesiastics from various parts of Christendom. The chief canon promulgated placed the papal election exclusively in the hands of the cardinals, and ordained that a two-thirds majority of the whole College should suffice for a valid election. During the rest of his reign Alexander was occupied in mediating between Henry II and his sons, and between Henry and Louis of France. He died, again an exile from Rome, on August 30, 1181. His long pontificate is one of the most eventful in papal history. He was matched against an opponent who not only aimed at reviving the imperial claims, but was himself a man of imperial character. The difficulties of the situation might have seemed overwhelming. Where Gregory VII failed Alexander succeeded. Tact, not force, was the quality required. The infinite patience and long tenacity of Alexander met their reward. The Emperor was forced to violate the solemn oath he had sworn at Wurzburg in 1165, never to acknowledge Alexander or his successors, and never to seek absolution from this oath. The Pope had successfully asserted his claim to the civil government of Rome and to many other purely temporal possessions.

[Sidenote: Frederick's new move.]

Once more Frederick crossed the Alps. He had crushed his formidable cousin, Henry the Lion, and banished him from Germany; he had turned the truce with the Lombards into the Peace of Constance by acquiescing in the loss of the imperial rights for which he had fought. His eldest son, Henry, had been crowned King of Germany as long ago as 1168. Frederick was now anxious to secure for him the succession to the imperial title, and hoped to find the Pope willing to crown Henry as his father's colleague in the Empire. But although Lucius III, Alexander's successor (1181-5), had been driven from Rome, and was dependent on the Emperor's help, it was impossible for him or for any Pope to agree to Frederick's wish. Two emperors at once were a manifest absurdity, and Frederick was not likely to accept the Pope's suggestion that he should resign in favour of his son. Moreover, there lay between Pope and Emperor the still unsettled question of the inheritance of the Countess Matilda. It was clear that the quarrel must shortly be renewed. By the nature of the respective claims there could never be more than a temporary truce. Lucius died, but his successor, Urban III, was yet more irreconcilable. Meanwhile Frederick had resolved on an act which would make the breach between Papacy and Empire irreparable. The King of Sicily was William II "the Good." His marriage to a daughter of Henry II of England (1177) had proved childless, and the succession seemed likely to fall to Constance, daughter of King Roger and aunt of the reigning King. She was over thirty years of age. Frederick's defeat in 1174 had been due to his failure to divide his enemies. Now, however, he had his chance. The Lombards, having got all that they wanted, were quite favourable to him. He planned to win Sicily also by a marriage between his youthful son Henry and the almost middle-aged heiress Constance. A party in Sicily helped him; and the marriage and the coronation of the happy pair as King and Queen of Italy took place at Milan in January, 1186. Not only had the Emperor knocked away the staff upon which the Papacy had been disposed to lean its arm for more than a century; but he had actually picked it up and proposed to use it in the future for the purpose of belabouring the Popes. Moreover, he had really secured his object of a hereditary empire; for Henry, now King with his father in Germany and in Italy, must needs succeed to all the paternal honours. In vain Urban tried to raise up a party against the Emperor; and the sentence of excommunication, which at length he had determined to pronounce, was stopped only by the death of the Pope on October 20, 1187.

[Sidenote: Frederick's death.]

It was, however, chance and not the policy of the Emperor that averted the inevitable conflict. On July 5 the Christians of Palestine had suffered a crushing defeat at the battle of Hittim or Tiberias at the hand of Saladin, and on October 3 the Mohammedan conqueror entered Jerusalem. The quarrel was necessarily suspended, and a new crusade was preached with such success that in May, 1189, Frederick set out for Palestine, to be followed a year later by the Kings of France and England. But the Emperor never reached the Holy Land. He made his way by Constantinople and Iconium into Cilicia, and there not far from Tarsus he disappeared, apparently drowned while crossing or bathing in a river.

[Sidenote: The new contest.]

