INNOCENT III AND THE CHURCH

[Excerpted from Carlton Munro, The Middle Ages, 395-1272 (New York: The Century Company, 1921), pp. 377-386]

Before Innocent III was elected, the temporal power of the papacy had been almost completely destroyed. The author of the Gesta of Innocent says that the emperor Henry "had taken possession of the whole Kingdom of Sicily and Papacy the whole patrimony of the Church up to the gates of the city, except the Campagna, and even in the city he was more obeyed than the pope himself." The prefect of Rome had become an imperial vassal. The people of the city had asserted their independence of the pope. After Henry's death the more distant portions of what had been the papal states were held by German counts, who had received them as fiefs. The environs of the city were held either by the local nobles or by the senate elected by the people. In addition, the papal treasury was sadly depleted.

Election of Innocent. A strong pope was needed, and was found in the person of Lothario Conti. He belonged to one of the most distinguished Roman families and had received an excellent education. He had studied "letters" at Paris and then had gone to Bologna to study law. He was, according to the "Gesta," "eloquent, both in the language of the people and in that of the learned, and skilled in music and singing. "When he was only twenty-nine he was made a cardinal. While holding this office he wrote his work On the Contempt of the World, or, as it is entitled in the first English edition, The Mirror of Man's Lyfe, plainly describing what weave would we are made of. This book was long popular, and was translated into several languages; but it does not represent the dominant side of Lothario's nature. Later he expressed his own preference when he said, "If the contemplative state is safer, the active is more fruitful; if the former is sweeter, the latter is more profitable. In fertility of offspring the blear-eyed Leah excelled the comely Rachel." On the death of Celestine III, Lothario, although only thirty-seven years of age, was elected pope, and took the name of Innocent III.

Innocent's Ideas. When crowning Innocent as pope, the archdeacon said, "Take the tiara, and know that thou art the father of princes and kings, the ruler of the world, the vicar on earth of our Saviour, Jesus | Christ, whose honor and glory shall endure through all eternity." 5 This formula was a part of the regular ceremony, but Innocent 1 intended to make the facts correspond to the formula. In his letter announcing his accession to the patriarch of Jerusalem, Innocent wrote that God had caused him "to obtain the most glorious possession to be found among men, the throne of Peter." In other letters he said: "The Lord gave Peter the rule not only over the universal Church, but also the rule over the whole world." "No king can reign rightly unless he devoutly serves Christ's vicar." "The priesthood is the sun, the kingdom the moon. Kings rule over their respective kingdoms, but Peter rules over the whole earth." Many another similar expression might be quoted from Innocent's letters.

States Of the Church. The pope's first care was to regain control over the states a of the Church; for, as he said, "the patrimony of blessed Peter was his portion, his desirable and magnificent heritage:" Immediately after his coronation he forced the imperial prefect of Rome to take the oath of vassalage to him. Then he gradually regained one strong place in the patrimony after another, so that within two years he was recognized as the overlord of the states of the Church as these had been described in the Donation of Pippin. But his rule was never fully effective in some parts, and he had to lay an interdict on more than one city to reduce it to obedience. He owed his success partly to his own indomitable energy and partly to the revolt of the Italian population against the German lords whom Henry VI had set over them. Innocent was able to gain much power as the champion of Italian independence. On the news of Henry's death there had been a general rising against his men, so that even his brother Philip had been compelled to flee to save his life.

Innocent and the Empire. Philip was elected emperor, but only by the Ghibellines. The Guelfs elected Otto, son of Henry the Lion. This contested election gave Innocent an opportunity to act as arbiter. Each contestant was anxious to gain his support. For three years Innocent delayed making a decision; then he decided in favor of Otto. The latter had renounced all imperial claims to the patrimony of St. Peter. The papal states, with the boundaries then agreed upon, remained practically unchanged for more than six hundred years. Innocent now did all in his power to support Otto; but gradually the Germans turned to Philip, and Otto steadily lost adherents. After Philip had been murdered by a private enemy in 1108, Otto married Philip's daughter and secured recognition as his successor. He was crowned emperor by the pope, but refused to keep his promises; and Innocent, as has been related already, turned to his ward, Frederic II, who soon secured the empire. Here we need only recall that Frederic's lack of success as emperor was due mainly to the leagues of Italian cities, which Innocent had done so much to encourage.

Innocent and the Kings. Innocent lost no opportunity to exert his power over the other kings. We have already described the manner in which Philip Augustus, the most powerful monarch in Europe, was disciplined by the pope. t In this case Innocent acted because Philip had violated the marriage sacrament. John of England was excommunicated and finally compelled to become a vassal of the pope. Peter of Aragon came to Rome to be crowned, and made his land a perpetual fief of the Holy See. Sancho of Portugal was forced to place his kingdom under the papal overlordship. Alfonso of Leon was compelled to break off a marriage with his niece. The rulers of Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and Denmark were submissive to the pope. In the East the Latin emperors of Constantinople and the king of Armenia sought his aid. Finally, it must be remembered that Sicily had long been held as a fief from the papacy.

