Absolute Monarchs

by John Julius Norwich

  Within less than two years, Innocent found himself without a secular rival in Europe. The death of Henry VI and the traditional enmity of the House of Guelf toward the Hohenstaufen had left the Western Empire rudderless and Germany in a state of civil war. Byzantium under its ridiculous emperor, Alexius III Angelus, was also in near chaos; independent Norman Sicily was gone; and both England and France were occupied with inheritance problems after the death of Richard I in 1199. The pope was consequently in a stronger position than any of his recent predecessors, and without a hostile emperor to intrigue against him he was soon able to reassert his authority both in the Papal States—which had been reduced to near anarchy by Hohenstaufen policies—and in Rome itself, reconciling the various aristocratic factions, to several of which he was related through his mother. He even managed to acquire the Duchy of Spoleto and the March of Ancona, a territory which stretched from Rome to the Adriatic and provided an invaluable cordon sanitaire between North Italy and the Sicilian kingdom, where he pulled off another diplomatic masterstroke by persuading the Empress Constance to make Sicily a papal fief and appoint the pope as regent during her son, Frederick’s, minority.

  He was less fortunate in giving his blessing to the Fourth Crusade. Like his predecessors, he was determined on the liberation of the Holy Places from Muslim occupation and as early as 1198 had called for a Crusade for the recovery of Jerusalem, imposing a tax of 2.5 percent on clerical incomes to pay for it. When, however, the Crusaders finally gathered in Venice in the summer of 1202, they were unable to pay the agreed 84,000 silver marks for the transport of their army across the Mediterranean; the Venetians therefore refused to sail unless they helped in the recapture of Zara (now Zadar) on the Dalmatian coast. Zara was duly taken and sacked, but fighting broke out almost at once between the Crusaders and the Venetians over the division of the spoils, and when order was finally restored the two groups settled down in separate quarters of the city for the winter. Before long news of what had happened reached the pope; outraged, he excommunicated the entire expedition. (Later he would reconsider and restrict the sentence—most unfairly—to the Venetians only.)

  Worse was to follow. While the Crusade was still in Zara, Duke Philip of Swabia—Barbarossa’s fifth and youngest son, who had married Irene, the daughter of the dethroned Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelus—arrived with a proposal: if the Crusade would escort his brother-in-law, Isaac’s son Alexius, to Constantinople and enthrone him there in the place of the present usurper, Alexius would finance its future advance and supply an additional army of ten thousand. He would also heal the 150-year schism by submitting the Byzantine Church to the authority of Rome. The invitation sounded tempting indeed and was accepted by both the Crusaders and the Venetians, who quickly forgot their differences, but it led, in April 1204, to the most unspeakable of the many outrages in the whole hideous history of the Crusades: the brutal sacking and near destruction, by men wearing the Cross of Christ on their shoulders, of Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire and Christendom’s most vital outpost in the East. As a result, a succession of Frankish thugs, most of them hardly able to write their names and none of them speaking a word of Greek, occupied the throne of the emperors for the next fifty-seven years. Byzantium was to endure for almost two centuries more, but only as the palest shadow of what it once had been.

  Pope Innocent, who had tried unsuccessfully to deflect the Crusaders from Constantinople altogether, was as horrified as anyone when he heard of the atrocities for which they had been responsible, but he could hardly ignore the fact that the Latin occupation brought with it a Roman Catholic patriarch, and so deluded himself into thinking that the schism was effectively at an end. “By the just judgment of God,” he wrote, “the kingdom of the Greeks is translated from the proud to the humble, from the disobedient to the faithful, from schismatics to Catholics.” How wrong he was: the rape of Constantinople, far from putting an end to the schism, set it in stone.

  Meanwhile, Innocent’s belief in the Crusading ideal remained unshaken—as the Albigenses were to learn to their cost.

