At length, in the year 1200, Baldwin of Flanders and a few bishops and nobles formed the nucleus of a Crusade, and the astute Venetians were invited to provide for the transport of an army. In the spring of 1202 the streams of soldiers and priests converged upon Venice, and an army of 23,000 assembled for the fourth assault on the Saracens. But the Pope's joy was soon overcast, and the Crusade proved to be the second most lamentable occurrence of his Pontificate.
When the army assembled near Venice, it was discovered that neither the soldiers nor the Pope had money enough to pay their passage to the East. Venice had by that time fully developed its hard commercial spirit, and its famous blind Doge proposed to remit the debt if the Crusaders would, on their way, retake Zara (in Dalmatia) from the Hungarians for the Venetians. Innocent made the most violent opposition, but the Venetians, disdaining his threats, compelled the impoverished soldiers to consent, and on October 8th they set sail, under threat of excommunication, to begin their Crusade by the shedding of Christian blood. They took Zara, and incurred excommunication; but Innocent could not reconcile himself to the complete failure of his grand plan. He withdrew the censures they had so flagrantly defied, and admitted, or stated, that they had acted under "a sort of necessity." They were to make some vague "satisfaction" for their misdeed, and push on, with clean souls, to the East. The Venetians alone were not relieved of the censure, but, though knights of a more tender conscience were painfully perplexed to find themselves in the same galleys with excommunicated men, the Venetians showed no concern. They had another check in reserve for the Pope.
Before they left Italy, Alexis Comnenus had arrived from Constantinople to ask their aid in restoring his father to the throne he had just lost, and they were disposed to assist him. One could not, of course, expect the Pope to show the same concern for the blood of schismatics as for the blood of the Hungarians, yet his consent to this fatal and lamentable enterprise is a stain on his record. The sordid squabble of the Comneni family did not deserve the sacrifice of a single knight, and the part of Isaac Comnenus was espoused by the Crusaders and the Pope only because the young Alexis promised money and provisions to the troops and the subjection of the Greek Church to the Lateran. The issue is well known. The Crusaders took Constantinople, sacked the city, and desecrated the churches with a brutality that must have shocked the Saracens; and they then settled down to divide its territory between themselves and the Venetians. The letterswhich Innocent sent, as the successive news arrived, are painful reading. He must blame their excesses, he says at first, but, after all, these outrages had been merited by the sins of the Greeks; let the Crusaders inform him that the submission of the Greek Church has been secured. At last they send him, for his confirmation, a treaty from which he learns that they have arranged all the affairs, spiritual as well as secular, of the new Empire without consulting him, and he writes more warmly. To the outrage they have committed he is still almost insensible; it is their audacity in ruling the new Church—in permitting the hated Venetians to select a Patriarch—which excites his anger.
The last phase of the enterprise caused him grave distress. Instead of proceeding to the East, the Latins set up an Empire and several petty princedoms, and the Greeks disdainfully watched their quarrels and awaited their own opportunity. Monks and priests were summoned from France, but the people were secretly wedded to their old religion and the new Church was a hollow sham. For years Innocent had to maintain a fretful correspondence, settling quarrels about jurisdiction and property, and scolding his Crusaders for their oppression and spoliation of the clergy. But it is needless to recount all the details of that historic failure. The weariness of Innocent may be appreciated from the fact that in 1213 he naïvely wrote to the Khalipha himself, beseeching him "in all humility" to restore to the Christians the land which they had not the courage or the interest to win by the sword.
The crusade against the Albigensians was more successful, and even more lamentable, and I need do no more here than elucidate Innocent's relation to that monstrous crime. The degradation of morals and ofreligious practice, the corruption of the clergy, and the stupendous claims of the Papacy, had already provoked in Europe the beginnings of protest. A somewhat modified form of Christianity's old rival, Manichæism, had lingered in the East and had in time mingled with the austere Christianity of the Pauline Epistles. From the Eastern Empire it had spread to Bulgaria, and from there, in the thirteenth century, it passed rapidly over Europe, assimilating all the anti-clerical and anti-ritualist feeling which the corruption of the time inspired. In one or other form it obtained considerable strength in Switzerland, Piedmont, and the south of France, and it was fast gathering recruits in Italy and Spain. The light-living princes of Languedoc had little inclination to persecute; nor would they think that, if one might sing ribald contempt of the ecclesiastical system in the tavern and the monastery, this disdain was less respectable in the mouths of a generally sincere and upright body of fanatics.
In the first year of his Pontificate Innocent sent two Cistercian monks, Guy and Renier, to convert the heretics and incite the civil and religious authorities to enforce the law. Of corporal persecution he assuredly did not dream at that time, and indeed his letters made it clear that he preferred persuasion to coercion of any kind. The monks failed either to convert the heretics or to induce the bishops and princes of the south of France to persecute (by confiscation and exile), and they were replaced by the more vigorous monk-legates, Pierre de Castelnau and Raoul, to whom the resolute Abbot Arnold of Citeaux was afterwards added. Their powers set aside all ordinary episcopal jurisdiction, and, in pursuance of their policy of displacing lax and reluctant prelates, they put the fanatical Foulquesof Marseilles in the bishopric of Toulouse. For eight years these energetic apostles worked almost in vain among the heretics. Apparently at the suggestion of St. Dominic, who was just entering the history of Europe, the Pope directed them to raise a corps of Cistercian monks who should live and preach on the model of the coming mendicant friars, but even this device made little impression on the heretics or the light-living Catholics. Arnold and Foulques, in particular, became desperate, and the lamentable policy of persecution began to grow in their minds and that of the Pope.
