Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/180

 THE THRONE OF THE WORLD

that if the Cardinals disagreed he was to be considered a lawfully elected Pope who obtained two-thirds of the votes. Since that time schisms have not resulted from disagreement inside the College of Cardinals. Other decisions reached by the Council were omens of that coming intellectual apostasy from the Church which was to prove so profoundly disturbing during the near future. Not long after this solemn finale, during the summer of 1181, Alexander, once again driven from a Rome still rocked by inner dissension, died in Civita Castellana.

This peace had been a peace between men, not between powers. Between 1180 and 1183 Frederic destroyed the power of Henry the Lion in Germany, and made a peace with Lombardy by which the latter was given the right to control its own political affairs on the con- dition that it recognized the Emperor as its supreme master. Thus Frederic saved the honour of the crown. Then he married his son Henry to Constance, posthumous daughter of the great Roger and hereditary princess of the Norman kingdom. The wedding took place in a reconciled Milan during the early months of 1 186. Henry received the Crown of Italy from the Patriarch of Aquileia, and called himself Csesar. The Empire thus faced the fortune and misfortune attendant upon incorporating within its boundaries a mighty and flourishing state. But Germany was soon to see that it had lost as much as the Empire had won that at the end the House of the Hohenstaufens would sink into the soil of the most splendid of its conquered lands.

The Papacy was now threatened by the grip of the Empire from the North and the South. Rome itself had room for the warring Imperial factions and the sovereign people, but not for the Popes. Lucius III spent only a few months there during the four years of his pontificate; Urban III and Gregory VIII never resided in the city; Clement III (1187-1 191) was the first Pope who could effect a recon- ciliation with the Senate and return. After many difficulties and defeats in attempting to carry on the policy of his predecessors he was given a new objective, which it is true, had already presented itself to Gregory VTII. This was a Crusade against Saladin, who in 1184 had decimated the Christian army and conquered Jerusalem. The Pope won over Genoa and Pisa as well as the Kings of France and

HENRY