1(38 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1198-1216.
God's teeth1 to follow the censure, if pronounced, with the mutilation of every Italian in the realm appointed by Inno cent, and the expulsion of all the prelates and clergy. The sentence was published by the bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester, March 22, 1208.2 They then fled the kingdom.
The interdict at once took effect, casting a deep gloom over the nation. The church bells remained unrung. The church buildings were closed. The usual ministrations of the priesthood remained unperformed. The great doors of the monasteries were left unopened, and worshippers were only admitted by secret passages. Penance was inflicted upon the innocent as well as the erring. Women, after child birth, presented themselves for purification outside the church walls. The dead were refused burial in consecrated ground, and the service of the priest was withheld.
John, although he had seen Philip Augustus bend under a similar censure, affected unconcern, and retaliated by confis cating the property of the higher clergy and convents and turning the inmates out of doors with little more than the clothes on their backs. The concubines of the priests were forcibly removed and purchased their ransom at heavy ex pense. A Welshman accused of murdering a priest was ordered by the king dismissed with the words, " Let him go, he has killed my enemy." The relatives of the fugitive bishops were thrown into prison.
In 1209 Innocent added to the interdict the solemn sentence of the personal anathema against the king.3 The bishops who remained in England did not dare publish it, "becoming like dumb dogs not daring to bark."4 John persisted in his defiant mood, continued to eke out his vengeance upon the innocent, and sought to divert the attention of his subjects
:This and the expression "by God's feet" were John's favorite forms of objurgation.
2 See Migne, 217, 190; Potthast, 286.
3 Potthast, 316.
4 A favorite expression of Matthew Paris.
§ 39. INNOCENT AND KING JOHN OB^ ENGLAND. 169
by negotiations and wars with Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Geoffrey, archdeacon of Norwich, who had been in his ser vice and now felt he could no longer so remain, was thrown into prison and there allowed to languish to death, covered from shoulders to feet with a cope of lead.1
One more weapon lay in the pope's power. In 1212 John was declared unworthy of his throne, and deposed. His subjects were absolved from the obligation of allegiance, and Christian princes were summoned to execute the sentence and take the crown. Gregory VII. had resorted to the same precarious measure with Henry IV. and been defeated. The bull was published at Soissons by Langton and the exiled bishops. Philip of France was quick to respond to the summons and collected an army. But the success of the English fleet checked the fear of an immediate invasion of the realm.
The nation's suspense, however, was taxed almost beyond the point of endurance. The king's arbitrary taxes and his amours with the wives and daughters of the barons aroused their determined hatred. Pressed from different sides, John suddenly had a meeting at Dover with the pope's special envoy, the subdeacon Pandulf.2 The hermit, Peter of Wakefield, had predicted that within three days of Ascension Day the king would cease to reign. Perhaps not without dread of the prediction, and not without irony to checkmate the plans of the French monarch, John gave in his submis-
1 Another example of John's unspeakable cruelty was his treatment of a rich Jew of Bristol upon whom he had made a demand for 10,000 marks. On his refusing, John ordered ten teeth to be taken out, one each day. The executioner dentist began with the molars. The sufferer held out till he had been served this way seven times. He then yielded, giving up the money, which, as Matthew Paris says, he might have done seven days before, thus saving himself all his agony. Luard's ed., II. 528.
2 Shakespeare is responsible for the popular mistake which makes Pandulf a cardinal. King John, Act III. Sc. 1. He served as legate in England, 1217-1221. The official documents call him "subdeacon and familiar to our lord the pope Innocent."