The principle of persecution had, as we saw, been established in the Lateran centuries before, and the only thing that restrained Innocent from applying it, in its bloodless form, was the refusal of the secular rulers to co-operate. Raymond of Toulouse was too healthily Epicurean to favour either the sombre creed of the heretics or the more sombre creed of the persecutor. Apologetic writers speak with horror of the number of his wives and fair friends, but we do not find that his conduct in this regard, or the similar conduct of other princes and prelates, attracted the attention of the Pope. When, however, he slighted a sentence of excommunication and still refused to persecute his excellent but unorthodox subjects, he received a withering letter.[251]"Who does he think he is?" the Pope asks scornfully, to disobey one before whom the greatest monarchs of the earth bow. Let him cease to "feed on corpses like a vulture"—to break a lance with his neighbours—and obey the Legates, or the Pope will invite a more powerful prince to displace him. As early as November 17, 1207, Innocent bade the Kingof France, the Duke of Burgundy, and other nobles, prepare for an expedition to Toulouse; and the privileges of Crusaders were promised to all who joined it.
Raymond was more moved by the political threat than by the spiritual censures, but there was sullen anger amongst his followers, and on January 15, 1208, the Legate Pierre de Castelnau was assassinated. There is not a tittle of evidence to incriminate Raymond, and it is in the highest degree improbable that he would thus open the gates to his greedy neighbours, but Innocent chose to believe that he had directed the murder. Without trial, he declared that Raymond had forfeited the allegiance of his subjects, and his dominions might be seized by any Christian prince. He spurred Philip of France—who must have been flattered to find himself now described as "exalted amongst all others by God"—to the attack.[252]He addressed a fiery summons to "all the nobles and people of France" to "avenge this terrible insult to God."[253]Philip wanted Toulouse, but he overreached himself in making terms and he dreaded England. There were, however, plenty of nobles willing to lead their men to the plunder of prosperous Provence, and the clergy had become seriously alarmed at the spread of the heresy in France. A vast army, joyous at the rich prospect of loot, converged upon the southern State. Innocent III. knew better than we know the forces he had set in motion. The end sanctified the means.
The next phase was pitiful: the issue is one of the most horrible pages of mediæval history. Raymond sent representatives to Rome to offer submission, and the Pope and his Legates were embarrassed and behaved abominably. When Raymond justly complained of the bitterness of Arnold of Citeaux, the Pope sent a peaceful notary from the Lateran; giving the man secret instructions to take no step without the directions of Arnold, who was to be in the background, and writing to Arnold that this Legate Milo is to be only "the bait to conceal the hook of thy sagacity." Arnold, meanwhile, went to organize the crusade, for they intended to impose on Raymond terms which seemed impossible. The helpless Raymond licked the dust: he was stripped and scourged, he had to surrender seven of his chief castles as hostages, and he was forced to promise to lead the troops against his own subjects. Innocent sank deeper into his awful policy. In an amazing letter to his Legates[254]he reminded them of the words of Paul (II. Corinthians, xii., 16); "Being crafty, I caught you with guile." They were to affect to regard the repentance of Raymond as sincere, and, "deceiving him by prudent dissimulation, pass to the extirpation of the other heretics." In other words, they were to crush Raymond's chief nobles and then, if he winced, crush him. Raymond did not wince, yet the army, with Abbot Arnold as Captain General, moved southward to that historic butchery of the Albigensians.
The modern plea that Innocent could not arrest the avalanche is as wanton as the idea that he was moved by "social considerations." A sentence of excommunication, promulgated by Arnold of Citeaux, would have reduced the army to impotent proportions. Innocent would not disappoint Arnold and Foulques, and those who had responded to his summons; and he felt more sure of success this way. After the first two months of butchery and seizure of cities, he sent hisblessing to the ambitious de Montfort. He was, however, superior to his Legates. The ferocious Arnold made every effort to goad Raymond to rebellion, and at last excommunicated him again on the plea that he had not fulfilled his promises. Innocent tried—rather tamely—to restrain Arnold, refused to confiscate Raymond's castles (as Arnold demanded) until he had a just trial, and received him courteously at Rome. At last, utterly revolted by the baseness of the Legates, Raymond winced. He was denounced to Rome, was confronted with terms which no man with a spark of honour could accept, and, when he refused, was excommunicated: the Pope confirming the sentence. Raymond's dominions were transferred to "the Blessed Peter," and de Montfort was to levy an annual tax—on which Innocent is painfully insistent—for the Papacy.
Two years butchery of men, women, and children had not yet broken the spirit of the Albigensians, and at the beginning of 1213, the Legates and Simon were dismayed to hear from Innocent that the crusade was over, and the troops had better proceed against the Saracens; that Raymond had not yet been legally convicted of heresy and murder, and had not therefore forfeited his fief; that, in any case, Raymond's sons, rather than Simon de Montfort, were his natural successors. Two Bulls (January 17 and 18, 1213) and four letters in quick succession apprised the miserable group that Innocent—largely owing to the intervention of Pedro of Aragon—at length appreciated their misconduct or had the courage to consult his better feelings. Unhappily, his courage did not last long. They stormed Rome with their remonstrances, and Innocent yielded. As, moreover, the King ofAragon failed in his attempt to reduce them by arms, the cause of Raymond was utterly lost and his territory was made over to Rome. To the end Innocent wavered between his more humane feeling and the policy he had so long countenanced. He refused to confirm the appointment of Simon as sovereign (under Rome) of the whole territory, and when Arnold (who was now Archbishop of Narbonne) quarrelled with Simon over the title of Duke of Narbonne, he supported Arnold. At the Lateran Council, which was to decide the issue, he made a plea for leniency to Raymond and justice to his heirs, but he yielded to the truculent priests, and the unhappy prince was cast aside with an annual pension of four hundred marks. Innocent did not live to see the arrogant Arnold excommunicate de Montfort, and the two Raymonds return and win back much of their estate.
