CEN T. grandeur and opulence, which it yet maintains in PART II Our times [y].

XIII

VI. INNOCENT III. who remained at the head The tyran- of the church until the year 1216, followed the nic pontificate of In- steps of GREGORY VII. and not only usurped the proved by despotic government of the church, but also several ex- claimed the empire of the world, and thought of

nocent III.

amples.

nothing less than subjecting the kings and princes of the earth to his lordly sceptre. He was a man of learning and application; but his cruelty, avarice, and arrogance [x] clouded the lustre of any good qualities which his panegyrists have thought proper to attribute to him. In Asia and Europe, he disposed of crowns and sceptres with the most wanton ambition. In Asia, he gave a king to the Armenians: in Europe, he usurped the same extravagant privilege in the year 1204, and conferred the regal dignity upon PRIMISLAUS, duke of Bohemia [a]. The same year he sent to JOHANNICIUS, duke of Bulgaria and Walachia, an extraordinary legate, who, in the name of the pontif, invested that prince with the ensigns and honours of royalty, while, with his own hand, he crowned PETER II. of Arragon, who had rendered his dominions subject and tributary to the church, and saluted him publicly at Rome with the title of King [b]. We omit many other examples of this frenetic pretension to universal empire, which might be produced from the letters of this arrogant pontif, and many other acts of despotism, which Europe beheld with astonishment, but also, to its eternal reproach, with the ignominious silence of a passive obedience.

VII.

[y] RAYNALDUS, loc. cit. ad. A. 1278, sect. 47. [See MATTH. PARIS, Histor. Major, p. 206. 230. [a] Other historians affirm, that it the was LIP that conferred the royal dignity upon PRIMISLAUS, in order

to strengthen his party against OTнO.

emperor

PHI

[6] MURATORII Antiq. Ital. medii ævi, tom. vi. p. 116. Jo. DE FERRERA, Histoire de Espagne, tom. iv. p. 8.

XIII. PART II.

VII. The ambition of this pope was not satis-C E N T. fied with the distribution and government of these petty kingdoms. He extended his views farther, and resolved to render the power and majesty of the Roman see formidable to the greatest European monarchs, and even to the emperors themselves. When the empire of Germany was disputed, towards the commencement of this century, between PHILIP, duke of Swabia, and Отно IV. third son of HENRY LION, he espoused, at first, the cause of Отно, thundered out his excommunications against PHILIP, and, upon the death of the latter, which happened in the year 1209, he placed the imperial diadem upon the head of his adversary. But as Отно was, by no means, disposed to submit to this pontif's nod, or to satisfy to the full his ambitious desires, he incurred, of consequence, his lordly indignation; and INNOCENT, declaring him, by a solemn excommunication, unworthy of the empire, raised in his place FREDERIC II. his pupil, the son of HENRY VI. and king of the two Sicilies, to the imperial throne in the year 1212 [c]. The same pontif excommunicated PHILIP AUGUSTUS, king of France, for having dissolved his marriage with INGERBURG, a princess of Denmark, and espoused another in her place; nor did he cease to pursue this monarch with his anathemas, until he engaged him to receive the divorced queen, and to restore her to her lost dignity [d].

VIII. But of all the European princes none felt, in so dishonourable and severe a manner, the despotic fury of this insolent pontif as JoHN, surnamed Sans terre, king of England. This prince opposed

[c] All this is amply illustrated in the Origines Guelphice, tom. iii. lib. vii. p. 247.

[d] BOULAY, Histor. Acad. Paris. tom. iii. p. 8. DANIEL, Histoire de la France, tom. iii. p. 475. GERHARD. DU BOIS, Histor. Eccles. Paris. tom. ii. p. 204-▬▬▬▬▬257 •