With the great Emperor's death the contest between Papacy and Empire enters on a new phase. It is typical of this phase that the one outstanding question between the two powers after the Peace of Venice was the question of Tuscany. For the quarrel was now almost entirely political, and was becoming more and more confined to Italian politics. The imperial attempt to subdue Italy to Germany had failed, and it remained for the Emperor to make it impossible for the Pope to live at Rome except as a dependant of the German King. With Tuscany, Lombardy, and Sicily under the imperial control, there was no room for papal action in Italy. In a contest of abstract principles the Emperor had entirely failed to subdue the Pope; and the interest and importance of the contest between Frederick and Alexander lay in the fact that each was the representative of an idea. This is no doubt the reason why Frederick's failure did not damage his prestige. But he had learnt that he could not set the abstract claims of the Empire against those of the Papacy. The former did not appeal to any one beyond the limits of Germany; whereas the latter could count on sympathy in every country of Western Europe. Frederick, therefore, made no more appeals to Europe. His disputes with the Papacy were now individual matters: they were contests of policy, not of principle, and he would not hesitate to turn circumstances to his advantage. Perhaps, fortunately for Frederick's reputation, he did nothing more than inaugurate this policy. But it was a policy which essentially suited the peculiar genius of his successor.

[Sidenote: Henry VI.]

As soon as Frederick had started for Palestine Henry was plunged in difficulties. Henry the Lion returned from banishment and raised a disturbance. A few months later William II of Sicily died, and Pope Clement III (1187-91) immediately invested with the kingdom Tancred, Count of Lecce, an illegitimate member of the Hauteville family, who had been elected by the party opposed to the German influence. On the top of these difficulties came the news of Frederick's death. There was thus a double reason for an expedition to Italy—Henry must assert his wife's claim to the throne of Sicily, and he must do this without quarrelling with the Pope, from whom he must obtain the imperial crown. His first expedition was only a formal success. Pope Celestine III (1191-8), who took office just after Henry entered Italy, dared not refuse to crown him emperor, nor could he prevent Henry from either courting the Roman Commune with success or prosecuting his claim to the Sicilian crown. But Henry failed before Naples: his army was decimated by the plague, and his wife fell into Tancred's hands.

[Sidenote: His success in Italy.]

This ill-success revived the Guelf opposition in Germany, whose most powerful supporter was Henry the Lion's brother-in-law, Richard of England. Richard on his way to Palestine had made an alliance with Tancred against the common Hohenstaufen enemy. But returning from crusade Richard fell into the hands of Leopold of Austria. Leopold was forced to hand him over to the Emperor, and the anti-Hohenstaufen alliance fell to pieces. For whatever reason, Henry kept the English King for more than a year, and turned a deaf ear to the papal remonstrances against his detention of a crusader. Fortified by the failure of the threatened combination against him, and by the money from Richard's ransom, Henry returned to Italy. Fortune favoured him at every turn. Since he left Italy Tancred and his eldest son had died, and Henry found no difficulty in getting hold of the youthful son of Tancred, who had been placed upon the throne under his mother's regency. Apulia and Sicily were overrun. The toils were closing round the Pope. Celestine had excommunicated all concerned in Richard's imprisonment until they should have restored his ransom. Thus by implication Henry was excommunicate. The money had been spent in subduing the papal fief of Sicily; while Henry further made his brother Philip Marquis of Tuscany, and planted his followers about in the lands of the Church. Yet Celestine did not dare to pronounce the fatal sentence against the Emperor directly.

[Sidenote: His imperial schemes.]

Henry meditated one more step which would have rendered the Pope powerless. Frederick, with the mere prospect of the Sicilian succession for his son, desired to make the imperial title hereditary; much more was Henry, the active sovereign of Sicily, anxious to accomplish this. The lay princes could have been bribed to consent by the recognition of hereditary succession to their fiefs. But the German ecclesiastics, with the Pope at their back, had no desire to increase the power of the Emperor, and the utmost that Henry could secure was the election as German King, and therefore King of the Romans, of his two-year-old son Frederick.

[Sidenote: His death.]