Causa causæ est causa causati, the schoolmen used to say. The Pope who maintained Arnold of Citeaux, Foulques of Marseilles, and Simon de Montfort in their positions when their characters were fully revealed, and the whole of Europe knew the atrocities they committed, bears the guilt of the massacre of the Albigensians.
The fourth Lateran Council was his last work, and one of the most important Councils of the Middle Ages. He summoned all the bishops, abbots, and priors of Christendom to come, on November 1, 1215, to discuss the reform of the Church, the suppression of heresy, and the recovery of Palestine. A vast audience listened to his opening sermon on November 11th, and for nineteen days they framed laws against heretics, Jews, and schismatics: vainly thundered against the vice, sensuality, and rapacity of the clergy: reduced theforbidden degrees of kindred (in marriage) to four—since there were only four humours in the body: imposed on all Christians a duty of confessing at least once a year: and fixed the next Crusade for June 1, 1216. But Innocent, if he marked with pride the contrast of that gorgeous assemblage to the little group of Christians who had met in an inn in the Transtiberina a thousand years earlier, cannot have been content. Not a single Greek had responded to his summons: grave murmurs at his hard policy and despotic action arose in the Council itself: half the prelates, at least, were unfit to impose reforming measures on their priests: and the ghastly mockery of his last Crusade gave little hope for the future. He did not even appreciate the new forces for good which were rising. He had coldly received, if not actually discouraged, Dominic and Francis. His ideal was power: of love he knew nothing. He flung himself ardently into the preparation for the new war on the Saracens, and died, on June 16, 1216, with the call to arms on his lips. He sacrificed himself nobly in the interest of his high ideal, and was one of the greatest makers of the Papacy, but he sacrificed also much that men inalienably prize, and he began the unmaking of the Papacy.
FOOTNOTES:[237]The clergy were to be free to elect their bishop, though in Germany the election had to take place in the presence of the Emperor or his representatives; this was a virtual retention of the imperial veto. Investiture with ring and crozier was replaced by a touch with the royal sceptre.[238]Fortunately, his work is little complicated by dispute, since his letters are so abundant. There is a contemporary life or panegyric (Gesta Innocentii Tertii), but it must be read with caution. Of modern biographies the great work of Achille Luchaire (6 vols., 1904-8) has superseded all others; though, as it scarcely ever indicates its authorities, the less discriminating work of Hurter is still useful. In English there is a good, but rather affected, sketch by C.H.C. Pirie-Gordon,Innocent the Great(1907). Milman is particularly good on Innocent III.[239]Ep., i., 410.[240]ii., 226.[241]This is affirmed in the contemporaryChronique d'Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ch. xxx.[242]Ep., ii., in the Register, "On the Affairs of the Empire": Migne, col. ccxvi.[243]Ep., xiv.[244]Xviii.[245]TheDeliberatio, or essential part of the Bull, is given in Migne's "Register of Imperial Concerns," no. xxix. See also the decretalVenerabilem Fratrem, no. lxii.[246]Lxi.[247]See R. Schwemer,Innocenz III. und die Deutsche Kirche während des Thronstreites von 1198-1208(1882), and E. Englemann,Phillip von Schwaben und Innocenz III.(1896).[248]Ep., viii., 7.[249]Ep., vi., 163.[250]See E. Gütschow,Innocenz III. und England(1904).[251]X., 69.[252]Xi., 28.[253]Xi., 29.[254]Xi., 232.
FOOTNOTES:
[237]The clergy were to be free to elect their bishop, though in Germany the election had to take place in the presence of the Emperor or his representatives; this was a virtual retention of the imperial veto. Investiture with ring and crozier was replaced by a touch with the royal sceptre.
[237]The clergy were to be free to elect their bishop, though in Germany the election had to take place in the presence of the Emperor or his representatives; this was a virtual retention of the imperial veto. Investiture with ring and crozier was replaced by a touch with the royal sceptre.
[238]Fortunately, his work is little complicated by dispute, since his letters are so abundant. There is a contemporary life or panegyric (Gesta Innocentii Tertii), but it must be read with caution. Of modern biographies the great work of Achille Luchaire (6 vols., 1904-8) has superseded all others; though, as it scarcely ever indicates its authorities, the less discriminating work of Hurter is still useful. In English there is a good, but rather affected, sketch by C.H.C. Pirie-Gordon,Innocent the Great(1907). Milman is particularly good on Innocent III.
[238]Fortunately, his work is little complicated by dispute, since his letters are so abundant. There is a contemporary life or panegyric (Gesta Innocentii Tertii), but it must be read with caution. Of modern biographies the great work of Achille Luchaire (6 vols., 1904-8) has superseded all others; though, as it scarcely ever indicates its authorities, the less discriminating work of Hurter is still useful. In English there is a good, but rather affected, sketch by C.H.C. Pirie-Gordon,Innocent the Great(1907). Milman is particularly good on Innocent III.
[239]Ep., i., 410.