  THE ALBIGENSES WERE a heretical Christian sect that had first appeared in the Languedoc toward the beginning of the eleventh century. Their particular heresy, Catharism, did not exist only in Western Europe; in former times Cathars had existed in Armenia, where for centuries, under the name of Paulicians, they had been a thorn in the flesh of successive Byzantine rulers, as well as in Bulgaria and Bosnia, where they were known as Bogomils. Essentially, they espoused the Manichaean doctrine that good and evil constituted two distinct spheres—that of the good, spiritual God and that of the Devil, creator of the material world—and that the earth was a constant battleground between them. Their leaders, the perfecti, abstained from meat and sex; they also rejected saints, holy images, and relics, together with all the sacraments of the Church, particularly baptism and marriage. To Pope Innocent, such departures from strict orthodoxy could not be tolerated. At first he attempted peaceable conversion, sending a Cistercian mission headed by a legate, Peter of Castelnau, and the Abbot of Cîteaux, and subsequently joined by the Spaniard Domingo de Guzmán, better known as St. Dominic; but in 1208 Peter was murdered by a henchman of Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, and Innocent proclaimed a Crusade.

  That Crusade was to continue for the next twenty years, pitting the northern barons, led by Simon IV de Montfort, against those of the South. It led to several hideous massacres—the worst of them all in the town of Montségur—and it utterly destroyed the venerable Provençal civilization of the early Middle Ages. Even when the war ended in 1229 with the Treaty of Paris, after the wholesale massacres of countless heretics, the heresy refused to die. It would be another hundred years before the Inquisition, unleashed on the region with all its terrifying efficiency, succeeded in crushing it at last.

  By a curious irony the year 1209, which marked the beginning of the Albigensian Crusade, also saw the establishment of the first of the two great mendicant orders, those of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic, respectively. Both men were well known to Pope Innocent, who, according to the old Franciscan tradition, orally approved St. Francis’s Order of Friars Minor in Rome on April 16. Those first friars were, quite simply, wandering preachers who accepted whatever employment—normally agricultural—or hospitality was offered them and, if absolutely necessary, begged for their bread.2 They preached the simplest of sermons to townsfolk and peasants alike and took particular pains over the care of the sick. The order proved hugely popular and grew with astonishing speed; ten years after its foundation, it boasted over three thousand members. The second order, that of St. Dominic, would be sanctioned in 1216, five months after the pope’s death.

  During the early years of Innocent’s pontificate, one of his most abiding concerns was the future of the German crown, which, it must be remembered, was elective rather than hereditary. Frederick of Sicily, the only son of Henry VI, had an obvious claim, but he was far away in Palermo and still a child. Of the two rival claimants in Germany, one was his uncle Philip, Duke of Swabia; the other was Otto, Duke of Brunswick, son of the Guelf leader Henry the Lion, Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, and his wife, Matilda, daughter of Henry II of England. Otto was consequently the nephew of Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Richard’s younger brother King John. Since Philip refused to give any undertakings with regard to Sicily while Otto readily agreed to respect papal rights both there and in the enlarged Papal States, Pope Innocent had no hesitation in supporting the Duke of Brunswick; Frederick’s future authority could, he felt, with any luck be restricted to Sicily. Hostilities between the two factions delayed any final solution to the problem for several years; gradually, however, the Duke of Swabia grew dangerously strong, to the point where Innocent might well have had to revise his position; the pope cannot have mourned unduly when Philip was murdered in 1208 by the Count Palatine of Bavaria, to whom he had refused one of his daughters in marriage. The way was now clear for Otto’s coronation, which Innocent performed in Rome on
Sunday, October 4, 1209. But the Duke of Brunswick proved a sad disappointment. Within weeks he was showing himself every bit as arrogant and bullying as Barbarossa or Henry VI had ever been, and in the summer of 1210 he invaded the Sicilian kingdom and took possession of all South Italy. Unfortunately for him, however, he went too far: his invasion of the papal province of Tuscany led to his instant excommunication, and in September 1211 a council of the leading German princes met in Nuremberg and declared him deposed. They then dispatched ambassadors to Palermo, with an invitation to Frederick, now just seventeen, to assume the vacant throne.

