PART I.

The popes were continually increasing their power in many ways, 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 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 Nicæa. 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 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 were 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 threatened to punish the archbishop and the barons severely, Langton stood firmly by the cause which he had taken up.