[239]Ep., i., 410.
[240]ii., 226.
[240]ii., 226.
[241]This is affirmed in the contemporaryChronique d'Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ch. xxx.
[241]This is affirmed in the contemporaryChronique d'Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ch. xxx.
[242]Ep., ii., in the Register, "On the Affairs of the Empire": Migne, col. ccxvi.
[242]Ep., ii., in the Register, "On the Affairs of the Empire": Migne, col. ccxvi.
[243]Ep., xiv.
[243]Ep., xiv.
[244]Xviii.
[244]Xviii.
[245]TheDeliberatio, or essential part of the Bull, is given in Migne's "Register of Imperial Concerns," no. xxix. See also the decretalVenerabilem Fratrem, no. lxii.
[245]TheDeliberatio, or essential part of the Bull, is given in Migne's "Register of Imperial Concerns," no. xxix. See also the decretalVenerabilem Fratrem, no. lxii.
[246]Lxi.
[246]Lxi.
[247]See R. Schwemer,Innocenz III. und die Deutsche Kirche während des Thronstreites von 1198-1208(1882), and E. Englemann,Phillip von Schwaben und Innocenz III.(1896).
[247]See R. Schwemer,Innocenz III. und die Deutsche Kirche während des Thronstreites von 1198-1208(1882), and E. Englemann,Phillip von Schwaben und Innocenz III.(1896).
[248]Ep., viii., 7.
[248]Ep., viii., 7.
[249]Ep., vi., 163.
[249]Ep., vi., 163.
[250]See E. Gütschow,Innocenz III. und England(1904).
[250]See E. Gütschow,Innocenz III. und England(1904).
[251]X., 69.
[251]X., 69.
[252]Xi., 28.
[252]Xi., 28.
[253]Xi., 29.
[253]Xi., 29.
[254]Xi., 232.
[254]Xi., 232.
CHAPTER X
JOHN XXII.: THE COURT AT AVIGNON
Inmaintaining that the power of the Papacy waned after the Pontificate of Innocent III., I do not mean that there was such visible decay as even the most acute contemporary observer might have detected. The thirteenth century must have seemed to the statesmen of the time to strengthen the Papacy. The Dominican and Franciscan friars, quickly recognized by Innocent's successors, impressed on Europe the duty of implicit obedience. The great canonists began to make an imposing body of law out of the decrees of the Popes. Art developed in close association with religious sentiment. The hereditary feud with the Hohenstauffens ended, fifty years after the death of Innocent, with the complete overthrow of the son and grandson of Frederic II. Yet most historians now recognize that the thirteenth century was, for the Papacy, a period of slow and subtle decay. The mighty struggle with Frederic, Manfred, and Conradin exhausted the high-minded, but not heroic, successors of Innocent, and it ended only when, by summoning Philip of Anjou, they substituted French for German predominance and inaugurated another exacting period of conflict. The alternative was a period of comparative impotence and flabby parasitism. Into this the Papacy passed;and, unfortunately for it, the degeneration occurred just when the eyes of Europe were growing sharper. It was the date of the early renaissance of culture, inspired by the Moors: it was a rich period of civic development and prosperity: it was the time when castes of keen-eyed lay lawyers and scholars were growing. Arms were yielding to togas in the work of restricting the growth of the Papacy.
Boniface VIII. (1294-1303) is the last great representative of the Papal ideal in its earlier and more austere mediæval form. His BullClericis laicos(1296) which declared all clerical and monastic property in the world to be under his protection and sternly bade secular rulers respect it, was one of the last Olympic fulminations; and it was defeated by England and France. Then, in 1300, he declared the Jubilee; and some historians see in that prostration of Christendom at the feet of the Papacy the last notable expression of its world-power. Men said at the time—I am not pressing it as fact—that Boniface was so exalted by the spectacle that he put on the imperial crown and sandals. No one questions that the Papacy decayed from that year. Under the banner of Papal absolutism Boniface made war on the great Ghibelline family of the Colonnas, and on Philip the Fair and his lawyers, and he ignominiously fell. The blameless and gentle Dominican, Benedict XI., who succeeded him, could not sustain for more than a few months the struggle he had inherited, and the Gascon Clement V. then inaugurated what has been too forcibly called "the Babylonian Captivity."
After a secret compact with Philip, after a complete sacrifice of his ideals, and after the distribution of much French gold among the cardinals, he obtained the tiara (1305). In 1309 he settled at Avignon, basely surrendered the Templars (after an appalling travesty of justice) to the cupidity of the King, and settled down, in the company of his sister and niece and dear friend the Countess of Talleyrand-Périgord, to a life of sensuous luxury and the accumulation of wealth. He died on March 12, 1314, leaving 1,078,800 florins (about £500,000) nearly the whole of which went to his family and friends, and the cardinals gathered anxiously to choose his successor.
Clement had died near Carpentras, about fifteen miles from Avignon, and the cardinals met in the episcopal palace of that town. The austere Gregory X. had decreed in 1274 that the cardinal electors should be walled into their chamber (or Conclave) until they had chosen a Pope, and the twenty-three princes of the Church prepared for a desperate encounter in their isolated quarters. There were six Italians, eager to tell a pitiful story of the ruin of Rome and the patrimonies because of the absence of the Pope from Italy. But there were nine Gascons—three of them nephews of Clement, all creatures of Clement—and, as two of the eight French cardinals supported the Gascons, they made a formidable majority and demanded an Avignon Pope: in fact, a Gascon Pope. Day followed day in angry discussion, and the cries of the infuriated followers of the Gascon cardinals without grew louder and louder. At last, on July 23d, there came a thundering on the doors, and the terrified cardinals, breaking through the wall, fled from the town and dispersed. For two years, to the grave scandal of Christendom, they refused to agree on a place of meeting, until at last Philip of Valois enticed them to Lyons, entrapped them into a monastery, and told them that they were prisoners until they made a Pope.
