thing which simple justice and good government demanded. A resolute attempt to break down the shield of crime, conducted in the right spirit, would have been something worthy of his kingship. But he failed of the right spirit. He gave way to resentment. He answered priestly assumption with an overstraining of royal prerogative, and was impelled into acts of tyrannical violence in his attempts to humble and to distress his opponent. As for Becket, he may be credited with a good measure of conscientious conviction. He probably believed that he was called upon to defend the sacred rights of the Church. But he conducted the defence as a partisan,- yea, as a bigot. He was without largeness of heart or clearness of vision. The rights of his order and the prerogatives of his see claimed his whole ardor. In his view, usurpation against these was the one crime. He had no prophet's voice to denounce other sins and iniquities in high places. Only encroachments against the ecclesiastical domain, and especially against the archiepiscopal throne of Canterbury, called forth his censures. His whole struggle, in short, was a struggle for mere power. Granting that it was not a display of selfishness, it was at least a display of narrowness. To seek mere power for the Church in a spirit which ignores the ethical and spiritual basis of the Church, even though one sacrifice himself in the seeking, is justly to incur the charge of narrowness and fanaticism. We will not impeach the honest intention of Becket. We will not refuse a certain admiration for the steadfastness with which he fought out his cause. But we blush for the moral judgment of one who, with anything like an adequate knowledge of his history, can pronounce him a saint. The canonization of Becket may be placed along with other instances of libel upon the New Testament ideal. III. - INNOCENT III. 1198 1216 Reference has been made to the fact that the temporary humiliation of Frederic Barbarossa had been followed by a vigorous and successful assertion of imperial claims. Great advantage accrued to the Empire in particular from the marriage of Frederic's son Henry to Constance, the heiress of the Norman dominion in Sicily and Southern Italy. The transfer of sovereignty over this territory to the Hohenstaufen family took away a valuable support from the papacy, and exposed it on all sides to the power of an ambitious rival. The inconvenience of the situation became at once apparent. For Henry VI., who received the imperial office on the death of Frederic, was not a man from whom an opponent could expect any leniency or concession. As aggressive in spirit as his father, he was far less restrained by the dictates of honor. Treating the papal censures as unworthy of notice, crushing opposition with equal vigor, cruelty, and unscrupulousness, he advanced to a controlling power in Italy. The gains, however, which he made were of very uncertain tenure. His tyranny strengthened and embittered the opposition to the Empire which was always cherished by a part of the Italian people, while his early death, in 1197, left no one from his house to take up the sceptre. His son Frederic was then but an infant. The Empire had no competent. champion against the papacy. On the contrary, the struggle of rival claimants for the imperial honor invited the Roman pontiff to interfere, to the magnifying of his own superiority. At this juncture, too, a man came to the papal throne who was qualified to make the most of the opportunity, a man whose capacity for rule has never been excelled by any one who has called himself a successor of Peter. Historians very commonly agree in the verdict that Innocent III. marks the culmination of the papal theocracy. Other pontiffs may have put forth equal pretensions, but in the actual exercise of governing power, in the successful maintenance of sovereignty, Innocent stands at the point of highest elevation in the whole line. His achievements were on a truly magnificent scale. As respects their moral quality, they will not indeed appear unstained. The vice of autocratic power is too plainly revealed to escape detection. Still the administration of Innocent III. bears in general the appearance of moral respectability. Like Gregory VII., he knew how to despise a bribe, and sought to drive out the plague of venality from his neighborhood. If his censorship over the nations was not carried out with full impartiality, it was often used to scourge a manifest injustice. No open turpitude cancelled the respect of his contemporaries. He had the prestige of superior learning. His study at the universities of Paris and Bologna had given him a good understanding of theology and an almost unequalled mastery of law. Unlike a majority of the Popes, he came to his pontificate in the undiminished vigor of his years, being installed at the early age of thirty-seven. The long term of eighteen years (1198–1216) gave him full scope for the execution of arduous enterprises. To one, therefore, who is not revolted by his boundless assumption and dictatorial exercise of authority, Innocent III. will not appear otherwise than as an imposing figure in history. A Roman Catholic at all tinged with Ultramontanism will take no exception to the following words of Alzog: "If Innocent had found occasion to show his steadfastness against outward misfortune, as did Gregory VII. and Alexander III., whom he far surpassed in theological and juristic learning, as well as in executive ability, so would one be obliged to pronounce him the greatest successor of Peter; in any case, he exalted the chair of Peter to the highest honor." 1 The conception of theocratic rule had been so fully outlined by Gregory VII. that there was little occasion to add thereto. Accordingly, we find Innocent's definitions of papal prerogatives substantially the same as those of his powerful predecessor of the eleventh century. He regarded the Pope as the central luminary, the sun of the ecclesiastical system. His jurisdiction in things spiritual-so he wrote to the French Kinghas no limits; by the divine ordinance, it is so full that it admits of no addition.2 Other dignitaries of the Church stand in servant relations. Among the apostolic seats the Roman is as the throne which the Revelator saw, while the relative position of the four patriarchates, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, is symbolized by the four living creatures which rendered their homage before the throne. The Pope indeed bears the name of a servant, that he may not 2 Lib. vi. epist. 163. 1 Kirchengeschichte, § 221. forget the demands of humility. But still, as the vicegerent of Christ, he occupies a kind of superhuman station. "He stands in the midst between God and man; below God, above man; less than God, more than man. He judges all, is judged by none." In the spiritual organism he is the head, and just as the head, which is the principal seat of the senses, bears rule among the members of the body, so the successors of Peter have a commanding primacy over all the prelates of the Church. As for temporal rulers, they belong to a quite different sphere. Their jurisdiction extends simply over bodies, not over souls. They have each but a single realm, whereas the successor of Peter rules with unbounded sway, as the vicar of Him to whom the whole earth belongs. Their glory is a borrowed glory. "As the moon derives its light from the sun, and is inferior to it at once in quantity and quality, in position as well as in effect, so the regal power derives the splendor of its dignity from pontifical authority." 3 In a word, kings are the servants of the Pope. He is their instructor as to their duties, the censor of their conduct, the arbiter of their disputes, the disposer, in case of stubborn disobedience, of their crowns. The practice of Innocent corresponded to his theory. 1 "Videtis quis iste servus, qui super familiam constituitur, profecto vicarius Jesu Christi, successor Petri, Christus Domini, Deus Pharaonis: inter Deum et hominem medius constitutus, citra Deum, sed ultra hominem minor Deo, sed major homine: qui de omnibus judicat, et a nemine judicatur; apostoli voce pronuntians 'qui me judicat, Dominus, est.'" (Serm. ii. in Consecrat. Pontif. Max., Opera Innocent., iv. 658.) 2 Lib. i. epist. 117, 320; ii. 209. 3 See messages to Philip of Swabia, Otho, and the nobles of Tus cany. |