tury,
was to prove fatal to one of the strongest of his successors. The more
political the papal authority became, the more difficult it was to
uphold its prestige as the source of law, of morality, of religion.
Innocent himself did not lose sight of the higher ideal because he
strove so firmly after more earthly aims. His successors were not
always so able or so high-minded. And it was as the protectors of the
people, not as the enemies of their political rights, that the great
popes of the eleventh and twelfth centuries had obtained their
wonderful ascendency over the best minds of Europe.

The coronation of Otto IV did not end Innocent's troubles with the
Empire. It was soon followed by an open breach between the Pope and
his nominee, from which ultimately developed something like a general
European war, between a league of partisans of the Pope and a league
of partisans of Otto. It was inevitable that Otto, as a crowned
emperor, should look upon the papal power in a way very different from
that in which he had regarded it when a faction leader struggling for
the crown. Then the support of the Pope was indispensable. Now the
autocracy of the Pope was to be feared. The Hohenstaufen
ministeriales, who now surrounded the Guelfic Emperor, raised his
ideals and modified his policy. Henry of Kalden, the old minister of
Henry VI, was now his closest confidant, and under his direction it
soon became Otto's ambition to continue the policy of the
Hohenstaufen. The great object of Henry VI had been the union of
Sicily with the Empire. To the alarm and disgust of Innocent, his
ancient dependent now strove to continue Henry VI's policy by driving
out Henry VI's son from his Sicilian inheritance. Otto now established
relations with Diepold and the other German adventurers, who still
defied Frederick II and the Pope in Apulia. He soon claimed the
inheritance of Matilda as well as the Sicilian monarchy. In August,
1210, he occupied Matilda's Tuscan lands, and in November invaded
Apulia, and prepared to despatch a Pisan fleet against Sicily.
Innocent was moved to a terrible wrath. On hearing of the capture of
Capua, and the revolt of Salerno and Naples, he excommunicated the
Emperor and freed his subjects from their oaths of fealty to him. But,
despite the threats of the Church, Otto conquered most of Apulia and
was equally successful in reviving the Imperial authority in Northern
Italy.

Innocent saw the power that he had built u