Henry's projects stretched out beyond the lands under his rule. The death of Saladin encouraged the idea of a new crusade. Henry as crusader might propitiate the Pope. But such an expedition once started might have been diverted, as indeed happened a few years later, for an attack upon Constantinople, which should lead to the union of both empires under the ambitious Hohenstaufen. Pretexts were not wanting. Henry collected a number of German crusaders upon the coast of Italy, and many of these had actually sailed for Palestine when everything was changed by Henry's sudden death on September 28, 1197. He had reigned eight years, and was only thirty-two years of age. Despite his youthful age and his short reign he had raised the imperial power to a height which it had scarcely ever touched before and which it was never to reach again. Endowed with ability at least equal to his father's, his very selfishness and ruthlessness gave him a success denied to his predecessor. All Henry's acts were associated with his own aggrandisement, and the result shows that the Papacy no less than the Empire was dependent for its influence chiefly upon the personality of the holder of the office. Henry had to deal at Rome with Popes of inferior capacity. Had Innocent III been elected a few years earlier, the tragedy of Anagni—the maltreatment of Boniface VIII by the emissaries of the King of France—might have been anticipated by a century.



CHAPTER IX

INNOCENT III

[Sidenote: The new Pope.]

Celestine III died less than four months after the Emperor Henry VI, and the centre of interest immediately shifted from the Empire to the Papacy. For, in their desire to shut out the Roman clergy and people from any share in the election, the Cardinals made haste to find a successor. As it happened, the object of their choice was also the favourite of the Roman people. Lothair of Segni was the youngest of the Cardinals, being only thirty-seven years of age. He was sprung from a German family which had settled in the tenth century in the Campagna. He had studied in Paris and Bologna, and had been made Cardinal by his uncle, Clement III. Celestine was of the rival family of Orsini, and during his reign the young Cardinal remained in retirement and consoled himself by writing a book on the Despite of the World. Thus he was young, noble, wealthy, and distinguished. He showed his power of self-control at once by doing nothing to shorten the canonical time before his consecration as priest and bishop; while the magnificence of the coronation ceremonies typified the view which he took of the office and position.

[Sidenote: The condition of Europe.]

The work of Innocent III was European in importance, and he found his opportunity in the disturbed condition of the time. The rivalry of Ghibelline and Guelf in Germany and Italy, and the rivalry of the houses of Capet and Plantagenet in France, forbade any concerted action on the part of Christendom, whether against pagans on the eastern frontier of Germany or against Mohammedans in Spain or Syria. Hungary and Poland were both in a state of ferment; in Spain the Almohades from Morocco were making serious advances. Saladin's death might seem to offer a peculiarly favourable chance of recovering for Christendom what had been so recently lost. But the Empire was divided; England and France neutralised each other, the Eastern Empire was weakened by the success of an usurper, the knightly orders were quarrelling with each other. And this state of disunion was not the most dangerous feature of the moment. The moral condition of Europe was seldom worse. Philip of France had repudiated his Danish wife, Ingebiorg, apparently for no more valid reason than that he liked some one better; Alfonso of Castile took his own half-sister to wife. Oriental manners, imported from Palestine or learnt from commercial intercourse in the Mediterranean, seemed to be invading the furthest regions of the West. Perhaps to the same influence may be attributed the spread of religious heresies. Much of this was provoked by direct antagonism to a powerful and corrupt Church; but the actual form assumed by the positive beliefs of those who organised themselves apart from the Catholic Church were largely Oriental in character.

Everything combined to encourage Innocent's interference, and it may be pointed out at once that his success was largely due to the selfish ambitions and desires of the lay princes, which enabled him to pose as the undoubted representative of moral force organised in the Church. In all his most important acts he was the mouthpiece of popular opinion. Thus his contest with Philip of France in favour of the repudiated Ingebiorg commanded the sympathy of every right-thinking person in Europe; his desire for the separation of Italy and Germany under different rulers was popular in Italy; while to attempt an union of the Churches of East and West, to crush out heresy in the south of France and elsewhere, to promote a new crusade in the East, were all regarded as duties falling strictly within the papal sphere.

[His claim for the Papacy.]

