Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/506

 456 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE St. Peter where the king placed his scepter and diadem on ! the Apostle's tomb with these words: "I confess from the heart and with my mouth that the Roman pontiff, successor to St. Peter, takes the place of Him who governs earthly realms, and can confer them upon whom it seems good to him. I, Peter, by the grace of God King of Aragon, Count of Barcelona, and Lord of Montpellier, desiring above all else the protection of God, of the Apostle, and of the Holy See, declare that I offer my kingdom to thee, admirable father and lord, sovereign pontiff Innocent, and to thy successors, and through thee to the most sacred Church of Rome. And I make my kingdom tributary to Rome at the rate of t wo hundred and fifty g old pieces which my treasury shall pay every year to the Apostolic See. And I swear for myself and my successors that we will remain thy faithful vassals and obedient subjects." On the other hand, Innocent opposed most strenuously any attempt of the State to seize church property or of Insistence on kings to Control ecclesiastical elections. He in- ecclesiastical structed a Hungarian archbishop, when reading to the people the legendary life of St. Stephen, the first Christian king of Hungary, to suppress a passage which spoke of the religious authority conferred upon that monarch. When the King of Portugal drove out some monks who were deep both in crime and in debt and replaced them by nuns under his daughter as abbess, Innocent bade the Archbishop of Compostella restore the monks in order to! teach the king that ecclesiastical liberty must not " suffer from the insolence of laymen," but then to oust them once more and allow the princess to start a nunnery if she wished, in order that "the depravity of the monks might not go unpunished." Innocent's relations with southern France and with the Count of Toulouse have already been mentioned in de- Relations scribing the Albigensian Crusade. It remains wi ^ rance to speak of his relations with the two royal houses, Capetian and Fk nMg enet, who were now engaged in continual strife with each other and who