Pope Innocent II

“ The first act of Innocent's papacy was the very legitimate attempt to establish his own authority and independence at home. The long subsistence of the idea that only a Pope-king with enough of secure temporal ascendency to keep him free at least from the influence of other sovereigns, could be safe in the exercise of his spiritual functions—is curious when we think of the always doubtful position of the Popes, who up to this time and indeed for long after retained the most unsteady footing in their own metropolis, the city which derived all its importance from them. ”

“ In 1208, however, Philip, who had been reconciled with Rome in the previous year, was assassinated, and Otto, with Innocent's approval, mounted the throne. To the intense indignation of the Pope, the new Emperor at once cast his oaths of fidelity to the wind and told Innocent to confine himself to spiritual matters. He annexed Tuscany and Spoleto, in spite of all the Pope's entreaties and threats, and was about to march against Naples and Apulia when Innocent launched against him a sentence of excommunication and deposition. ”

“ A very beautiful modern writer gives us the true character of Innocent III. It is fair to judge of all the Popes as this man has been judged; he is a correct model of the whole, and I doubt not but, taking him all and all, he is the best model that has been given of a Romish Pope. ”

“ For the Lord Jesus says, 'I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.'" And in accordance with this principle the Dictatus Papae lays it down that "the Roman Church has never erred, nor, as Scripture testifies, will it ever err." Innocent III pertinently asks how he could confirm others in the faith, which is recognised as a special duty of his office, unless he himself were firm in the faith. But many writers, including Innocent himself, believed that it was possible for a Pope to err in some individual point, and that it was the duty of the Church to convert him. ”

“ Innocent XIII. (Michele Angelo Conti) , pope from 1721 to 1724, was the son of the duke of Poli, and a member of a family that had produced several popes, among them Innocent III., was born in Rome on the 13th of May 1655, served as nuncio in Switzerland, and, for a much longer time, in Portugal, was made cardinal and bishop of Osimo and Viterbo by Clement XI., whom he succeeded on the 8th of May 1721. One of his first acts was to invest the emperor Charles VI. with Naples (1722) ; but against the imperial investiture of Don Carlos with Parma and Piacenza he protested, albeit in vain. ”

“ It was Pope Innocent III who placed in the hands of the Church this terrible weapon of persecution, and who, by the awful severity of his own attitude towards liberty of conscience, of thought, and of expression, afforded to fanaticism and religious intolerance an example that was to be their merciless guide through centuries to come. ”

“ Through the untimely death of the Pope, however, while he was going to persuade Pisa to join in the crusade, the crusade did not mature, but later the Popes were not slow in claiming the leadership granted in this instance by the council to Innocent III.
In no direction did Innocent III. accomplish more than in his uncompromising attack on heresy. It must never be forgotten that heresy was the greatest crime of the Middle Ages. God had planted His Church on earth, appointed the Pope as vice-gerent, and prescribed laws and dogmas in the Bible and the canons to govern the Church. ”

“ Toward the end of his life, Innocent held a general council in the basilica of St. John Lateran. A vast gathering of bishops heads of orders, and secular dignitaries gave brilliancy to the gathering and enhanced the glory of the Pontiff. Enthroned over more than four hundred bishops, the Pope proudly declared the law to the world. "Two things we have specially to heart," wrote Innocent, in summoning the assembly, "the deliverance of the Holy Land and the reform of the Church Universal." In its vast collection of seventy canons, the Lateran Council strove hard to carry out the Pope's programme. ”

“ So Innocent returned at last, a good man, much tried by misfortune, but neither wise nor a leader of men. At that time the soldiers of Rome were beaten in open battle by the people of Tivoli, a humiliation which it was not easy to forget. And it is more than probable that the Pierleoni looked on at the Pope's failure in scornful inaction from their stronghold of Sant' Angelo, which they had only nominally surrendered to Innocent's authority. ”

“ Innocent, however, was not so good a Guelf as his party, for the Pope was the guardian and chief defender, during his troubled royal childhood, of Frederic of Sicily, afterwards the Emperor Frederic II., but at the beginning of Pope Innocent's reign a very helpless baby prince, fatherless, and soon, also, motherless, and surrounded by rapacious Germans, each man fighting for a scheme of his own, by which to transfer the insecure crown to his own head, or at least to rob it of both power and revenue. ”

“ Some historians hail Innocent as a great apostle of the "Italia Una" ideal, and he sometimes presses on particular towns "the interests of the whole of Italy." It is, however, absurd to associate his feeling with the later ideal of Italian unity. He cared for the unity of Italy only in the sense that the Pope was to be its unique ruler. Those Germans—he scorns them—must be driven out. Those free cities, always at war with each other, must be persuaded that the Papal seal will be their best protection. Even that kingdom of Naples and Sicily must somehow pass under Rome ”

“ If this happened where there was no Apostolic See to build upon, but simply the privileges of the royal city, how much more in the case of Rome, which stood alone in the West the single object of common reverence; "since it is well known," says this same Pope Innocent, "that there were no churches founded by any one, either in Italy, the Gauls, Spain, Africa, Sicily, or in the adjacent islands, unless by those whom the Apostle St. Peter, or his successors, had appointed Bishops." [46] So that the Pope, on the Patriarchal theory, was the common father of the whole West. ”

“ They attempted to attack the Saracens first at Tunis, and there Louis died of fever. The crusades perished with him. [14]
POPE AND EMPEROR With the wane of the crusading fervor waned also the power of the popes. Innocent had extended his authority by terror and physical force. But men soon ceased to find religious inspiration for such "holy wars," and the calls of later popes fell upon deafened ears. The democratic policy of Innocent's predecessors had rallied all Italy around them ”