CEN T. opposed vigorously the measures of INNOCENT, XIII. who had ordered the monks of Canterbury to chuse PART II. STEPHEN LANGTON, a Roman cardinal of Eng

lish descent, archbishop of that see, notwithstanding the election of JOHN DE GREY to that high dignity, which had been regularly made by the convent, and had been confirmed by royal authority [e]. The pope, after having consecrated LANGTON at Viterbo, wrote a soothing letter in his favour, to the king, accompanied with four rings, and a mystical comment upon the precious stones with which they were enriched. But this present was not sufficient to avert the just indignation of the offended monarch, who sent a body of troops to drive out of the kingdom the monks of Canterbury, who had been engaged by the pope's menaces to receive LANGTON as their archbishop. The king also declared to the pontif, that, if he persisted in imposing a prelate upon the see of Canterbury, in opposition to a regular election already made, the consequences of such presumptuous obstinacy would, in the issue, prove fatal to the papal authority in England. INNOCENT was so far from being terrified by this menacing remonstrance, that, in the year 1200, he sent orders to the bishops of London, Worcester, and Ely, to lay the kingdom under an interdict, in case the monarch refused to yield and to receive LANGTON. JOHN, alarmed at this terrible menace, and unwilling to break entirely with the pope, declared his readiness to confirm

[e] Dr MOSHEIM passes lightly over this rupture between king JOHN and INNOCENT III. mentioning in a few lines the interdict under which England was laid by that pontif, the excommunication he issued out against the king's person, and the impious act by which he absolved the English from their allegiance. The translator, however, thought this event of too great importance to be treated with such brevity, and has, therefore, taken the liberty to enlarge considerably this eighth section which contains but eleven lines in the original.

PARTIL

confirm the election made at Rome; but, in the c E N T. act that was drawn up for this purpose, he wisely, XIII. threw in a clause to prevent any interpretation of this compliance, that might be prejudicial to his rights, dignity, and prerogative. This exception was rejected, and the interdict was proclaimed. A stop was immediately put to divine service; the churches were shut; the administration of all the sacraments was suspended except that of baptism; the dead were buried in the highways without the usual rites or any funeral soiemnity. But, notwithstanding this interdict, the Cistertian order continued to perform divine service, and several learned and respectable divines, among which were the bishops of Winchester and Norwich, protested against the injustice of the pope's proceedings.

The interdict not producing the effects that were expected from it, the pontif proceeded to a still farther degree of severity and presumption, and denounced a sentence of excommunication against the person of the English mor.arch. This sentence, which was issued out in the year 1208, was followed about three years after by a bull, absolving all his subjects from their oath of allegiance, and ordering all persons to avoid him, on pain of excommunication. But it was in the year 1212, that INNOCENT carried his impious tyranny to the most enormous length, when, assembling a council of cardinals and prelates, he deposed JoHN, declared the throne of England vacant, and wrote to PHILIP AUGUSTUS, king of France, to execute this sentence, to undertake the conquest of England, and to unite that kingdom to his dominions for ever. He, at the same time, published another bull, exhorting all Christian princes to contribute, whatever was in their power, to the success of this expedition, promising such as seconded PHILIP in this grand

enterprise,

PART II

CENT.enterprise, the same indulgences that were grantXIII. ed to those who carried arms against the infidels in Palestine. The French monarch entered into the views of the Roman pontif, and made immense preparations for the invasion of England. The king of England, on the other hand, assembled his forces, and was putting himself in a posture of defence, when PANDULF, the pope's legate, arrived at Dover, and proposed a conference in order to prevent the approaching rupture, and to conjure the storm. This artful legate terrified the king, who met him at that place, with an exaggerated account of the armament of PHILIP on the one hand, and of the disaffection of the English on the other; and persuaded him that there was no possible way left of saving his dominions from the formidable arms of the French king, but that of putting them under the protection of the Roman see. JOHN, finding himself in such a perplexing situation, and full of diffidence both in the nobles of his court and in the officers of his army, complied with this dishonourable proposal, did homage to INNOCENT, resigned his crown to the legate, and received it again as a present from the see of Rome, to which he rendered his kingdoms tributary, and swore fealty as a vassal and feudatory [ƒ]. In the act by which he resigned, thus scandalously, his kingdoms to the papal jurisdiction, he declared that he had neither been compelled to this measure by fear nor by force; but that it was his own voluntary deed, performed by the advice, and with the consent, of the barons of his kingdom. He obliged himself and his heirs to pay an annual sum of seven hundred marks for England, and

three

[f] For a full account of this shameful ceremony, see MATTHEW PARIS, Historia Major, p. 189. 192. 195. As alSO BOULAY, Histor. Acad. Paris. tom. iii. p. 67. RAPIN THOYRAS, Histoire d'Angleterre, tom. ii. p. 304.