chapter xx.]. He saw the beginnings of a fresh Crusade against the

obstinate heathen on the eastern shores of the Baltic. But all these Crusades were against pagans and infidels. [Sidenote: Extension of the crusading idea.] Innocent made a much greater new departure when he proclaimed the first Crusade directed against a Christian land. The Albigensian Crusade, which can more profitably be described when we deal with the development of the French monarchy [see chapter xvii.], succeeded in destroying the most dangerous and widespread popular heresy that Christianity had witnessed since the fall of the Roman Empire, and Innocent rejoiced that his times saw the Church purged of its worst blemish. But in extending the benefits of a Crusade to Christians fighting against Christians, he handed on a precedent which was soon fatally abused by his successors. In crushing out the young national life of southern France the Papacy again set a people against itself. The denunciations of the German Minnesinger were re-echoed in the complaints of the last of the Troubadours. Rome had ceased to do harm to Turks and Saracens, but had stirred up Christians to war against fellow-Christians. God and His Saints abandon the greedy, the strife-loving, the unjust, worldly Church. The picture is darkly coloured by a partisan, but in every triumph of Innocent there lay the shadow of future trouble.

[Sidenote: Innocent III.’s religious position.]

Crusades, even against heretics and infidels, are the work of earthly force rather than of spiritual influence. It was to build up the great outward corporation of the Church that all these labours of Innocent mainly tended. Even his additions to the Canon Law, his reforms of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, dealt with the external rather than the internal life of the Church. The criticism of James of Vitry, that the Roman Curia was so busy in secular affairs that it hardly turned a thought to spiritual things, is clearly applicable to much of Innocent’s activity. But the many-sided Pope did not ignore the religious wants of the Church. His Crusade against heresy was no mere war against enemies of the wealth and power of the Church. The new tendencies that were to transform the spiritual life of the thirteenth century were not strange to him. He favoured the early work of Dominic: he had personal dealings with Francis, and showed his sympathy with the early work of the poor man of Assisi [see chapter xviii.]. But it is as the conqueror and organiser rather than the priest or prophet that Innocent made his mark in the Church. It is significant that, with all his greatness, he never attained the honours of sanctity.

[Sidenote: The Fourth General Lateran Council, 1215.]

Towards the end of his life, Innocent held a General Council in the basilica of St. John Lateran. A vast gathering of bishops, heads of orders, and secular dignitaries gave brilliancy to the gathering and enhanced the glory of the Pontiff. Enthroned over more than four hundred bishops, the Pope proudly declared the law to the world. ‘Two things we have specially to heart,’ wrote Innocent, in summoning the assembly, ‘the deliverance of the Holy Land and the reform of the Church Universal.’ In its vast collection of seventy canons, the Lateran Council strove hard to carry out the Pope’s programme. It condemned the dying heresies of the Albigeois and the Cathari, and prescribed the methods and punishments of the unrepentant heretic. It strove to rekindle zeal for the Crusade. It drew up a drastic scheme for reforming the internal life and discipline of the Church. It strove to elevate the morals and the learning of the clergy, to check their worldliness and covetousness, and to restrain them from abusing the authority of the Church through excess of zeal or more corrupt motives. It invited bishops to set up free schools to teach poor scholars grammar and theology. It forbade trial by battle and trial by ordeal. It subjected the existing monastic orders to stricter superintendence, and forbade the establishment of new monastic rules. It forbade superstitious practices and the worship of spurious or unauthorised relics. The whole series of canons sought to regulate and ameliorate the influence of the Church on society. If many of the abuses aimed at were too deeply rooted to be overthrown by mere legislation, the attempt speaks well for the character and intelligence of Pope and Council. All mediæval lawmaking, civil and ecclesiastical alike, was but the promulgation of an ideal, rather than the issuing of precepts meant to be literally executed. But no more serious attempt at rooting out inveterate evils was ever made in the Middle Ages than in this Council.

The formal enunciation of this lofty programme of reform brought Innocent’s pontificate to a glorious end. The Pontiff devoted what little remained of his life to hurrying on the preparations for the projected Crusade, which was to set out in 1217. [Sidenote: Death of Innocent III., 16th July 1216.] But in the summer of 1216 Innocent died at Perugia, when only fifty-six years old. If not the greatest, he was the most powerful of all the Popes. For nearly twenty years the whole history of Europe groups itself round his doings.