Under these auspices Jacques de Cahors, Cardinal of Porto, became John XXII. He was a little, dry, bilious old man of seventy-two: but an able lawyer and administrator, and a man of wonderful vigour for his age. In his case the more careful research of modern times and the opening of the Vatican Archives have tended to give him, in some respects, a more honourable position in history than he had hitherto occupied. The reader will hardly find him morally and spiritually attractive, but he had a remarkable and powerful personality, and he achieved more than has been supposed. His "Register" in the Vatican Archives contains 65,000 letters. Most of these are very brief notes written by the Papal clerks, but there are many of interest and they enable us at times to correct the anecdotists of his age. He had virulent enemies, and they must be read with reserve.[255]
Jacques d'Euse, of Cahors, is said by unfriendly writers of the time to have been the son of a cobbler (or, according to others, a tailor). As he had relatives in good positions, and received a good schooling, this is probably a legend. But his early life is obscure. He studied under the Dominicans of Cahors, and then attended the lectures at Montpellier and at Paris. The story of Ferretti di Vicenza, that he went with atrading uncle to Naples and became tutor to the sons of Charles II., does not harmonize with these facts, and we must therefore reject the further charge that he obtained his bishopric by forging a letter in the name of Charles. He seems rather to have taught civil law for a long period at Cahors, and then at Toulouse, where he earned the friendship of the Bishop, St. Louis, and was thus brought to the notice and favour of the Bishop's father, the King of Naples. Charles secured the bishopric of Fréjus for him in 1300, and made him his Chancellor in 1307. When Charles died, his son Robert continued the patronage and got for him the bishopric of Avignon. Clement V. found him a useful man and pliant lawyer. It was he who did the most accommodating research for Clement in the suppression of the Templars, and he was rewarded with a red hat in 1312. He was a sober man, liking good solid fare and regular ways, and kept his energy and ambition in his eighth decade of life.
Robert of Naples pressed his candidature for the Papacy when Clement died, and the Gascons adopted him. He won the vote of Cardinal Orsini—this statement of his critics is confirmed by later events—by professing a most determined intention to transfer the Papacy to Rome. The anecdotists say that he swore never to mount a horse until he was established at the Lateran; and, after a gorgeous coronation-ceremony at Lyons on September 5th, he at once proceededby boatto Avignon. The Italian cardinals left him in disgust, and he promptly promoted ten new cardinals, of whom nine were French (and three, including his nephew, from Cahors). Of his later seventeen cardinals, thirteen were French, three Italian, and one Spanish. The Papacy was fixed at Avignon.
The little town which Clement had chosen as the seat of the Papacy had the advantage, in John's eyes, of being separated from Philip's territory by the Rhone and being under the suzerainty of Robert of Naples. It was still a small, poorly built town. Clement had found the Dominican monastery large enough for his Epicurean establishment. John returned at first to his old episcopal palace, but the great rock on which the Papal Palace now stands soon inspired his ambition and he began assiduously to nurse the Papal income. Much of Clement's money had been removed and stored by his clever and unscrupulous nephew, the Viscount Bertrand de Goth, who would not easily disgorge it. After a time John asserted his spiritual power, and summoned the Viscount to present an account. Three times the noble ignored his summons, and then, when John was about to proceed against him, he judiciously distributed some of the money among the cardinals and had the case postponed. At length he rode boldly into Avignon to give his account. He had, he explained, with a most insolent air of simplicity and candour, received 300,000 florins from his uncle. This sum was destined to be used in the next Crusade, and he had sworn on the Gospels not to yield it for any other purpose. John was baulked and was compelled to compromise. They agreed to divide the money, and a receipt preserved at the Vatican shows that 150,000 florins were all he obtained of Clement's huge fortune. Clement had left only 70,000 florins directly to his successor, and half of this had to go to the cardinals. All the rest Clement regarded as private fortune and distributed among his friends and servants.
John turned to the organization of the Papal income, and his success in this direction is notorious. Villanisays in hisFlorentine History[256]that at his death John left a fortune of 25,000,000 florins[257]in coin and jewels. Villani is hostile, but he affirms that he had this information from his brother, who was one of the bankers appointed to appraise the sum. Other chroniclers give different figures. It happens, however, that John's ledgers are still preserved in the Vatican archives, and as in this case they completely refute the anti-Papal chroniclers—a point certainly to be carefully noted by the historian—they have been published.[258]Some of the ledgers are "missing," but there are general statements (tallying with the separate ledgers), and from these it appears that the entire income of the Papacy during the eighteen years of John's Pontificate was about four and a half million florins (or about £120,000 a year), and that the greater part of this was spent on the Italian war. There is an expenditure of nearly three millions under the humorous heading of "Wax, and certain extraordinary expenses," and the items show that the Italian campaign to recover the Papal estates absorbed most of this. At the same time the ledgers do not quite confirm the edifying tradition of John's sober and simple life. His table and cellar cost (in modern terms) nearly £3000 a year; his "wardrobe" nearly £4000 a year: and his officials and staff about £15,000 a year. Immense sums seem to have been given to relatives—there is one item of 72,000 florins paid to his brother Peter for certain estates—and we know that in 1339 he began to build the famous Papal Palace.
