500 Gregory VIII., was characterized by wise and resolute administration. A Frenchman by birth, he was the first to establish those intimate relations with France which rendered that state the traditional ally of the Roman see, and culminated in the secession to Avignon. Germany, on the other hand, appears from this time as generally heading the anti-papal party, espousing the cause of the antipope, and siding with Ghibelline faction. But the chief event in the pontificate of Calixtus, and one which may be looked upon as inaugurating a new era in the history of our sub ject, was the Concordat of Worms of the year 1122. Concordat By this memorable treaty, which, accepted as the law of of Worms. Christendom, seemed to promise an ultimate conclusion of the long struggle, an understanding was at last arrived at. The emperor ceded the right of investiture by the ring and the pastoral staff, thereby renouncing that at which the church most demurred, the appearance of assuming to be in any way the transmitter of the spiritual succession, but retaining the right of granting church benefices or other property by the symbol of temporal power, the sceptre. The pope, on the other hand, consented that the election of bishops and abbots should take place, according to canonical procedure in the presence of the emperor, but that neither bribery nor compulsion should be resorted to, and that, in the case of disputed elections, there should be a right of appeal to the metropolitan and provincial bishops. In Germany the investiture with the regalia by the sceptre was to precede the consecration, the dependence of the higher clergy being thus secured to the emperor ; but in other countries the lay investiture was to take place within six months after consecration. In an appended clause a re servation was made which afterwards became a fruitful germ of controversy: the elected dignitary bound himself to dis charge his feudal obligations to the emperor arising out of his investiture with the temporalities, " except in all things which are acknowledged to belong to the Roman Church." During the pontificate of INNOCENT II. (1130-43) the importance of the new relations established with France Bernard are to be seen in the all-commanding influence of BERNARD Clair- OF CLAiRVATJX (q.v.), the unswerving supporter of the papal claims, round whose career indeed the life of the Western Church for half a century may be said mainly to revolve. In the struggle, arising out of his disputed elec tion, with the antipope, Anacletus II., Innocent succeeded in gaining the support of Bernard, and through Bernard that of the emperor Lothair; and the narrative of his restoration to his see by the imperial forces, after an exile of four years, is one of the most dramatic episodes in papal history. Technically, at least, Anacletus had the better claim to the papacy, having been elected by a majority of the cardinals ; but Innocent secured the support of Lothair by making over to him the territory bequeathed by the countess Matilda. In return for this concession, Lothair accepted the imperial crown from Innocent in the church of the Lateran, and acknowledged himself the pope s vassal, in the language of the inscription recording the event, "Post homo fit Papse, sumit quo dante coronam." Eenewal The change in the imperial dynasty, involving as it did r the the setting aside of Lothair s son-in-law as emperor, revived witifthe tte . riv ^ lr y between the empire and the papacy ; and the empire. Ghibellines, or adherents of the Hohenstaufen (or Swabian) line, now represented a more distinctly defined party in opposition to the Guelfs, who sustained the traditional policy of the Saxon imperial line, and sided with the popes. Frederick Barbarossa, although he consented to receive the imperial crown at the hands of HADRIAN IV. (1154-59), required that pontiff altogether to disavow the notion of having conferred it as a henrficium upon a vassal, main taining that, through the election of the princes, he held his crowns (both kingly and imperial) of God alone. During the pontificate of ALEXANDER III. (1159-81) Frederick supported the cause of the antipopes. A dis puted election, in which the merits of the candidates are even yet more difficult to determine than in the election of Innocent II., gave rise to a series of counter claims, and Alexander, during his long pontificate, had to contend with four successive antipopes each backed by the imperial arms. Only the election of the first, Victor V. (antipope, 1159-64), however, had real canonical validity, the claims of the others having always been regarded by all orthodox Catholics as presumptuous. It was during the latter part of Alexander s government that Rome achieved a great moral triumph in England in the reaction j which followed upon the murder of Thomas Becket and the abrogation of the Constitutions of Clarendon. Eight I years later the attention of all Christian Europe was riveted I by the memorable occurrence which marked the consum-
- mation of the truce of Venice (1178), when Frederick
j Barbarossa prostrated himself before the aged pontiff and held his stirrup as he mounted his palfrey. Passing by the comparatively unimportant careers of the five popes whose names stand between those of Alexander and INNOCENT III. (1198-1216), we find ourselves at the Inno< stage which marks the culmination of the papal power. nl - The august descent of this pontiff; his learning as a canonist and his commanding genius ; the interdicts which he could venture to impose on great realms, whether ruled by the astute sagacity of a Philip Augustus or by the reckless folly of a John ; his sentences of excommunica tion, hurled with deadly effect at emperor and at kings ; the vigour with which he wrested whole provinces from the imperial domination the march of Ancona and the duchy of Spoleto to weld together into one compact whole the Patrimonium and the Romagna ; the energy Avith which he repressed the heresies which threatened the unity of the church ; the boldness with which he defined the doctrine of transubstantiation ; his patience in working and waiting for opportunities, and the promptitude with which he seized the occasion when it arrived, such are the features which combine to render the eighteen years pontificate of Innocent III. a period of unrivalled lustre and importance in the history of the popedom. It was now that the papal power may be said to have effectually impressed its theory of sacerdotal government upon Europe ; that the canon law, wherein that theory was elaborated, began to be taught in the universities which rose throughout Europe Bologna, Padua, Paris, Orleans, Oxford, and Cambridge ; that ecclesiastical discipline everywhere modelled itself on the practice of Rome ; that the mendicant orders, especially those of St Dominic and St Francis of Assisi, with their irregular enthusiasm, skilfully converted by Innocent into a widely-diffused, untiring, and devoted propaganda, roused a new spirit alike in the universities and among the illiterate laity, and became a powerful instrument wherewith to coerce to obedience the episcopal order and the whole body of the secular clergy. The chief interest attaching to the pontificates of The HONORIUS III. (1216-27), GREGORY IX. (1227-41), and en.j INNOCENT IV. (1243-54) arises from their connexion with ^ re the policy and career of Frederick II. (emperor 1210-50). To the whole traditions of the popedom Frederick was especially obnoxious, menacing on the one hand its standard i of doctrine by his reputed scepticism, and its newly acquired possessions on the other by his schemes for the revival of imperial supremacy in Italy. In the sequel his designs were baffled by the ability and resolution of Gregory and Innocent; and at the general council of Lyons (1245) Frederick was deposed both from his imperial and his kingly dignities, and his subjects declared to be absolved
from their fidelity. In this manner the power claimed by