Innocent and the City of Rome. While Innocent was exercising so great power throughout the Christian world, he was having trouble in Rome. When he was first elected pope the rule over the municipality was exercised by a senator, who represented the people. Innocent succeeded in getting the right to nominate the senator, and the latter took an oath to be faithful to him It is significant of the conditions in Rome that the senator, in his oath to the pope, swore "to guarantee to the cardinals, to their following and to thine, perfect security when they go to church, while they remain there, and on their return." But in Rome there was constant strife between the papal adherents and their opponents. Twice, at least, Innocent was forced to flee from the city. It was not until after he had been pope for ten years that he was able to live in security in the city of Rome.

Innocent's Work. Innocent made the papacy stronger than it had ever been before, and his reign, from 1198 to 12I6, marks the apogee of its temporal power. We may take this opportunity to summarize his work, which has been described in this and the preceding chapters. Innocent had restored the temporal authority of the Holy See in the patrimony, and had secured full recognition of his rights from the emperors, so that he is sometimes called "the founder of the papal states." He had encouraged and upheld the leagues of Italian cities. He had acted as arbiter between rival candidates for thrones, and had made monarchs his vassals. He had suppressed heresy in the south of France, by means of the Albigensian crusade. He had commissioned and favored Francis and Dominic, whose followers were to be so influential in the service of the Church. He had seen the submission of the Eastern empire to the Roman Church, as a result 0 of the Fourth Crusade. He had, through his legate, reformed the course of study in the University of Paris. There is no space to mention the other activities recorded in his thousands of letters.

The Fourth Lateran Council--1215. In 12I3 Innocent wrote to all the patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, both in the West and in the Orient, ordering them to come to Rome for a council to be held two and one half years later. He said, "Two things I have especially at heart: the reconquest of the Holy Land and the reform of the Church universal." Accordingly, in November, 12I5 an ecumenical council was held in the Lateran. More than four hundred bishops, eight hundred abbots and priors, and a great host both of the clergy and the laity met to do the pope's bidding. Seventy-one primates, including the patriarchs of Constantinople and Jerusalem, envoys from the emperor Frederic and from the kings of France, England, Aragon, Hungary, Jerusalem, and Cyprus, and representatives of Italian cities, were present. "The whole world seemed to be there." The council determined on a new crusade, for which the pope had long been preparing and which he offered to lead in person. The canons that the council enacted covered a wide range of subjects. The Waldensian and Albigensian heresies were condemned, and punishment of all unrepentant heretics was prescribed. In an endeavor to reform the discipline of the Church and the life of its members, the council ordered that the granting of indulgences should be restricted, that bishops should appoint competent men to preach, and should provide free instruction in grammar and theology for poor scholars. It forbade priests to officiate at ordeals or the wager of battle, thus practically prohibiting these two methods of trial, as they were of no effect without the religious sanction. It ordered that Jews and Saracens everywhere should wear a distinctive costume, and that Jews should hold no public office that would give them authority over Christians. Some of the other reforms that it attempted will be mentioned later. This council was the culminating act in Innocent's life. He died the following year.

Need of Reform. There was urgent need for the reforms that the council had attempted. Innocent's letters and acts are the best testimony to this. He did all in his power to stop the exaction of bribes in the papal curia and to expedite justice. He took personal cognizance of the more importance cases; and yet, against a high official in the Church, even he was not always able to get justice done. Frequently cases dragged on for years. Jacques de Vitry, in describing the members of the curia, says: "All were so taken up with worldly and temporal affairs, with kings and kingdoms, lawsuits and quarrels, that they would scarcely permit a word on spiritual matters." This was just after Innocent's death. Many of the officials did not share Innocent's zeal for reform, as they looked upon an office in the curia merely as a means of earning a living. This is illustrated by the action of the council in prohibiting the extortions that the papal legates had been practising. Under weaker or less conscientious popes the conditions were extremely bad. The curia became notorious for its venality and chicanery.

