submissive and humble tools, assumed with the purple the
habits and pretensions of the sovereigns they had dispossessed.
Nevertheless, Innocent left his successors a much vaster and
more stable political dominion than that which he had received
from his predecessors, since it comprised both East and West;
and his five immediate successors were able to preserve this
ascendancy. They even extended the limits of Roman imperialism
by converting the pagans of the Baltic to Christianity, and
further reinforced the work of ecclesiastical centralization by
enlisting in their service a force which had recently come into
existence and was rapidly becoming popular—the mendicant
orders, and notably the Dominicans and Franciscans. The
The Friars
and the Universities.
Roman power was also increased by the formation
of the Universities—privileged corporations of
masters and students, which escaped the local power
of the bishop and his chancellor only to place themselves under
the direction and supervision of the Holy See. Mistress of the
entire Christian organism, Rome thus gained control of international
education, and the mendicant monks who formed her
devoted militia lost no time in monopolizing the professorial
chairs. Although the ecclesiastical monarchy continued to
gain strength, the successors of Innocent III. made less use
than he of their immense power. Under Gregory IX. (1227–1241)
and Innocent IV. (1243–1254) the conflict between the
priesthood and the Empire was revived by the enigmatic
Frederick II., the polyglot and lettered emperor, the friend of
Saracens, the despot who, in youth styled "king of priests," in
later years personified ideas that were directly opposed to the
medieval theocracy; and the struggle lasted nearly thirty years.
The Hohenstaufen succumbed to it, and the papacy itself
received a terrible shock, which shook its vast empire to the
foundations.
Nevertheless, the first half of the 13th century may be regarded
as the grand epoch of medieval papal history. Supreme in
Europe, the papacy gathered into a body of doctrine
the decisions given in virtue of its enormous de facto
power, and promulgated its collected decrees and
Culmination
of the Papal Power.
oracula to form the immutable law of the Christian world.
Innocent III., Honorius III. and Gregory IX. employed their
jurists to collect the most important of their rulings, and
Gregory's decrees became the definitive repository of the canon
law. Besides making laws for the Christendom of the present
and the future, these popes employed themselves in giving a
more regular form to their principal administrative organ, the
offices of the Curia. The development of the Roman chancery
is also a characteristic sign of the evolution that was taking place.
From the time of Innocent III. the usages of the apostolic
scribes become transformed into precise rules, which for the
most part remained in force until the 15th century.
4. Period from Urban IV. to Benedict XI. (1261–1305).—This period comprises 13 pontificates, all of short duration (three or four years at the most, and some only a few months), with the exception of that of Boniface VIII., who was pope for nine years. This accidental fact constitutes a prime difference in favour of the preceding period, in which there were only five pontiffs during the first sixty years of the 13th century. Towards the end of the 13th century the directors of the Christian world occupied the throne of St Peter for too short a time to be able to make their personal views prevail or to execute their political projects at leisure after ripe meditation. Whatever the merit of a Gregory X. or a Nicholas III., the brevity of their pontificates prevented any one of these ephemeral sovereigns from being a great pope.
But other and far more important differences characterize
this period. Although there was no theoretical restriction to
the temporal supremacy and religious power of the
papacy, certain historical facts of great importance
contributed to the fatal diminution of their extent.Influence of the Power
of France.
The first of these was the preponderance of the French monarchy
and nation in Europe. Founded by the conquests of Philip
Augustus and Louis VIII. and legitimated and extended by
the policy and moral influence of the crowned saint, Louis IX.,
the French monarchy enjoyed undisputed supremacy at the end
of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th; and this
hegemony of France was manifested, not only by the extension
of the direct power exercised by the French kings over all the
neighbouring nationalities, but also by the establishment of
Capetian dynasties in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies and in
Hungary. From this time the sovereign of Rome, like other
sovereigns, had to submit to French influence. But, whereas
the pope was sometimes compelled to become the instrument of
the policy of the kings of France or the adventurers of their race,
he was often able to utilize this new and pervading force for the
realization of his own designs, although he endeavoured from
time to time, but without enduring success, to shake off the
overwhelming yoke of the French. In short, it was in the
sphere of French interests much more than in that of the general
interests of Latin Christendom that the activities of these popes
were exerted. The fact of many of the popes being of French
birth and France the field of their diplomacy shows that the
supreme pontificate was already becoming French in character.
This change was a prelude to the more or less complete subjection
of the papacy to French influence which took place in the
following century at the period of the “Babylonish Captivity,”
the violent reaction personified by Boniface VIII. affording but
a brief respite in this irresistible evolution. It was the Frenchman
Urban IV. (1261–1264) who called Charles of Anjou into
Italy to combat the last heirs of Frederick II. and thus paved
the way for the establishment of the Angevin dynasty on the
throne of Naples. Under Clement IV. (1265–1268) an agreement
was concluded by which Sicily was handed over to the brother
of St Louis, and the victories of Benevento (1266) and Tagliacozzo
(1267) assured the triumph of the Guelph party and enabled
the Angevins to plant themselves definitely on Neapolitan soil.
Conradin's tragic and inevitable end closed the last act of the
secular struggle between the Holy See and the Empire.
Haunted by the recollection of that formidable conflict and
lulled in the security of the Great Interregnum, which was to
render Germany long powerless, the papacy thought merely
of the support that France could give, and paid no heed to the
dangers threatened by the extension of Charles of Anjou's
monarchy in central and northern Italy. The Visconti Gregory X.
(1271–1276) made an attempt to bring about a reaction
against the tendency which had influenced his two immediate
predecessors. He placed himself outside the theatre of French
influence, and occupied himself solely with the task of giving to
the papal monarchy that character of universality and political
superiority which had made the greatness of an Alexander III.
or an Innocent III. He opposed the aggrandizing projects of
the Angevins, intervened in Germany with a view to terminating
the Great Interregnum, and sought a necessary counterpoise
to Capetian predominance in an alliance with Rudolph of
Habsburg, who had become an emperor without imperilling
the papacy. The Orsini Nicholas III. pursued the same policy
with regard to the independence and greatness of the Roman
See, but died too soon for the cause he upheld, and, at his death
in 1280, the inevitable current revived with overpowering
force. His successor, Martin IV. (1281–1285), a prelate of
Champagne, brother of several councillors of the king of France,
prebendary at Rouen and Tours, and one of the most zealous
in favour of the canonization of Louis IX., ascended the papal
throne under the auspices of Charles of Anjou, and undertook
the government of the Church with the sole intention of furthering
in every way the interests of the country of his birth. A
Frenchman before everything, he abased the papal power to
such an extent as to excite the indignation of his contemporaries,
often slavishly subordinating it to the exigencies of the domestic
and foreign policy of the Angevins at Naples and the reigning
house at Paris. But he was prevented from carrying out this
policy by an unforeseen blow, the Sicilian Vespers (March 1282),
an event important both in itself and in its results. By rejecting
the Capetian sovereign that Rome wished to thrust upon it to
deliver it from the dynasty of Aragon, the little island of Sicily
arrested the progress of French imperialism, ruined the vast
