Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/513

 INNOCENT III AND THE STATES OF EUROPE 463 promises, soon revived the Italian policy of Henry VI and in 1 2 10 was excommunicated by Innocent, who now brought forward young Frederick as his candidate for emperor. Otto also had Philip Augustus, the King of France, for an enemy, and when that monarch defeated him in 12 14 at the battle of jjouvin es in northern France, he gave up the struggle for the imperial throne and retired to his private estates. Again Innocent had seemingly triumphed. It is true that Frederick was the son of Henry VI, and that he was already King of Sicily, and that the Papacy held it a menace to its independence to have Innocent Germany and southern Italy controlled by the and Fred- same ruler. But Frederick had thus far shown himself a docile vassal in Sicily; he promised to surrender Sicily to his son when he himself should be crowned em- peror; he officially confirmed to the pope all the territory in Italy which Otto had promised; and he made further important concessions in connection with the control of the Church in Germany. He surrendered the "right of spoil" or royal custom of seizing the goods of dead bishops ; he granted freedom in ecclesiastical elections and freedom of appeal to the court at Rome. Finally he agreed to go on a crusade. But after Innocent's death, as we shall see, he became the arch-enemy of the Papacy. The absence of any imperial authority in Italy during Innocent's pontificate — for the rival candidates spent practically all the time contending in Germany innocent — would afford a good opportunity, one might j^an suppose, for the pope to bring actually under his communes rule the territories which he claimed in central Italy. But the communes with which that region was now filled, while they had been glad to join with Innocent in driving out the imperial agents, had no desire to accept instead the rule of the pope within their walls. Only after a struggle of ten years was Innocent able to master his own city of Rome, where previous popes had been unable to prevent the com- munal movement from spreading. At one time Innocent and his brother Richard were expelled from the city, be-