In sum, the editors of John's accounts conclude that the Papal treasury would, at his death, have shown a deficit of 90,000 florins but for a loan of half a million from his private purse; and that the total amount left behind by him (besides his valuable library of 1028 volumes, his collection of 329 jewelled rings, etc.) was only about 800,000 florins. It is true that, in spite of the businesslike appearance of the ledgers, we must not take this as a statement of the Pope's entire estate. Vast sums were collected which did not pass through Avignon, but went straight to the Legate in Italy (and possibly elsewhere). Moreover, the "private purse" of the Pope is an interesting and obscure part of his system. It was discovered at his death that he had a secret "little chamber," over one of the corridors, into which a large part of the income went. There are historical indications that he diverted to his private account large sums for military and special political purposes. He did not foresee how Clement VI. would genially dissipate it, with the words: "My predecessors did not know how to live." This account was not entered in books, and we have to be content with the assurance that he left at his death rather less than a million florins in all.
Yet an income of—if we make allowance for the unrecorded sums—something like £200,000 a year, at a time when the patrimonies were mostly alienated, was enormous, and there is no reason to doubt the statement of all historians that it came largely from tainted sources. John's fiscal policy is a stage in the degeneration of the Papacy. Clement IV. had, in 1267, reserved to the Pope the income of the benefices of clerks who died at Rome, and Boniface VIII. had enlarged this by including all who died within a twodays' journey of Rome. John extended the law throughout the Church and demanded three years' revenue for each that fell vacant. By his BullExecrabilishe ordered all clerks (except his cardinals) who held several benefices to select one and surrender the rest to the Apostolic See. He created bishoprics—he made six out of the bishopric of Toulouse—by subdividing actual sees (on the plea, of course, that the duties would be better discharged), and by an astute system of promotions he, when a see fell vacant, contrived to move several men and secure the "first fruits" on their appointments: a vacant archbishopric, for instance, would be filled by a higher bishop, the higher bishopric by a lower bishop, and so on. It was possible to put a complexion of reform on all these measures, but clergy and laity muttered a charge of avarice. Then there were the incomes from kingdoms and duchies (England, Aragon, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and Spoleto) which owed an annual tribute, the yield of the surviving patrimonies, the taxes on dispensations and grants, and a certain beginning of the sale of indulgences which, unfortunately, we cannot closely ascertain.
John was not wholly immersed in finance and insensible of higher duties. He created universities at Cahors and Perugia, regulated the studies at Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris, and even (as we shall see) concerned himself with the state of the East. But the only council we trace under his control (held at St. Ruf, in 1326) was almost entirely concerned with ecclesiastical property and immunities, and his correspondence is, in effect, almost wholly fiscal and political. He greatly enlarged the Rota (or legal and business part of the Curia), and filled it with a cosmopolitanstaff of clerks, to deal with this large and lucrative side of his affairs. It is pleaded that the Papacy could not discharge its duties without this wealth and power; and it must seem unfortunate that the acquisition and maintenance of the wealth and power left so little time for the duties they were to enable the Pope to discharge.
Watered by this stream of gold, Avignon flourished. John was generous to his family and his cardinals: palaces began to rise above the lowly roofs of the town: a gay and coloured life filled its streets. A Papal household costing £25,000 a year would of itself make an impression. We know Avignon best in the later and even richer days of Benedict XII. and Clement VI. who followed John. Not far away, even in the days of John, dwelt a writer who was destined to immortality, and he passed scathing criticisms on Avignon. Petrarch is a rhetorician and poet, as well as a fierce opponent of the Avignon Papacy, but one cannot lightly disregard his assurance that Papal Avignon was "Babylon," "a living hell," and "the sink of all vices."[259]He is chiefly describing Avignon under Clement VI., but he says that it is only a change "from bad to worse" since John's days.
An episode that occurred soon after John's elevation is, perhaps, more convincing than Petrarch's fiery rhetoric, since its features were determined in a legal process. Hugues Géraud, a favourite of Clement V., had obtained from that Pope the bishopric of Cahors, paying the Papal tax of a thousand florins for it. Heproceeded to make his possession as lucrative as possible and live comfortably on the revenue his clerks extorted for him. John's townsfolk appealed to him, as soon as he settled in Avignon, and he summoned the Bishop to his court. Hugues Géraud sealed the lips of his priests by an oath of silence, but, of course, a Pope could undo that seal, and the inquiry revealed enormities on the part of the Bishop. Toward the close of the inquiry certain men were arrested bringing mysterious packages into the town. They had with them various poisons and certain little wax images concealed in loaves. The Bishop and his chief clerks were at once arrested, and, although the Papal officials used torture to open their lips, the substance of their story seems reliable. Fearful of the issue, Hugues Géraud had applied to a Jew at Toulouse, and to others, for these poisons and wax images. It was proved in court that members of the Papal household, including a cardinal, were bribed to facilitate the poisoning, and that the wax images, which were not effective without the blessing of some prelate, were actually blessed by the Archbishop of Toulouse. The Archbishop pleaded that he had no suspicion of the awful purpose of these images—familiar as they were in the Middle Ages—but he soon fled from Toulouse, and it is conjectured that he had hoped that the death of the Pope would save his diocese (and income) from the threatened dismemberment.[260]
Some of these images had already been smuggled into Avignon and the Bishop and his archpriest had, in the well-known mediæval manner, set up one of themas representative of the Pope's nephew, Cardinal Jacques de Via, and stabbed it in the belly and legs with silver styles, while the wicked Jew repeated the suitable imprecations. John XXII. fully shared the views of his age in regard to these magical practices, and we can imagine how he and others were confirmed in that belief when, in the course of the trial, Jacques de Via sickened and died. The trial came to a speedy conclusion. The Bishop of Cahors was dragged by horses through the town and burned at the stake: his numerous clerical and lay accomplices were adequately punished: and John spurred the Inquisitors to a deadly campaign against magicians throughout the country. Some of the cardinals were involved in this or a similar plot, but John shrewdly disarmed them with gold rather than make powerful enemies.
