The Historians' History of the World 08

After he had thus consolidated his power in Italy, he commenced an energetic interference in German politics; for he forthwith claimed the right to decide on a disputed imperial election. He must naturally have been inclined rather to the Guelf than to the Hohenstaufen candidate, so maintaining his pretensions he actually decided (1201) in favour of Otto IV. However, he was resisted with great energy by Philip’s party, and the flame of discord only burned so much the brighter in Germany. As Philip continued to gain more decisive advantages over his enemy, Innocent began negotiations with him, which seemed fraught with danger to Otto. Meanwhile Philip was murdered by Otto of Wittelsbach in Bamberg (1208). Otto IV was then universally recognised as emperor, and after he had satisfied the pope’s demands in all points he was crowned by him. But so soon as Otto had reached this goal of his wishes, he began again to vindicate the imperial rights in Italy, and to overthrow the pope’s new creations, without suffering himself to be turned from his path by the sentence of excommunication and dethronement which the deluded Innocent pronounced against him in November, 1210. Now he himself encouraged the canvass of the only surviving Hohenstaufen. Frederick appeared in Germany in 1212, and, upheld as he was by the pope and the king of France, he quickly won most of all ranks to his side. On the 25th of July, 1215, he received the German king’s crown at Aachen, and Otto down to his death (1218) had to content himself with his ancestral territories in Brunswick.

UNIVERSAL SWAY OF THE POPE

On every side, the thunder of Rome broke over the heads of princes. A certain Swero is excommunicated for usurping the crown of Norway. A legate, in passing through Hungary, is detained by the king: Innocent writes in tolerably mild terms to this potentate, but fails not to intimate that he might be compelled to prevent his son’s accession to the throne. The king of Leon had married his cousin, a princess of Castile. Innocent subjects the kingdom to an interdict. When the clergy of Leon petition him to remove it, because when they ceased to perform their functions the laity paid no tithes and listened to heretical teachers when orthodox mouths were mute, he consented that divine service with closed doors, but not the rites of burial, might be performed. The king at length gave way, and sent back his wife.

But a more illustrious victory of the same kind was obtained over Philip Augustus, who, having repudiated Ingeborg of Denmark, had contracted another marriage. The conduct of the king, though not without the usual excuse of those times, nearness of blood, was justly condemned; and Innocent did not hesitate to visit his sins upon the people by a general interdict. This, after a short demur from some bishops, was enforced throughout France; the dead lay unburied, and the living were cut off from the offices of religion, till Philip, thus subdued, took back his divorced wife. The submission of such a prince, not feebly superstitious, like his predecessor Robert, nor vexed with seditions, like the emperor Henry IV, but brave, firm, and victorious, is perhaps the proudest trophy on the scutcheon of Rome.

Compared with this, the subsequent triumph of Innocent over the pusillanimous John seems cheaply gained, though the surrender of a powerful kingdom into the vassalage of the pope may strike us as a proof of stupendous baseness on one side and audacity on the other.

A disputed election furnished Innocent with an opportunity of thrusting forward the cardinal Stephen Langton into the archbishopric of Canterbury against the king’s will. When John resisted with anger, the pope laid England under an interdict, in 1208, and afterwards excommunicated the king; the latter sought by reckless cruelty to avenge himself on the clergy, and by severe oppression to make sure of his vassals. At last Innocent deposed him from his kingdom, and handed it over to the king of France. But while he was arming himself for the conquest, John, unable to trust his vassals, yielded in all points, and even received his kingdom in fee from the pope under circumstances of the greatest humiliation. Now was England yielded up to the discretion of an arbitrary pope and a contemptible king; this united the prelates and the barons to wrest Magna Charta from the king in 1215. In vain the pope with spiritual and the king with temporal weapons strove to effect its repeal; John’s death, however, in 1216, quickly put an end to internal discord.