Character of Bishops. There were always devout bishops, and it would be easy to draw up a roll of honor that would include many a humble Christian and many an earnest reformer. Yet these did not form the majority, and their efforts were too frequently in vain. The power and wealth that a bishopric conferred caused the office to be sought by ambitious and worldly men. Innocent's characterization of the archbishop of Narbonne has already been quoted. The pope's letters refer to a number of other wicked bishops. At the beginning of Innocent's reign the archbishop of Besançon was accused by his chapter of perjury, simony, and incest, and the charges were apparently true. Yet he retained his bishopric for sixteen years, until he was driven out by the indignant citizens. In 1202 the chapter of the cathedral at Toul appealed to Innocent to depose their bishop. This was accomplished only after eight years, during which the bishop led a life of debauchery and incest. Any one who is curious to learn the depths of iniquity to which these and other bishops sank can find their crimes eloquently condemned in the pope's letters. The evils that Bernard of Clairvaux had denounced still continued, and the office of a bishop was a by-word not only in the mouths of irreverent students and imperial partisans, but also in the invectives of reformers zealous for the Church's good. Caesarius of Heisterbach quotes a clerk at Paris as saying, "I can believe everything, but I cannot believe that any German bishop can be saved." Again he quotes a monk: "The state of the Church has already come to this, that it is not worthy to be ruled except by reprobate bishops."

Ecclesiastical Courts. The Lateran council tried to reform the ecclesiastical courts. It ordered that no clerk should extend his jurisdiction to the detriment of a lay tribunal. The confusion between the two kinds of courts has been referred to in preceding chapters. When students and crusaders had been granted the privilege of trial in a ecclesiastical courts, these inevitably encroached more and more a upon the jurisdiction of the lay courts, and the orders of the council were of no avail. Equally futile was the canon forbidding clerics to take part in any judgment that entailed the shedding of blood, for bishops had their feudal as well as their ecclesiastical courts. An even worse evil was the venality practised in the ecclesiastical courts, which Innocent so often had occasion to rebuke Priests. The council tried to reform the priests and to provide for better service. The bishops were to take care that candidates were properly instructed for their duties. The priests were not to throw dice or engage in similar pastimes. Excessive drinking and frequenting of taverns were prohibited. They were to dress fittingly. They were to celebrate mass frequently and reverentially. The wording of the canons show that these orders were necessary, and these reforms the council ordered for all of the clergy, not merely for the priests. One canon shows the lack of success attained by prohibiting marriage of priests, which had been insisted upon for a century and a half; for it ordained that no son, and especially no bastard, of a priest should succeed his father in office.

Simony and Greed. Office in the Church was too often looked upon as a property right. Any who had bought a benefice was inclined to exploit it for his own pecuniary advantage. Innocent had declared that I "Simony is a disease of the Church which cannot be cured by either mild remedies or fire." The council was especially intent upon mitigating this evil. It recorded the fact that fees were often demanded for the consecration of bishops, the benediction of abbots, and the ordination of clerks. It branded these as simoniacal practices that must cease. It stated that simony had taken such deep root in the monasteries for women that, almost without exception, payment was required before a candidate would be allowed to enter; that many of the clergy demanded pay for the sacraments; that in some places it was the custom that money must be paid for absolution from excommunication. It decreed that, if a ban had been laid for the purpose of extorting money, the money must be given back. It renewed the prohibition against "pluralities," which "had had little effect." Its own action was equally ineffective, and clerks continued to strive eagerly to obtain as many benefices as they could. The council also endeavored to protect the priests against the greed of patrons and bishops who had appropriated tithes. "In some localities the priests are said to receive only one-quarter of one-quarter of the tithes. Because of this, scarcely an educated priest can be found in those localities." But the council was unable to prevent the alienation of the tithes, and had to be content with ordering that the priest must receive "a fitting portion," so that he might be able to live.

Belief in Relics. The council forbade the sale of relics, and ordered that no new relic should be venerated until it had been approved by the pope. There was need for this action. Relics had been venerated throughout the Middle Ages, and were believed to cure the sick and to heal the maimed. They were used to enhance the binding character of an oath. In fact, they were held to be useful for so many purposes, and so many abuses had crept in, that in 1100 the pope forbade any cleric to carry relics about the country for the sake of gain. A few years later the abbot Guibert wrote a remarkable treatise on relics, questioning the genuineness of some. He tells of a head of John the Baptist in the Orient and another in the West, and says: "It is certain on the one hand that there has been only one St. John the Baptist, and on the other hand that no one can say without sin that one man has been able to have two heads." The whole work is an attack upon the manufacture and abuse of relics; but Guibert felt it necessary to console his readers by the assurance that they did not sin when they unwittingly venerated false relics, and that their prayer, if sincere, would be pleasing to God, even if they were deceived as to the sanctity of the person whose intercession they were seeking. Guibert's satirical treatise had no effect upon the general body of Christians They sought eagerly to obtain relics, especially for their churches or monasteries, which were often enriched by the possession of a portion of a popular saint.