These details will suffice to make clear the state of the clergy and laity at the close of a century which some writers appraise as one of profound inspiration, and we must go on to consider the large policy which John's wealth was intended to support. The central theme is, once more, the political struggle with the Emperor—the undying curse which temporal power had brought with it—but we cannot understand this aright unless we first regard a spiritual struggle of great interest.
The followers of Francis of Assisi had branched into the customary parties of rigourists and liberals. On the one hand were the great body of the friars, living in large comfortable monasteries, raising a stupendously rich church over the bones of their ascetic founder. On the other hand were the faithful minority, the genuinely ascetic, casting withering reproaches on the liberals, assimilating much of the mystic and—we mayjustly say—protestant feeling which was growing in Europe. There were bloody conflicts as well as highly seasoned arguments. The "Spirituals" and "Fratricelli" could not but regard the wealth and sensuality of the higher clergy as an apostasy from the Christian ideal, and they had become one of the most pronounced "protestant" sects of the time and were anathematized repeatedly by the Popes. During the Papal vacancy the Spirituals had prospered and become more strident. Christendom had apostatized, and they were the heralds of a new religion, revealed to Francis of Assisi. This arrogant Papacy and priesthood must disappear before true religion can flourish.
In the spring of 1317 John condemned them, and, when they still preached revolt, summoned about sixty of them to Avignon. They used very plain speech and received a very plain reply. The Papacy had now discovered that persistent or "contumacious" disobedience amounted to heresy, and the Inquisitors belonged to the rival Dominican order. So several sons of St. Francis were burned at the stake—four were burned at Marseilles on May 7, 1318—and many were cast into prison. But John went too far. He ordered the Franciscan authorities to consider whether absolute poverty was the genuine basis of their rule, and they decided that it was: in the sense of a Bull (Exiit qui seminat) of Nicholas III., which allowed them "the use" of things without the actual "ownership." John revoked the Bull, and in a Decretal of December 8, 1322 (Ad Conditorem), declared that this was impossible nonsense. When the friars retorted that such poverty had actually been practised by Christ and his Apostles, John consulted the learned doctors of Paris and, in the DecretalCum inter nonnullos(November12, 1323), pronounced this thesis heretical. The "Spirituals" were now reinforced by abler men, who fled to Italy and joined the anti-Papal campaign of Louis of Bavaria. Michael de Cesena, the General of the Order, nailed to the door of Pisa cathedral a document in which he impeached John for heresy. William of Ockham, the English friar, one of the most acute of the later schoolmen, and others, discharged a shower of invectives which would have made the fortune of a sixteenth-century Reformer. John was "Anti-Christ," the "Dragon with Seven Heads," and so on. They induced Louis of Bavaria to declare John's Decretals heretical, and fought shoulder to shoulder with the learned Paris doctors, Marsiglio of Padua and Jean of Jandun, whoseDefensor Pacis(1324) was a crushing indictment of the Papal pretensions and vindication of the secular power. All over Italy and Germany there was a fierce scrutiny of the bases of the Papal claims. The Reformation was commencing, two centuries before Luther.
The spiritual struggle had thus merged in the political struggle, owing to the common opposition to John XXII., and this must now be considered. Frederic of Austria and Louis of Bavaria were both chosen King of the Romans, and, as neither had had the full number of votes, there was the not unfamiliar struggle for recognition. They disregarded John's summons to his tribunal, took to the sword, and Frederic was beaten and imprisoned in 1322. John coldly acknowledged Louis's letter announcing his victory; unquestionably he from the first wanted the imperial crown to pass to France and the imperial rule to vanish from Italy. Then Louis invaded Italy, and John declared war.
Italy already gave the Pope concern. The Ghibellines, or Imperialists, had grown powerful in the Pope's absence, and their chief leader, Matteo Visconti of Milan, a ruthless and exacting ruler, was "Imperial Vicar" in the country. When Visconti, in defiance of the Pope's commands, gave aid to the Ghibellines of Genoa, John, who claimed to represent the Empire during the "vacancy," withdrew his title of Vicar and awarded it to Robert of Naples. Robert went to consult John at Avignon, and a campaign followed. Cardinal Bertrand de Poyet—who was, says Petrarch, so much like John "in face and ferocity"[261]that one could easily credit the rumour that he was John's son—was sent to direct the Papal cause and to denounce the Viscontis to the Inquisition. Matteo was found guilty of heresy (or contumacious refusal to abandon the title of Vicar), and he and his son were charged with oppression of the clergy (which is plausible enough) and with a quaint and amusing mixture of magic and other devilry.[262]Possibly John relied more confidently on the troops of Philip of Valois and Henry of Austria, whom he successively summoned to Italy; but they retired almost without a blow. Matteo repented and died, but his sons and their associates continued the war.