The importance of this great activity lies in the fact that it was based upon the most advanced theories of papal power. It was the controversy over lay investiture which first caused the defenders of the Church to formulate their views of the sphere of ecclesiastical influence as against the influence of the secular authority. But the extreme claims put forward for the Papacy as the head of the Church, by Gregory VII and his followers, had provoked the counter definitions of the jurists of Bologna on behalf of the imperial power. But the claim of universal dominion by the Emperor was contradicted by facts, and never rose above the dignity of an academic thesis; whereas in the century which elapsed from the days of Gregory VII to those of Innocent III the papal power was becoming an increasing reality in the Church. It is indeed a little difficult to see wherein it was possible for any successor of Gregory VII to make an advance upon the claims put forward by that Pope. Gregory in fond of pointing out that the power of binding and loosing given to St. Peter was absolutely comprehensive, including all persons and secular as well as spiritual matters. Innocent tells the Patriarch of Constantinople that the Lord left to Peter not only the whole Church, but the whole world to govern. To the Karolingian age it was the Emperor who was the Vicar of God. The Church reformers, while attacking this title, do not seem to have claimed in words for the Pope a higher title than Vicar of St. Peter. Innocent, however, more than once asserts that he is the representative "not of mere man, but of very God." In fact, such development as is to be found in the papal office during the twelfth century consists merely in making rather more explicit positions which have already been asserted. Gregory, in writing to William the Conqueror, had used the figures of the sun and moon to illustrate the relations of Church and State. Innocent draws out the analogy in much detail: "As God, the builder of the universe, has set up two lights in the firmament of heaven, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, so for the firmament of the universal Church, which is called by the name of heaven, He has set up two great dignities, the greater to rule souls, as it were days, and the lesser to rule bodies, as it were nights; and these are priestly authority and royal power. Further, as the moon obtains its light from the sun, seeing that it is really the lesser both in quantity and quality, and also in position and influence, so royal power obtains the splendour of its dignity from priestly authority." He points out on another occasion that "individual kings have individual kingdoms, but Peter is over all, as in fulness so also in breadth, because he is the Vicar of Him whose is the earth and the fulness thereof, the round world and they that dwell therein. Further, as the priesthood excels in dignity, so it precedes in antiquity. Both kingdom and priesthood," he allows, "were instituted among the people of God; but," he adds, "while the priesthood was instituted by divine ordinance, the kingdom came into existence through the importunity of man." Hence it is not strange that "not only in the Patrimony of the Church, but also in other spheres, we occasionally exercise temporal jurisdiction," for "he to whom God says in Peter, 'Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, etc.', is His Vicar, who is priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek, ordained by God to be judge of the quick and the dead."

[Sidenote: He secures power in Rome.]

But while the Pope assumed this all-embracing position, a considerable share of his energies was absorbed in a very small and purely selfish matter—the extension of the temporal dominion of the Papacy; and the use for this personal object of the great powers which men willingly acknowledged in the Pope as the upholder of the standard of morality greatly prejudiced the success of Innocent's policy elsewhere. In its origin this was a policy of self-preservation. The civil government of Rome was in the hands of a prefect representing the Emperor and a senator who was the spokesman of the Commune. The Pope was either a prisoner or a nonentity in his own capital. The Empire being in abeyance, it was not difficult to transform the prefect into a papal officer, but a greater triumph was the nomination of the senator, for it carried the ultimate control over the municipality, and thus undermined the power of the Commune, which had paralysed the papal influence in Rome for nearly sixty years. This signal victory was not gained without a struggle. The democratic party even drove the Pope from the city for a time; but by 1205, Innocent, by apparent concessions and the use of bribery, had won his end.

[Sidenote: Central Italy.]

Meanwhile an even more important movement had been accomplished. The centre of the peninsula outside the Patrimony of St. Peter was in the hands Of Henry VI's German followers. One was driven from Spoleto, another from Ravenna, and both these districts were added to the papal dominions. Tuscany had been made over to Henry VI's brother, Philip; but he went off to secure the German crown, and his subjects did homage to the Pope. There existed, however, a League of Tuscan cities, and the Pope, leaving to them their independence, merely accepted the office of President of the League. It was the addition of these substantial dominions to the lands of the Patrimony which, as between Pope and Emperor, effectually solved the question of the long-contested Matildan inheritance, and laid the foundation of the temporal dominions of the Papacy as they remained until 1860.