  The invitation came as a complete surprise. Frederick’s principal councillors strongly advised against acceptance. He had no ties of his own with Germany; indeed, he had never set foot on German soil. His hold on his own Sicilian kingdom was still far from secure; it was scarcely a year since the Duke of Brunswick had been threatening him from across the Straits of Messina. Was this really the moment to absent himself from Sicily for several months at least, for the sake of an honor which, however impressive, might yet prove illusory? On the other hand, a refusal would, he knew, be seen by the German princes as a deliberate snub, and could not fail to strengthen the position of his chief rival. Both in Italy and in Germany, the Duke of Brunswick still had plenty of support. Having renounced none of his long-term ambitions, Otto was fully capable of launching a new campaign—and he would not make the same mistake next time. Here was an opportunity to deal him a knockout blow. It was not to be missed.

  Pope Innocent, after some hesitation, gave his approval. Frederick’s election would admittedly tighten the imperial grip to the north and south of the Papal States, and it was in order to emphasize the independence, at least theoretical, of the Kingdom of Sicily from the empire that the pope insisted on Frederick’s renunciation of the Sicilian throne in favor of his newborn son, with the child’s mother, Constance, acting as regent.3 Once those formalities had been settled, Frederick could set off. At the end of February 1212 he sailed from Messina. His immediate destination, however, was not Germany but Rome; and there, on Easter Sunday, March 25, he knelt before the pope and performed the act of feudal homage to him—technically on behalf of his son the king—for the Sicilian kingdom.

  His way north, however, was by no means clear. On July 28 he was given a warm welcome in Pavia, but the Lombard plain was constantly patrolled by bands of pro-Guelf Milanese, and it was one of these bands that surprised the imperial party as they were leaving the town the next morning. Frederick was lucky indeed to be able to leap onto one of the horses and, having forded the Lambro River bareback, to make his way to friendly Cremona. By the beginning of autumn he was safely in Germany, where, in December, he was crowned king. It was his first step toward the Empire of the West.

  From Innocent’s point of view, Frederick had begun promisingly enough. In the summer of 1213 he guaranteed, in what was known as the Golden Bull of Eger, free elections of all bishops and abbots in his realms, and allowed, in cases of religious litigation, the right of appeal to the Holy See, which had been previously denied in Sicily. It was inevitable that imperial-papal relations should sooner or later turn sour—they always did—but for the remaining three years of Innocent’s life he had good reason to congratulate himself on the success of his policy toward the empire.

  OTTO OF BRUNSWICK had done enough to blacken himself in the pope’s eyes, and his image was not improved by the fact that he was the nephew of King John of England. Already in 1208, before Otto had fallen from grace and when John had refused to recognize the pope’s nominee (and old personal friend) Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, Innocent had laid the whole kingdom under an interdict. John had retaliated by seizing all clerical property and ordering the arrests of all the mistresses of priests and clerks—though he soon allowed them to buy back their freedom. Negotiations had begun between king and pope, but John continued as refractory as ever, and in 1209 Innocent excommunicated him—at which nearly all the English bishops and abbots went into voluntary exile. Now, the ban of the Church had in the past been known to bring kings and even emperors to their knees—we have only to think of Henry IV at Canossa; the difficulty was that when sees and abbacies became vacant, their revenue reverted to the Crown. By 1211 the king’s profits from seven of one and seventeen of the other were such that he seemed to be actually enjoying his excommunication and in no hurry to have it lifted.

  A year later, however, by now some £100,000 the richer, John determined to win back extensive territories in France—Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and parts of Poitou—that he had lost to Philip Augustus early in his reign. This would clearly involve a massive continental campaign, and such a campaign, he knew, would be impossible while he was an excommunicate. And so, in November 1212, he agreed to accept Langton. He need not have bothered; the ensuing campaign was a disaster. His chief ally was his nephew, the Duke of Brunswick, whom he had long supported and largely financed; there were also units from the Low Countries commanded by the Count of Flanders, making a total of perhaps 15,000 men in all. Undaunted, the 10,000-strong army of Philip Augustus, supported only by Frederick of Sicily, rode out to meet the invaders on July 27, 1214, at Bouvines, between Lille and Tournai—and won a decisive victory. The Count of Flanders was taken prisoner, while Otto fled back to Brunswick. As for John himself, Bouvines marked the end of his coalition and of all his continental ambitions. At home, his position was now so weak that he was obliged to sign the Magna Carta the following year.