“ It is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trodden under foot of men. For this reason much is demanded from him to whom much is given."
Thus Innocent began his career, solemnly conscious of the greatness of his position. But the reader will perceive that nothing could be more evangelical than his doctrine. Exalting as he does the high claims of Peter, he never falls into the error of supposing him to be the Rock on which the foundations of the Church are laid. On the other hand his idea of the Pope as beneath God but above men, lower than God but greater than men, is startling. ”

“ When there happens a Pope like Innocent, bent wholly to reject all the instances of Princes; the only remedy is to sow disturbances in the Church, and broyls between the Protestants and Catholicks, thereby to puzzle the Pope’s brain, and frighten him, so that he shall rather seek the friendship of Princes, than they his. ”

“ It seemed as if, after a century of delays, the Papacy was going to enjoy the inheritance of Matilda, and Innocent eagerly set himself to work to provide for its administration. In the north the Pope maintained friendly relations with the rival communities of the Lombard plain. But his most immediate and brilliant triumph was in establishing his authority over Rome and the Patrimony of St. Peter. On his accession he found his lands just throwing off the yoke of the German garrisons that had kept them in subjection during Henry VI.’s lifetime. |The subjection of Rome and of the Patrimony of St. ”

“ The Emperor again had said to the Papal Nuncio, "Your Pope, my lord, has an easy time of it, with Madame Olympia to put him to sleep."
Driven by these and many other such manifestations [Pg 358] of public feeling, Innocent determined to make a great effort. He announced to Olympia with every expression of regret for the hard necessity, that she must quit the Vatican; and knowing well what he would have to endure, if he exposed himself to her reproaches and entreaties, he forbade her to come for the future into his presence. ”

“ Dangers thickened about the king on every side, and his abject spirit was sustained only by the consolations which Gualo, the Pope's legate, poured into his ear. The legate assured him of the constant support of the Pope, and exhorted him to courage, since it was impossible that any harm could happen to a prince who was under the protection of Holy Church. But now the news arrived that Pope Innocent, whose efforts alone had sustained the tyrant in his power, was dead, and a considerable time elapsed before his successor was appointed. ”

“ There was much persecution, but it was not systematic. There is reason to think that in the pursuit of heresy the Church was mainly guided by considerations of its temporal interest, and was roused to severe action only when the spread of false doctrine threatened to reduce its revenues or seemed a menace to society. At the end of the twelfth century Innocent III became Pope and under him the Church of Western Europe reached the height of its power. He and his immediate successors are responsible for imagining and beginning an organized movement to sweep heretics out of Christendom. ”

“ The system of Gregory VII. made no claim of doctrinal infallibility for the Holy See, though his ignorance of history led him to suppose that no heretic had ever presided over the Roman church, and his understanding of Luke xxii. 32 made him confidently expect that none ever would. Innocent III., indeed, publicly acknowledged that even the pope might err in matters of faith, and then, but only then, become amenable to the judgment of the church. And Innocent IV., fifty years later, taught that the pope might err. It is therefore wrong to say, “I believe what the pope believes;” ”

“ They preached Papal indulgences, they stirred up men to crusades in behalf of the Papacy, they gathered money for the Papal use. ... The Emperor Frederic II., who had been brought up under Innocent's guardianship, proved the greatest enemy of the newly-won sovereignty of the Pope. King of Sicily and Naples, Frederic was resolved to assert again the Imperial pretensions of North Italy, and then win back the Papal acquisitions in the centre; if his plan had succeeded, the Pope would have lost his independence and sunk to be the instrument of the house of Hohenstaufen. ”

“ The Conclave assembled at Naples and elected a nephew of Gregory IX., who took the name of Alexander IV. The new Pope was described by Matthew Paris as ‘kindly and pious, assiduous in prayer and strenuously ascetic, but easily moved by flatterers and inclined to avarice.’ He had not the inflexible will of his predecessor and (though he continued Innocent’s policy) he was not very successful in his efforts, despite the fact that it was easier to carry on the war against the Hohenstaufen now that the legitimate stock was almost extinct and Germany entirely isolated from Sicily. ”

“ The Christian bishop has become important enough for his election to count in profane history. Paganism is writhing in death pangs; Christianity is growing haughty and wanton in its triumph.
Innocent I., at the opening of the fifth century, seems the first pope who grasped the conception of Rome's universal ecclesiastical dominion. The capture of Rome by Alaric ended the city's claims to temporal supremacy; it confirmed the spiritual ascendancy of her bishop throughout the West. ”

“ We find him rebuking two priests of Constantinople, one of whom had only preached five times between his expulsion and October, while the other had not preached once; setting on foot a mission to the pagans of Phœnicia; anxious to have a good bishop consecrated for the Goths; drawing tighter the old ties which bound him to the clergy of Antioch, and employing part of his friend's contributions in the redemption of captives, and the relief of the poor.
Pope Innocent now boldly espoused his cause, as that of a confessor for righteousness' sake. ”

“ Markwald of Anweiler left his Apulian fiefs for Romagna. But the Pope 317joined with Constance in his hostility to the Germans. Without Innocent III.’s strong and constant support she could hardly have carried out her policy. Recognising in the renewal of the old papal protection the best hopes for the independence of Sicily, Constance, on her death in 1198, called on Innocent III. to act as the guardian of her son. |Death of Constance, 1198.| Innocent loyally took up her work, and struggled with all his might to preserve the kingdom of Frederick against his many enemies. ”

“ A number of the bishops even, who had been consecrated by his anti-popes, were allowed to remain in their own sees, or were otherwise provided for. But, nevertheless, the papacy had come forth victorious from the long struggle.
No. V. is the act by which King John, in 1213, laid England at the feet of a papal legate, to receive it back, by paying tribute, as a fief from the see of Rome. The course of the struggle between John and Pope Innocent is too familiar to need recapitulation. ”