as necessary for the election of a pope. The measure was passed in view of the long struggle that had just been ended by the peace of Venice, and that had begun with the double election of 1160. (See Book IV., No. IV.)
No VII., the general summons of Innocent III. to a crusade in 1215, is the most exhaustive and complete appeal of the kind that was issued. For the next seventyfive years the summonses were to be simple verbal reissues of it—small changes being made, however, as the condition of affairs became more and more despairing. Thus, for instance, it became necessary in course of time to reward by remissions of so and so many days those who would consent even to be present at the preaching of the papal legate who came to announce a crusade; and finally, just before the fall of Acre, full remission was granted to those who would contribute anything at all to the lost cause.[1]
No. VIII. is the Rule of St. Francis, which, although Innocent III. had verbally consented to the foundation of the order, was not formally approved by the papacy until 1223. The rise of the mendicant orders is undoubtedly the most important feature in the church history of the early thirteenth century. St. Dominicus founded for himself no new rule, simply accepting the old rule of the Augustine monks and adding to it a few new regulations.
- ↑ It is well known that the misuse of the papal power of granting: indulgence for sins—a power that owes its whole development to the crusades—was one of the chief causes that brought ahout the Reformation. It is not generally known, however, that almost all the prominent features of the later so notorious traffic existed in their completeness nearly three hundred years earlier. I have found in an ancient chronicle (see Muratori, viii. p. 1092) an account of a papal legate who, in 1219, offered, as an inducement to all those who would prolong their stay and defend the holy land, to absolve the souls of their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, wives and children!
