The Historians' History of the World 08 [Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy]

A Thirteenth Century Monk

In France, Philip Augustus is forced to seem, yet only seem, to submit; the miseries of his unhappy wife are but aggravated by the papal protection. The death of Agnes of Méran, rather than Innocent’s authority, heals the strife. The sons of the proscribed concubine succeed to the throne of France.

In England the barons refuse to desert John when under the interdict of the pope; when the pope becomes the king’s ally, resenting the cession of the realm, they withdraw their allegiance. Even in Stephen Langton, who owes his promotion to the pope, the Englishman prevails over the ecclesiastic; the Great Charter is extorted from the king when under the express protection of the holy see, and maintained resolutely against the papal sentence of abrogation; and in the Great Charter is laid the first stone of the religious as well as the civil liberties of the land.

Venice, in the crusade, deludes, defies, baffles the pope. The crusaders become her army, besiege, fight, conquer for her interests. In vain the pope protests, threatens, anathematises; Venice calmly proceeds in the subjugation of Zara. To the astonishment, the indignation of the pope, the crusaders’ banners wave not over Jerusalem, but over Constantinople. But for her own wisdom, Venice might have given an emperor to the capital of the East; she secures the patriarchate almost in defiance of the pope; only when she has entirely gained her ends does she submit to the petty and unregarded vengeance of the pope.

Even in the Albigensian war the success was indeed complete; heresy was crushed, but by means of which Innocent disapproved in his heart. He had let loose a terrible force, which he could neither arrest nor control. The pope can do everything but show mercy or moderation. He could not shake off, the papacy has never shaken off, the burden of its complicity in the remorseless carnage perpetrated by the crusaders in Languedoc, in the crimes and cruelties of Simon de Montfort. A dark and ineffaceable stain of fraud and dissimulation too has gathered around the fame of Innocent himself.[103] Heresy was quenched in blood; but the earth sooner or later gives out the terrible cry of blood for vengeance against murderers and oppressors.

The great religious event of this pontificate, the foundation of the Mendicant orders, that which perhaps perpetuated, or at least immeasurably strengthened, the papal power for two centuries, was extorted from the reluctant pope. Both St. Dominic and St. Francis were coldly received, almost contemptuously repelled. It was not till either his own more mature deliberation or wiser counsel, which took the form of divine admonition, prevented this fatal error and prophetically revealed the secret of their strength and of their irresistible influence throughout Christendom, that Innocent awoke to wisdom. He then bequeathed these two great standing armies to the papacy; armies maintained without cost, sworn, more than sworn, bound by the unbroken chains of their own zeal and devotion to unquestioning, unhesitating service throughout Christendom, speaking all languages. They were colonies of religious militia, natives of every land, yet under foreign control and guidance. Their whole power, importance, perhaps possessions rested on their fidelity to the see of Rome, that fidelity guaranteed by the charter of their existence. Well might they appear so great as they are seen by the eye of Dante, like the cherubim and seraphim in paradise.e