Relics from Constantinople. The number of relics in western Europe was enormously increased after the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Villehardouin said that this city contained more relics than all the rest of the world. For centuries, and especially after the Moslem conquests, art treasures and relics had been carried thither for safety and ornament. The crusaders cared little for the art treasures, but were eager to get the relics. In fact, they were less tempted by the magnificent reliquaries in which these were set than by the relics themselves. The most precious was the true cross, which was divided up among the leaders. The total number of relics acquired at Constantinople cannot be even estimated. One abbot obtained for his church more than sixty; among these was a piece of the true cross, twelve other relics from places that Christ had hallowed, two of John the Baptist, relics of four of the apostles and twenty of the martyrs, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of the "place where the Lord gave the law to Moses." All of these were carried off surreptitiously by the abbot. Many of the relics taken at Constantinople were sold, and such relics often fell into private hands. For a half century after the sack the influx of relics into western Europe continued. Under these conditions many fraudulent relics could easily find a market in the West, for there was great rivalry in securing such treasures. Many sermon stories tell of miracles wrought by relics, even for the ungodly. One tells how two beggars were healed against their will and afterward had to work for their living. Others emphasize the fact that even false relics are efficacious if the owner believes them to be genuine. It is clear that the action of the council had little effect in checking the trade in relics, whether genuine or manufactured.

The Eucharist. This council ordered that the Sacred Host must be kept carefully, lest something unfitting happen to it. This order was soon repeated by other councils, and was necessary because superstitious practices had crept in. Some believed, for example, that the Host, dissolved in water, would protect vegetables from destruction by insects. One sermon story tells how a wicked man tried to entice away all the bees from his neighbors by concealing a Host in one of his hives. The bees actually did come to the hive, relates the story, and there they constructed a little church, and "with the greatest reverence they placed the body of our Lord upon the altar." It is interesting to note in passing that the term "transubstantiation "was first used at this council.

The Devil. The first canon contains a creed carefully formulated to express the differences between Christianity and the heresies of the Albigensians and Waldensians. It declares that the Devil and the other demons were good when created, but afterward became evil. The beliefs then current among many Christians attributed power over material things to the Devil. The sermon stories frequently represent him as employed by saints and the Virgin to work miracles, because of his control over the material universe. For instance, he is ordered to transport a knight from India to France before evening; when a monk and a woman had been detected in theft, demons were commanded by the Virgin to assume the form of the monk and the woman, and thus avert a scandal.

The Virgin. The Virgin is not mentioned in the proceedings of the council. This is surprising, for, as Henry Adams says, "the Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time." "One cannot realize how actual Mary was, to the men and women of the Middle Ages, and how she was present, as a matter of course, whether by way of miracle or as a habit of life, throughout their daily existence." St. Bernard, Abelard, and many another composed hymns in her honor. It would carry us too far afield to attempt to portray the character of the Virgin as the men and women of the twelfth and thirteenth century conceived it. o How passionately they worshiped Mary, the cathedral of Chartres shows; and how this worship elevated the whole sex, all the literature and history of the time proclaim. "

Cathedrals. The age of Innocent III stands midway in the great period of church-building. "According to history," as Henry Adams says, "in the single century between 1170 and 1270 the French built eighty cathedrals and nearly five hundred churches of the cathedral class, which would have cost, according to an estimate made in 1840, more than five thousand millions to replace. Five thousand million francs is a thousand million dollars, and this covered only the great churches of a single century. "This expenditure was possible because all the people aided; sometimes all actually joined in the work." Powerful princes of the world, men brought up in honor and in wealth, nobles, men and women, have bent their proud and haughty necks to the harness of the carts, and, like beasts of burden, they have dragged to the abode of Christ these wagons, loaded with wines, grains, oil, stone, wood, and all that is necessary for the wants of life or for the construction of the church.... Often a thousand persons and more are attached to the chariots." This same spectacle had been seen when Suger was building the church at St. Denis. More often, all the people contributed toward the cost of the work; for a cathedral was the result of the effort of a whole community, aided by the feudal overlords.

What actuated the citizens was a combination of religious fervor and the popular desire to outdo some neighboring town. Monarchs, rebellious vassals, gilds of artisans, vied with one another in giving to the Church windows of stained glass or other ornaments. In the twelfth century, to be sure, some reformers, like Bernard of Clairvaux, had frowned upon such expenditures for useless ornament, and the Cistercians had built only plain edifices without towers; but Suger in his enthusiasm for building and adorning the church at St. Denis represented the age far more accurately. Sculpture was pressed, or admitted, into service. The magnificent west fronts and portals of many churches were covered with scenes from the Old and New Testaments and from the lives of saints and martyrs. A cathedral with its sculpture and windows became for the illiterate man a great Bible where he could read many a story. These churches bear witness to the same spirit that produced the twelfth- and thirteenth-century poetry and the universities. The daring experimentation with arches and buttresses, the imagination and fancy seen in the carving of gargoyles and other quaint forms, show emancipation from the old bonds and a desire for individual expression.