although they were often unable to hold their ground in their own city, but were driven out by the Romans, so that they were obliged to seek a refuge in France, or to fix their court for a time in some little Italian town. They claimed the right of setting up and
plucking down emperors and kings. Instead of asking the emperor to confirm their own election to the papacy, as in former times, they declared that no one could be emperor without their consent. They
said that they were the chief lords over kingdoms; /they required 218 the emperors to hold their stirrup as they mounted on horseback, and the rein of their bridle as they rode. And while such was their
treatment of earthly princes, they also steadily tried to get into their own hands the powers which properly belonged to bishops, so that the bishops should seem to have no rights of their own, but to hold their office and to do whatever they did only through the pope's leave and as his servants. They contrived that whenever any difference arose in the Church of any country, instead of being settled on the spot, it should be carried by an appeal to Rome, that the pope might judge it. They declared themselves to be above any councils of bishops, and claimed the power of assembling general councils, although in earlier times this power had belonged to the emperors, as was seen in the case of the first great council of Nicaea. They interfered with the election of bishops, and with the appointment of clergy to offices, in every country; and they sent into every country their ambassadors, or "legates" (as they were called), whom they charged people to respect and obey as they would respect and obey the pope himself. These legates usually made themselves hated by their pride and greediness; for they set
themselves up far above the archbishops and bishops of any country that they might be sent into, and they squeezed out from the clergy of each country which they visited the means of keeping up their pomp and splendour.
The popes who followed Gregory VII all endeavoured to act in his spirit, and to push the claims of their see further and further. And of these popes, by far the strongest and most successful was Innocent III, who was only thirty-seven years old when he was elected in 1198. I have told you how Gregory said that the papacy was as much greater than any earthly power as the sun is than the
moon. And now Innocent carried out this further by saying that, as the lesser light (the moon) borrows of the greater light (the sun), so the royal power is borrowed from the priestly power.
Innocent pretended to a right of judging between the /princes who 219 claimed the empire and the kingdom of Germany, and of making an
emperor by his own choice. He forced the king of France, Philip Augustus, to do justice to a virtuous Danish princess, whom he had married and had afterwards put away. And he forced John of England to accept Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, although Langton was appointed by the pope without any regard to the rights of the clergy or of the sovereign of England. Both in France and in England, Innocent made use of what was called an interdict to make people submit to his will. By this sentence (which had first come into use about three hundred years before), a whole country was punished at once, the bad and the good alike; all the churches were closed, all the bells there silenced, all the outward signs of
religion were taken away. There was no blessing for marriage, there were no prayers at the burial of the dead; the baptism of children and the office for the dying were the only services of the Church which were allowed while the interdict lasted. And it was commonly found, that, although a king might not himself care for any
spiritual threats or sentences which the pope might utter, he was unable to hold out against the general feeling of his people, who could not bear to be without the rites of religion, and cried out that the innocent thousands were punished for the sake of one guilty person.
John was completely subdued to the papacy, and agreed to give up his crown to the pope's commissioner, Pandulf; after which he received it again from Pandulf's hands, and promised to hold the kingdoms of England and Ireland under the condition of paying a yearly tribute as an acknowledgment that the pope was his lord.
Archbishop Langton, although he had been forced on the English Church by the pope, yet afterwards took a different line from what might have been expected. For when John, by his tyranny, provoked his barons to rise against him, the archbishop was at the head of
those who wrung from the king the Great Charter as a security for
English liberty; and, although the pope was violently angry, /and 220 threatened to punish the archbishop and the barons severely, Langton stood firmly by the cause which he had taken up.
PART II
While Innocent was thus carrying things with a high hand among the Christians of the West, he could not but feel distress about the state of affairs in the East. There, countries which had once been Christian, and among them the Holy Land, where the Saviour had lived and died, had fallen into the hands of unbelievers, and all the
efforts which had been made to recover them had hitherto been vain.
The pope's mind was set on a new crusade, and in order to raise money for it he gave much out of his own purse, stinted himself as to his manner of living, obliged the cardinals and others around him to do the like, and caused collections to be gathered throughout Western Christendom. Eloquent preachers were sent about to stir people up to the great work, and the chief beginning was made at a place called Ecry, in the north of France. It so happened that the most famous of the preachers, whose name was Fulk, arrived there just as a number of nobles and knights were met for a tournament (which was the name given to the fights of knights on horseback, which were regarded as sport, but very often ended in sad earnest).
Fulk, by the power of his speech, persuaded most of these gallant knights at Ecry to take the cross; and, as the number of Crusaders grew, some of them were sent to Venice, to provide means for their being carried by sea to Egypt, which was the country in which it was thought that the Mahometans might be attacked with the best hope of success.
When these envoys reached Venice, which was then the chief trading city of Europe, they found the Venetians very willing to supply what they wanted. It was agreed that for a certain sum of money the Venetians should prepare ships and provisions for the number of Crusaders which was expected; and they did so accordingly. But when the /Crusaders came, it was found that their numbers fell short of 221 what had been reckoned on; for many had chosen other ways of going