s and widespread popular heresy that
Christianity had witnessed since the fall of the Roman Empire, and
Innocent rejoiced that his times saw the Church purged of its worst
blemish. But in extending the benefits of a crusade to Christians
fighting against Christians, he handed on a precedent which was soon
fatally abused by his successors. In crushing out the young national
life of Southern France the papacy again set a people against itself.
The denunciations of the German Minnesinger were reechoed in the
complaints of the last of the Troubadours. Rome had ceased to do harm
to Turks and Saracens, but had stirred up Christians to war against
fellow-Christians. God and his saints abandon the greedy, the
strife-loving, the unjust worldly Church. The picture is darkly
colored by a partisan, but in every triumph of Innocent there lay the
shadow of future trouble.

Crusades, even against heretics and infidels, are the work of earthly
force rather than of spiritual influence. It was to build up the great
outward corporation of the Church that all these labors of Innocent
mainly tended. Even his additions to the canon law, his reforms of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, dealt with the external rather than the
internal life of the Church. The criticism of James of Vitry, that the
Roman curia was so busy in secular affairs that it hardly turned a
thought to spiritual things, is clearly applicable to much of
Innocent's activity. But the many-sided Pope did not ignore the
religious wants of the Church. His crusade against heresy was no mere
war against enemies of the wealth and power of the Church. The new
tendencies that were to transform the spiritual life of the thirteenth
century were not strange to him. He favored the early work of Dominic;
he had personal dealings with Francis, and showed his sympathy with
the early work of the poor man of Assisi. But it is as the conqueror
and organizer rather than the priest or prophet that Innocent made his
mark in the Church. It is significant that, with all his greatness, he
never attained the honors of sanctity.

Toward the end of his life, Innocent held a general council in the
basilica of St. John Lateran. A vast gathering of bishops heads of
orders, and secular dignitaries gave brilliancy to the gathering and
enhanced the glory of the Pontiff. Enthroned over more than four
hundred bishops, the Pope proudly declared the law to the world. "Two
things we have specially to heart," wrote In