At this juncture Louis conquered Frederic and sent word to the Legate to keep his troops out of imperial territory. When the Legate refused, he joined the Ghibellines and drew from John a vigorous denunciation. He was to abandon the "heretics" and come toAvignon for the examination of his claim to the Empire. Louis, retorting (under the inspiration of the friars) that there were heretics at Avignon as well as in Italy, went his way, and John turned to France. Charles the Fair, the new King, had discovered that, when Clement V. had authorized his marriage with Blanche of Burgundy, a remote godmothership had been overlooked, and he was in the painful position of living with one to whom he was not validly married. John declared the marriage void, allowed Charles to marry another lady, and was soon in conference with Charles and with Robert of Naples. Germany took alarm at this plain hint of an intention to make Charles Emperor; the Italian spiritual war upon the Pope was vigorously repeated in that country, and the Diet of Ratisbon rejected John's authority and called for a General Council.
Louis, in 1326, became reconciled with Frederic of Austria and was recognized in Germany as sole Emperor, but John had gone too far to withdraw, or was too deeply involved with Charles of France and Robert of Naples. In alliance with the Ghibellines, Louis made a triumphant tour over Italy, and on April 18, 1328, to the immense joy of his throng of rebel supporters, solemnly declared, in St. Peter's, that "James of Cahors" was guilty of heresy and treason.[263]Friar Peter of Corbara was substituted for him, with the name of Nicholas V., and Rome exulted in the restoration of the Papacy. But the drama ended as it had often ended before. Louis oppressed the country and alienated his supporters; and before the end of the year Friar Peter was, with a halter round his neck, at the Pope's feet in Avignon and Louis was back in Germany.John refused to compromise honourably with Louis, and the agitation against the Papacy in Germany, whither all the rebels had now gone, was more bitter than ever.
The next phase of the struggle is not wholly clear. John of Bohemia intervened and overran Italy. It seems probable that the Pope had nothing to do with this invasion, and at first suspected that John was in league with Louis; but that, as John made progress and had friendly communication with Avignon, the Pope began to hope that the new development offered him a stronger King of Italy (under Papal suzerainty) than Robert and a less oppressive protector than Philip VI. of France.[264]Philip and John visited the Pope at Avignon, and it was announced that John was to be recognized as King of part of Italy. The curious alliance of the three reveals some miscalculation. Philip must have trusted that John of Bohemia would work for him, but the Pope had assuredly no idea of abandoning his claim to Italy. The issue was singular. The Italians, in face of this alliance, united under Robert of Naples and overcame the Papal and Bohemian troops. John had, as part of the campaign, announced his intention of transferring the Papal Court to Bologna, and the Legate actually began to erect a palace for him. When the Bolognese realized that John had no serious intention of coming, they joined the Imperialists and cast out the Legate and his troops. It is said that the collapse of his costly Italian campaign weighed so heavily on the Pope that he did not leave his palace during the year of life which still remained.
John's relations with other countries are not of great interest. He was almost the master, rather than theslave, of the three French monarchs who ruled during his Pontificate, and some of his letters paternally chide them for such defects as talking in church. In letters to Edward of England he tried to reconcile that monarch with Robert Bruce, and he begged more humane treatment of the Irish, who had appealed for his intervention. In Poland he excommunicated the Teutonic knights for taking Danzig and Pomerania from King Ladislas. His eye wandered even farther afield. He was genuinely interested in the fate of Christians in the East, and sent a mission to the Sultan, who sharply dismissed it. No Pope had, in a sense, a wider horizon, for John not only sent friars to preach in Armenia and Persia, but actually appointed a Legate for India, China, and Thibet. Yet his ruling of the Christian world was singularly slender in comparison with that of his great predecessors. His energy was absorbed in fiscal and political matters. In co-operation with Philip he sent a fleet against the Saracens, and it won a victory, but the Crusade he announced on July 26, 1333, never went beyond that naval success. On the other hand, when the Pastoureaux, a wild rabble, marched over France proclaiming a popular Crusade, John excommunicated them for taking the cross without his permission; of their appalling treatment of the Jews he made no complaint, nor did he move when the lepers of France were brutally persecuted on some superstitious charge of the time. He was oppressive to the Jews, and ordered the burning of the Talmud.
He has, in fine, the distinction of putting forward a doctrine which his Church condemns as heretical. Preaching on All Saints' Day in 1331, he suggested that probably the saints did not enjoy the direct vision (or Beatific Vision) of God in heaven, and would not doso until after the Day of Judgment. There is no doubt whatever that he held this as an opinion, though he made no effort to impose it on others; beyond a certain liberality in bestowing benefices on clerics who supported him. There was a violent agitation in France. The Dominican friars and the universities strongly opposed the view, and, when the General of the Franciscan Order thought it advantageous to support the Pope, the King of France swore that he would not have his realm sullied by the heresy. This agitation, and John's correspondence with Philip VI., make it quite clear that the Pope held the heresy, as an opinion. A few days before he died, however, he wrote a Bull—at least, such a Bull was published by his successor—endorsing the received doctrine and declaring that he had put forward his theory only "by way of conference."
He died on December 4, 1334, bowed with age and saddened by the failure of his work. A more complete study of his letters than has yet been made may in some measure enlarge our knowledge of his properly Pontifical action, but there can be little doubt that money and politics chiefly engrossed his attention. The chief interest of his Pontificate is the light it throws on the preparation for the Reformation. John's fiscal policy, however much open to censure, was unselfish; but he opened to his even less religious successors the road to disaster.