  Such is the reputation of this most celebrated of all historic documents that it comes as something of a surprise to learn that the more intransigent barons almost immediately rendered it unworkable. Far from ensuring a healthier relationship between themselves and the monarchy, it led to a civil war which soon became an international one when Prince Louis of France (later Louis VIII) invaded England at the barons’ invitation. Pope Innocent, who saw it not as an assertion of the law against tyranny but as an attempt at feudal insurrection against royal authority, was predictably furious—and at John’s request declared it null and void on the grounds that it had been imposed upon the king against his will.

  By this time, however, the pope was immersed in preparations for the climax of his pontificate, and indeed of all medieval papal legislation, the Fourth Lateran Council, which opened in November 1215. Present were more than four hundred bishops and archbishops, including the Latin patriarchs of Constantinople and Jerusalem and representatives of those in Alexandria and Antioch. Among the rest were more than eight hundred abbots and priors, together with the envoys of Frederick of Sicily (now King of the Germans), the Latin Emperor of Constantinople, and the kings of England, France, Aragon, Sicily, Hungary, Cyprus, and Jerusalem. Conspicuous by their absence were representatives of the Greek Church in the East; the horrors of the Fourth Crusade were still too fresh in their minds.

  The Council concerned itself with two problems in particular: the occupation by the Infidel of the Holy Places and the recrudescence of heresy. The starting date of the proposed new Crusade was fixed for June 1, 1217, and a tax of one-fortieth of their income was imposed on all the clergy, with pope and cardinals paying one-tenth; but Innocent’s death on July 16, 1216, deprived the preparations of their momentum and the project was of necessity postponed. Where heresy was concerned, it is noteworthy that the first speaker after the pope himself was the Bishop of Agde, who discussed the Albigensian problem at considerable length. Later the Catharist doctrine was formally condemned, and Crusading privileges were extended to all those who took part in campaigns against it.

  Sometime during the early sessions of the Council, St. Dominic arrived in Rome to request from Pope Innocent the official confirmation of his order; but there were various problems to be solved, and it was Innocent’s successor, Honorius III, who finally gave the Dominicans his blessing. They were to prove as successful as the Franciscans; by the time of Dominic’s death in 1221, six priories had been founded in Lombardy, four in Provence, fou
r in France, three each in Tuscany and Rome, and two in Spain.

  Altogether, the Council promulgated seventy-one canons, or decrees, covering a remarkably wide field. The very first defined the doctrine of transubstantiation; the thirteenth forbade the foundation of any new religious orders (St. Dominic got over that one by adopting the Rule of St. Augustine); the eighteenth abolished the use of hot water and red-hot iron in trials by ordeal; the twenty-first insisted on confession and Communion for all Catholics at least once a year at Easter; the thirty-first prohibited illegitimate sons of the clergy from inheriting their fathers’ churches. The closing canons were directed against the Jews: no Christian was to have commerce with Jewish usurers; both Jews and Muslims were to wear distinctive dress; no Jew might appear in public during Holy Week, nor might he exercise any public function involving power over Christians.

  Those last provisions seem shocking to us today; they would not have done so in the early thirteenth century. Innocent and his colleagues were children of their time; they discriminated against the Jews, but it was their fellow Christians whom they persecuted. Before condemning them too harshly we should perhaps consider the position of the Jews in medieval England, remembering how before the end of the century, after innumerable arrests and executions, King Edward I was to banish the entire Jewish community from English soil.

  Quite apart from the decrees of the Council, Innocent was responsible for a huge corpus of legislation; he left over six thousand letters, many of which were decretals of canon law, issuing his first collection of them as early as 1210 and entrusting it to the University of Bologna. His reign marks the apex of the temporal power of the medieval Papacy, but none could have foreseen the suddenness with which it came to an end. In July 1216 the pope left Rome for the North, hoping to settle the age-old quarrel between Genoa and Pisa so that the two great maritime republics could collaborate in the projected Crusade. Some years before, he had suffered a severe attack of malaria which had brought him to the edge of the grave; he had gotten no further than Perugia when the same disease struck again. A day or two later he was dead. He was fifty-five.