[Sidenote: South Italy.]

The German influence also threatened to be paramount in the south of the peninsula. For Henry VI, while giving to Queen Constance the nominal regency during the minority of their son Frederick, took care that the real authority should be in the hands of his German followers. Constance, however, had no desire for the continued union of the German and Sicilian crowns; and here she found a staunch supporter in the Pope. First with Celestine, and then with Innocent, she entered into close relations. Frederick took the old Norman oath of vassalage for his dominions; and when Innocent confirmed the title, he compelled Constance in return to surrender the ecclesiastical privileges connected with elections, legatine visits, appeals, and councils originally granted by Urban II to Count Roger of Sicily, and to promise an annual tribute. The Pope, however, aided her to clear her country of the Germans, many of whom he afterwards again hunted from Central Italy. It was natural, therefore, that on her death in November, 1198, Constance should commend her child to the guardianship of Innocent. Innocent himself was far too much occupied to take the personal direction of affairs, and eight years of incessant warfare (1200-8) were necessary before the German influence could be finally got rid of, and then Innocent secured his influence through a regency of native nobles under the presidency of his own brother.

[Sidenote: The contest in Germany.]

Even on the German side there was little need to anticipate that the two crowns of Germany and Sicily would remain united. The nobles were scarcely likely to keep their promise of crowning Henry's young son. He was a mere child, three years of age; not yet baptised, perhaps because his father was excommunicate; brought up in Italy and in the hands of Italians; a protege of the Pope. Thus his uncle Philip was easily persuaded by the Hohenstaufen supporters in Germany to take the place intended for his nephew, and was chosen and crowned as King of Germany (March, 1198). But the enemies of the Hohenstaufen could not let the opportunity go by, and three months later, at the suggestion of Richard of England, they elected and crowned his nephew, Otto of Brunswick, a son of Henry the Lion of Saxony, whom Richard had made Count of Poitou and York. Thus was revived the struggle between Ghibelline and Guelf.

[Sidenote: Innocent's decision.]

Innocent undertook the decision of the question as a matter belonging to his sphere, "chiefly because it was the Apostolic See which transferred the Empire from the east to the west, and lastly because the same See grants the crown of the Empire." In the divided condition of Germany much depended on his attitude. It was scarcely likely that he would accept a Hohenstaufen who was lord of Tuscany. But Philip was the nominee of the most numerous and important section of the German nobles, while the death of Richard of England (1199) deprived Otto of his chief supporter. As Gregory VII on a similar occasion, so now Innocent delayed his decision between the rivals until he could make up his mind that Otto had some chance of success. Meanwhile he did everything to prejudice the minds of the German people against Philip, who, as the holder of lands claimed by the Papacy, was already excommunicate. After three years of deliberation Innocent declared himself. Otto paid a heavy price for the decision in his favour. By the Capitulation of Neuss (June, 1201) he swore to protect to the utmost all the possessions, honours, and rights of the Roman Church, both those which it already held and those which he would help it to recover. The extent of land was defined as including not only the Patrimony of St. Peter (from Radicofani to Ceperano), but also the Exarchate, the Pentapolis, the March of Ancona, the Duchy of Spoleto, and the territories of the Countess Matilda.

[Sidenote: Innocent III and Philip Augustus of France.]

