Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/248

230 fathers were right, no doubt, in opposing Innocent's designs in England, in seeing principally in his policy towards King John an attempt to advance the claims of the papal see against the rights of Englishmen. Matthew Paris says that John knew the pope as the most ambitious and proudest of men, a man insatiable after money and capable of every crime to obtain it; but history does not bear out his judgment. Two schools of historians have discussed the character of Innocent. He stands before one as a clever Italian, an intriguing, ambitious priest, meddling in every business to advance the interests of the Church ; and before the other party — that, namely, which believes in the Roman Catholic Church as the divine institution of the world — as the priest full of supernatural energy, of ability, and of success, the model pontiff, the type pre-eminently of the Vicar of God. Judging the man by the circumstances of his time, and putting aside his trivial weaknesses, one sees a clear-headed statesman who knew his own purpose, and was tenacious of its realization — one of the men who stamp their character upon the world's history in unmistakable outlines. It is in considering the amount of useful work done and the beneficial influence exerted by such popes as Innocent, that we, who are outside the Church of Rome, come to understand how the belief in the inspired character of the pope's official conduct has grown up. The character given of Innocent by a contemporary is borne out by his conduct during the fourth crusade — "a man of much discretion and kindliness, young indeed in years (he was thirty-seven when made pope), but old in prudence, ripe in judgment, adorned by the uprightness of his character, of a noble race and commanding presence, a lover of what was right and good, a hater of iniquity and vice, so