304

THE GLORY OF CHRISTENDOM

THE NEMESIS OF POWER 305
Christendom, until at last-and inevitably, given their policy-it was turned on them.
Two hundred years earlier the great Hildebrand, Pope St. Gregory VII, had firmly established the
principle that the Pope had the right and duty to act as moral judge of kings and emperors. An act of the
temporal sovereign which was clearly immoral, or clearly directed against the liberty of the Church, should be
condemned by the Pope; a long record of such acts, of defiance of the Church and the moral law, justified the
Pope in proclaiming that the ruler who had created that record no longer deserved the obedience of his
Christian people? But since the Pope (except within the Papal states) was not a temporal sovereign, such acts
of judgment should be rare, and limited to the most flagrant offenses.
This caution was particularly needed because in this age (and for long afterward) the Pope was
frequently drawn into temporal politics in another way, through the necessity of providing dispensations for
royal marriages. Most of the royal families of Christendom were related to one another within the very broad
range of prohibited degrees for marriage which the Church then enforced. Yet royal marriages were considered
an essential component of most important international treaties. The Pope granted such dispensations when he
concluded that the common good served by the treaty overrode the desirability of maintaining the normal
marriage laws. This thrust him into the midst of almost every major diplomatic negotiation. The most prudent
way to deal with this problem was undoubtedly that which the Church herself ultimately chose, in the
nineteenth century: to narrow the prohibited degrees of relationship for marriage to very close ties such as
uncle and niece, or first cousins. But no one seems to have thought of that in the thirteenth century, or for long
afterward.
During the years covered by this chapter, beginning with the pontificate of Martin IV from 1281 to 1285,
the Popes involved themselves by a series of increasingly imprudent decisions in major issues of both
international relations (war and peace and diplomacy) and internal politics among the nations and smaller
states of Christendom, whose spiritual component was at best arguable and at worst virtually nonexistent. They
expanded their political intervention far beyond anything done, or probably envisaged by any of their
predecessors. They did not hesitate to use the most powerful spiritual weapons at their disposal-
excommunication and interdict-to punish disobedience to their political decisions.
Consequently they were accused, then and since, of seeking to exercise direct temporal power over
Christendom. It must be emphasized that there is no probative evidence of this. We have no document or first-
hand report in which a Pope specifies expanded temporal power (beyond the Papal states of
Volume II, Chapter 19 of this history.
Italy) as his goal. Rather the Popes were drawn into their excessive political and temporal involvement step by
step, by arguments derived from particular cases and problems that seemed reasonable to them; and the further
they got into the political thicket, the harder it was for them to get out of it. Finally, at least one and probably
two Popes in effect perished by the sword, their successor became a virtual captive of the wielder of that
sword, and the glory of Christendom went for a time into eclipse.
The great ones of the temporal order fared no better. Popes Boniface VIII and Benedict XI at least died as
victims, at peace with God. Holy Roman Emperors Adolf and Albert died literally by the sword, by
assassination; Emperor Henry VII, Philip IV of France and Edward I of England died friendless, alone, full of
hate and yearning for revenge, estranged from most still living who had loved and served them. The nemesis of
power stalked them, and in the end it struck them down.
It was an age when holiness lay hidden, symbolized by Peter Murrone, the hermit of the Abruzzi, who
spent more than sixty years in a cave, was called forth from his cave to become Pope Celestine V, resigned in
five months, spent the last year of his life in a prison cell about the same size as his cave, and was canonized
ten years after his death.
But it was also an age when heroes took arms against tyranny and betrayal and won against all odds,
when a poor unknown knight named William Wallace came from nowhere to strike for the liberty of Scotland
by destroying Edward I's mighty army at Stirling Bridge; when Robert the Bruce secured Scotland's liberty for
three hundred years at the Battle of Bannockburn; when the Flemish burghers at Courtrai overmatched the
proud armored horsemen of Philip IV for freedom's sake; when Alfonso Perez de Guzman "the Good," who
had vowed to hold the vital stronghold of Tarifa against the Moors, hurled his sword over its battlements after
his own "Christian" prince swore to kill his son if he did not surrender, held it, and saved it.
This period began with an extraordinary series of Papal fatalities. The conclave which assembled the
specified ten days after the death of the great Pope Gregory X chose Peter of Tarentaise, the Cardinal
Archbishop of Lyons, as his successor by unanimous vote on the first ballot. Peter was a Dominican, a famous
theologian and professorial colleague of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the leaders of the Council of Lyons. Pope
Gregory X had much trusted and admired Peter, who was with him when he died. The new Pope took the name
Innocent V. 4 But within five months he was speaking to the cardinals who had elected him, on his own
deathbed:
Horace K Mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Middle Ages, Volume XVIII (London, 1931), pp. 247-341.
4
lbid., XVII, 3-14.