But in the course of the next few years Innocent was obliged to take up a totally different attitude in this struggle in consequence of disappointments elsewhere. There were two such which fell especially heavily upon him during the first half of his reign. He inherited from his predecessor a quarrel with Philip Augustus of France. Philip lost his first wife in 1190; in 1193 his designs against England caused him to marry Ingebiorg, a sister of the King of Denmark. Immediately after the marriage he took a dislike to her, refused to live with her, and obtained from an assembly of his own clergy a sentence of divorce, founded on an allegation of some very distant relationship between him and his new wife. Ingebiorg and her brother appealed to Pope Celestine III, who declared the sentence of divorce illegal and null. Philip not only paid no attention to the numerous letters and legates of the Pope, but he tried to make the divorce irrevocable by taking a new wife. After several rebuffs he found in Agnes of Meran, the daughter of a Bavarian noble, one who was willing to accept the dubious position (1196). Innocent III at once took up an uncompromising attitude, and instructed his legates that if Philip refused to send away Agnes and to restore Ingebiorg, they should put the kingdom under an interdict preparatory to a sentence of personal excommunication against Philip and Agnes themselves. Those bishops who dared to publish the interdict were seriously maltreated by the King; but after nine months of resistance the distress of his people at the cessation of religious services caused him to submit; he pretended to take back Ingebiorg, and the interdict was raised (1200). But he did not send away Agnes, and a renewal of the interdict was only averted by Agnes' death in 1201. Innocent, desiring to be conciliatory, actually declared Agnes' two children legitimate. Philip still, however, pressed for a divorce from Ingebiorg, declaring that he was bewitched by her. After his victory over John of England in 1204 he became more than ever obdurate to papal remonstrances, and he even contemplated a new marriage. Innocent was not in a position to drive him to extremes, and was obliged to temporise for a time. Eventually, however, he reduced Philip to submission.

[Sidenote: The Fourth Crusade.]

But Innocent suffered more definite defeat in the matter of the Crusade. The crusading fervour had much diminished, and it has been pointed out as characteristic of the age that a fourth crusade was determined on at a tournament in Champagne in 1199. Celestine III had vainly tried to rouse the interest of Europe, but the preaching of Fulk, the priest of Neuilly, recalled the efforts and the success of Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard. Innocent III lent his whole influence to the enterprise. But from the first everything seemed to go contrary to his wishes. The death of Theobald of Champagne (1201), who was the papal nominee for the leadership, placed at the head of the crusaders Boniface, Marquis of Montserrat, an Italian and kinsman of Philip of France and a typical representative of the worst side of feudalism. From that moment Innocent lost all control over the expedition. Instead of going directly to the Holy Land, the barons decided to attack the Mohammedan power in Egypt—perhaps the sounder policy. They made an agreement with the Venetians to find the shipping for the host in return for a large sum of money. But the long delay caused many crusaders to set off to the Holy Land; so that when the main force arrived at Venice it was so diminished in numbers that the leaders could not raise the sum for which they had pledged themselves to Venice. Probably there was no deep-laid plot for the diversion of the crusading host from the first. But the Venetians suddenly found themselves with the practical direction of a formidable army; they had enemies in the Adriatic against whom they had hitherto been powerless; they had old causes of rivalry and enmity with Constantinople. At the same time King Philip of Germany was urging the cause of his brother-in-law, who had been deposed from the Byzantine throne. The crusaders, unwilling to disperse and unable to insist, allowed themselves to be diverted, first to an attack upon Zara, a nest of pirates in the Adriatic, although it belonged to the King of Hungary, who was himself a crusader; and then to Constantinople, which they ultimately captured (1204), and where they set up a Latin Empire. Innocent did everything to prevent this diversion of his cherished scheme. He forbade the attack upon Zara, he excommunicated the Venetians for going to Constantinople, and threatened the whole host with the same penalty. But he was powerless. The few in the army who were moved by some of the crusading spirit were overruled; and when the papal legates for the expedition to Palestine joined the army at Constantinople, all thought of going on to Palestine was abandoned. Innocent was forced to accept what was done and to console himself with the thought of the blow thus dealt to the Eastern Church.

[Sidenote: Innocent's difficulty.]

