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Rh submissive and humble tools, assumed with the purple the habits and pretensions of the sovereigns they had dispossessed. Nevertheless, Innocent left his successors a much vaster and more stable political dominion than that which he had received from his predecessors, since it comprised both East and West; and his five immediate successors were able to preserve this ascendancy. They even extended the limits of Roman imperialism by converting the pagans of the Baltic to Christianity, and further reinforced the work of ecclesiastical centralization by enlisting in their service a force which had recently come into existence and was rapidly becoming popular—the mendicant orders, and notably the Dominicans and Franciscans. The

Roman power was also increased by the formation of the Universities—privileged corporations of masters and students, which escaped the local power of the bishop and his chancellor only to place themselves under the direction and supervision of the Holy See. Mistress of the entire Christian organism, Rome thus gained control of international education, and the mendicant monks who formed her devoted militia lost no time in monopolizing the professorial chairs. Although the ecclesiastical monarchy continued to gain strength, the successors of Innocent III. made less use than he of their immense power. Under Gregory IX. (1227–1241) and Innocent IV. (1243–1254) the conflict between the priesthood and the Empire was revived by the enigmatic Frederick II., the polyglot and lettered emperor, the friend of Saracens, the despot who, in youth styled "king of priests," in later years personified ideas that were directly opposed to the medieval theocracy; and the struggle lasted nearly thirty years. The Hohenstaufen succumbed to it, and the papacy itself received a terrible shock, which shook its vast empire to the foundations.

Nevertheless, the first half of the 13th century may be regarded as the grand epoch of medieval papal history. Supreme in Europe, the papacy gathered into a body of doctrine the decisions given in virtue of its enormous de facto power, and promulgated its collected decrees and

oracula to form the immutable law of the Christian world. Innocent III., Honorius III. and Gregory IX. employed their jurists to collect the most important of their rulings, and Gregory's decrees became the definitive repository of the canon law. Besides making laws for the Christendom of the present and the future, these popes employed themselves in giving a more regular form to their principal administrative organ, the offices of the Curia. The development of the Roman chancery is also a characteristic sign of the evolution that was taking place. From the time of Innocent III. the usages of the apostolic scribes become transformed into precise rules, which for the most part remained in force until the 15th century.

4. ''Period from Urban IV. to Benedict XI. (1261–1305'').—This period comprises 13 pontificates, all of short duration (three or four years at the most, and some only a few months), with the exception of that of Boniface VIII., who was pope for nine years. This accidental fact constitutes a prime difference in favour of the preceding period, in which there were only five pontiffs during the first sixty years of the 13th century. Towards the end of the 13th century the directors of the Christian world occupied the throne of St Peter for too short a time to be able to make their personal views prevail or to execute their political projects at leisure after ripe meditation. Whatever the merit of a Gregory X. or a Nicholas III., the brevity of their pontificates prevented any one of these ephemeral sovereigns from being a great pope.

But other and far more important differences characterize this period. Although there was no theoretical restriction to the temporal supremacy and religious power of the papacy, certain historical facts of great importance contributed to the fatal diminution of their extent. The first of these was the preponderance of the French monarchy and nation in Europe. Founded by the conquests of Philip Augustus and Louis VIII. and legitimated and extended by the policy and moral influence of the crowned saint, Louis IX., the French monarchy enjoyed undisputed supremacy at the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th; and this hegemony of France was manifested, not only by the extension of the direct power exercised by the French kings over all the neighbouring nationalities, but also by the establishment of Capetian dynasties in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies and in Hungary. From this time the sovereign of Rome, like other sovereigns, had to submit to French influence. But, whereas the pope was sometimes compelled to become the instrument of the policy of the kings of France or the adventurers of their race, he was often able to utilize this new and pervading force for the realization of his own designs, although he endeavoured from time to time, but without enduring success, to shake off the overwhelming yoke of the French. In short, it was in the sphere of French interests much more than in that of the general interests of Latin Christendom that the activities of these popes were exerted. The fact of many of the popes being of French birth and France the field of their diplomacy shows that the supreme pontificate was already becoming French in character. This change was a prelude to the more or less complete subjection of the papacy to French influence which took place in the following century at the period of the “Babylonish Captivity,” the violent reaction personified by Boniface VIII. affording but a brief respite in this irresistible evolution. It was the Frenchman Urban IV. (1261–1264) who called Charles of Anjou into Italy to combat the last heirs of Frederick II. and thus paved the way for the establishment of the Angevin dynasty on the throne of Naples. Under Clement IV. (1265–1268) an agreement was concluded by which Sicily was handed over to the brother of St Louis, and the victories of Benevento (1266) and Tagliacozzo (1267) assured the triumph of the Guelph party and enabled the Angevins to plant themselves definitely on Neapolitan soil. Conradin's tragic and inevitable end closed the last act of the secular struggle between the Holy See and the Empire. Haunted by the recollection of that formidable conflict and lulled in the security of the Great Interregnum, which was to render Germany long powerless, the papacy thought merely of the support that France could give, and paid no heed to the dangers threatened by the extension of Charles of Anjou's monarchy in central and northern Italy. The Visconti Gregory X. (1271–1276) made an attempt to bring about a reaction against the tendency which had influenced his two immediate predecessors. He placed himself outside the theatre of French influence, and occupied himself solely with the task of giving to the papal monarchy that character of universality and political superiority which had made the greatness of an Alexander III. or an Innocent III. He opposed the aggrandizing projects of the Angevins, intervened in Germany with a view to terminating the Great Interregnum, and sought a necessary counterpoise to Capetian predominance in an alliance with Rudolph of Habsburg, who had become an emperor without imperilling the papacy. The Orsini Nicholas III. pursued the same policy with regard to the independence and greatness of the Roman See, but died too soon for the cause he upheld, and, at his death in 1280, the inevitable current revived with overpowering force. His successor, Martin IV. (1281–1285), a prelate of Champagne, brother of several councillors of the king of France, prebendary at Rouen and Tours, and one of the most zealous in favour of the canonization of Louis IX., ascended the papal throne under the auspices of Charles of Anjou, and undertook the government of the Church with the sole intention of furthering in every way the interests of the country of his birth. A Frenchman before everything, he abased the papal power to such an extent as to excite the indignation of his contemporaries, often slavishly subordinating it to the exigencies of the domestic and foreign policy of the Angevins at Naples and the reigning house at Paris. But he was prevented from carrying out this policy by an unforeseen blow, the Sicilian Vespers (March 1282), an event important both in itself and in its results. By rejecting the Capetian sovereign that Rome wished to thrust upon it to deliver it from the dynasty of Aragon, the little island of Sicily arrested the progress of French imperialism, ruined the vast