RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Innocent II-III
France, defeated Otto's confederate, the king of England. Accordingly, Philip, now risen to the height of his power, again (June, Innocent 1206) addressed a conciliatory mesas Arbiter sage to Innocent, wherein he set forth in with noteworthy frankness the condi-
Germany. tions that led to the double election, and boldly defended his right to the crown. To secure the acknowledgment of this right from the pope, he was willing to refer the points at issue between the empire and the see of Rome for final decision to a court of arbitration composed of cardinals and princes of the realm. Eventually, in 1207, Innocent was obliged to make allowance for the altered situation and to drop Otto, but the legates were unable to induce him to abdicate. After prolonged negotiations, Philip now consented to papal arbitration proposed by Innocent, having been assured that the certain result of the examination into the double election would be his own recognition. In view of the existing situation Otto could not decline to submit to the Curia's verdict. This turn of affairs implied a great triumph for the policy of Innocent III., since he had succeeded in transferring to Rome the decision of the strife for the throne. The difficult question of the disposition of the empire's estates in central Italy now found a happy solution by Innocent's formally renouncing these domains, with the proviso that the Hohenstaufen's daughter should be granted in marriage to the pope's nephew; while the latter, as the king's son-in-law, was to be invested with the duchy of Tuscany. At this critical moment, when the way to the royal and imperial crown lay open to Philip of Swabia, he was murdered, on June 21, 1208, by Palsgrave Otto of Wittelsbach.
Otto IV- now submitted to a new election, and on Nov. 11, 1208, this made him the universally recognized king of Germany. In a state He Crowns paper dated at Speyer Mar. 20, 1209, Otto. he conceded more than he had prom- Frederick ised; that is, he recognized the boundof Sicily, aries of the States of the Church as drawn by Innocent III., promised to render service in the extirpation of heresy, and disavowed all manner of influence in Church elections. Thereby he obtained, on the pope's behalf, assurance of his coronation as emperor. He started on his expedition across the Alps in the summer of 1209, and the pope placed the imperial crown on his head Oct. 4, 1209. But Otto forgot all his promises almost before he had reached his goal. He declared war against a protege of Innocent, King Frederick of Sicily, and the forcible seizure of a portion of Peter's patrimonium caused the pope to threaten the emperor with the anathema. On Nov. 18, 1210, this threat was carried out, when the Curia received intelligence of Otto's incursion within the king of Sicily's dominion. The pope now summoned against Otto the magnates of Italy and the German imperial princes, and concluded an alliance with Philip Augustus of France with a view to dethroning the emperor. The latter had won so many advantages in his conflict with Frederick of Sicily that the latter was actually meditating flight, when Innocent succeeded in detaching Cremona,
Mantua, Verona, Ferrara, and other cities of northern Italy from the emperor; while in Germany, with the cooperation of France, he brought it about that the imperial princes assembled at Nuremberg in Sept., 1211, resolved to offer the German royal crown to Frederick of Sicily, as the son of Henry VI. Innocent did not forbid the king of Sicily to acquiesce in this proposal of the German princes after the king had devised a state paper to the import that in the future he intended to constitute his Sicilian kingdom a papal appanage. By a convention of princes at Frankfort, Dec. 5, 1212, Frederick was elected king of the Romans in all due form, and soon afterward he was crowned at Mainz. When Frederick kept gaining larger and larger support in central and south Germany, and when even members of the house of Guelph were turning to the Hohenstaufen, the pope deemed the time at hand for asking and receiving of Frederick some toll of gratitude. On June 12, 1213, the elected emperor, in a state paper drawn up at Eger (Mirbt, Quellen, pp. 131-133), guaranteed anew to " his protector and benefactor, Innocent " all the domains rights, and concessions which Otto IV., on Mar. 22, 1209, had granted the see of Peter. The battle of Bouvines, June 27, 1214, in which Otto IV. and his ally, the king of England, were utterly defeated by Philip Augustus of France, decided the strife for the German throne in favor of Frederick II. The illustrious council which convened at Rome in 1215 again passed sentence of excommunication upon Otto, whereupon Innocent proclaimed, before the council, Frederick II. as the elected emperor. The pope was spared by death from the bitter experience which was to be the lot of his successors, that, from the Church standpoint, the elevation of Frederick II. was a still greater blunder than the favor shown previously to Otto IV.
Innocent could boast of still greater success in relation to Philip Augustus of France. The latter, by the act of an assembly of French Innocent's bishops at Compiegne, had separated Relations from his lawful wife, Ingeborg, a with France Danish princess, ostensibly because of and Spain, too close a degree of relationship between them; subsequently he had married Agnes, the daughter of Duke Berthaud III. of Meran. Pope Celestine III. had already protested, in the name of the Church, against this dissolution of marriage, as also against the later wedlock. Innocent took up the cause of the repudiated wife at the very beginning of his papacy. Philip Augustus turning a deaf ear to all remonstrances, the pope's cardinal legate, in a council at Dijon, declared the interdict upon all France, and when the clergy generally suspended public worship, the people revolted and the nobility took to arms. Philip Augustus was at last constrained, on Sept. 7, 1200, to promise the papal legate, Cardinal Bishop Octaviano of Ostia, and Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, to take Ingeborg back as queen and consort. He then sought in vain, at a synod at Soissons, to induce the papal legates to dissolve his marriage, and next attempted to compel his wife to a " voluntary " renunciation. In 1213 Innocent had the satisfaction of seeing the queen
Innocent III