These rebuffs seriously diminished Innocent's influence in Europe for a time. Moreover, Innocent soon had reason to regret his championship of Otto. Philip was wealthy and personally popular, while Otto's brusquerie and selfishness alienated many supporters. Consequently from 1203 Philip distinctly obtained the upper hand, and at length in 1207 Innocent opened negotiations with him. But these were rendered futile when Philip fell victim to the assassin's knife in June, 1208. Otto's acceptance now became inevitable, and he did everything to conciliate his opponents. He submitted himself to a fresh election by the German nobles, and won the Hohenstaufen by marrying Beatrice, the daughter of his late rival. He made new concessions to the Pope, which practically amounted to a renunciation of the powers confirmed to the Emperor in the matter of elections by the Concordat of Worms; he undertook to give up the right of spoils and to help in the eradication of heresy. And all this he promised because he was "King of the Romans by the grace of God and of the Pope."

[Sidenote: Otto's designs.]

But Otto's acceptance was only the beginning of the end. He knew that he owed his position merely to the accident of Philip's death and to the absence of any eligible Hohenstaufen candidate. He had therefore no feelings of gratitude towards Innocent. Moreover, he was now surrounded by Ghibelline influences, and was anxious to be crowned emperor. Thus, despite his promises of 1201 and 1209, to recover to the Papacy all the lands and rights which it claimed, he began to realise that the task to which he must give himself was the restoration of the connection between Italy and Germany, which had been entirely broken since Henry VI's death. In fact, this Guelf prince took up the work of the Hohenstaufen. When, therefore, Otto and Innocent met in Italy a year later, Otto declined to give more than a verbal promise that after his coronation he would do what was right. Innocent, in return, did not refuse the crown indeed, but made a new departure in naming Otto Emperor without consecrating him as such, and thus denied to him the divinity of the imperial office (October, 1209).

[Sidenote: Otto's success.]

Otto immediately set to work. He recovered for the Empire all the lands of Central Italy which Innocent had already annexed to the papal dominions, including, of course, the Matildan inheritance; he made the Roman Prefect an imperial officer again; and entering into alliance with the German followers of Henry VI, who had never been entirely dislodged from the southern kingdom, he overran Apulia and prepared, by the aid of a fleet lent by Pisa, to pass over into Sicily. Innocent did everything in his power to check the conqueror. He excommunicated him (August, 1210); in conjunction with Philip Augustus of France, the old ally of Henry VI, he roused disaffection against Otto among the German nobles. Innocent was somewhat taken aback when Otto's subjects, finding that the Pope in his anathema had absolved them from their fealty to the King, held Otto as deposed, and proceeded to elect in his place the young Frederick Roger, Henry VI's son and the papal ward, who was already King of Sicily. This choice also threatened to produce that very union of Germany and Italy which Otto was bent on accomplishing. But the need of checking Otto forced Innocent to acquiesce, and Frederick did everything to allay the papal fears.

[Sidenote: Innocent and Frederick.]

Since Frederick could not stop Otto's progress in the south, it was arranged that he should go north to Germany in the hope of drawing Otto away. Before he left, Frederick had his young child Henry crowned, as an earnest that he did not intend to join the kingdom he was going to seek with that which he already held. He passed through Rome on his way north, and Innocent obtained from him a repetition of his liege homage for Sicily and a promise that the two kingdoms should be kept separate. In return Innocent gave him the title of "Emperor elect by the grace of God and of the Pope," and supplied him with money. Innocent thus hoped that he had taken every precaution to avoid the dangers which he feared, while Frederick, young and inexperienced, seems to have accepted the conditions willingly and to have intended to keep them. His ambition and the unexpected prospects thus opened to him led him on regardless of consequences.

[Sidenote: Otto's failure.]

Frederick's move was perfectly successful. Otto rushed back to Germany, and the death of his wife Beatrice did away with any obligations of loyalty which the partisans of the Hohenstaufen might have felt towards him. Frederick was elected and crowned (December, 1212), and renewed the old Hohenstaufen league with France. Otto turned for help to his uncle, John of England. John was excommunicate, but now made his peace with the Pope. Philip, at first encouraged by Innocent to attack England and then after John's submission forbidden to go, turned his arms against Flanders. A coalition was formed against him, and was joined by John and by Otto; but Philip's victory at Bouvines (July, 1214) broke up the coalition and put an end to Otto's hopes. For the four years of life which remained to him his power was confined to Brunswick.