terests of the Church
he seldom made demands which he had not the power to enforce. John of
England attempted resistance, but was compelled to submit. Innocent
even gave the archbishopric of Canterbury to one of his cardinals,
Stephen Langton, against the wishes of a Norman king. He took away the
wife of Philip Augustus; he nominated an emperor to the throne of
Constantine; he compelled France to make war on England, and incited the
barons to rebellion against John. Ten years' civil war in Germany was
the fruit of his astute policy, and the only great failure of his
administration was that he could not exempt Italy from the dominion of
the Emperors of Germany, thus giving rise to the two great political
parties of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,--the Guelphs and
Ghibellines.

To cement his vast spiritual power he encouraged what doubtless seemed
even to him a great fanaticism, but which he found could be turned to
his advantage,--that of the Mendicant Friars, established by Saint
Francis of Assisi, and Saint Dominic of the great family of the Guzmans
in Spain. These men made substantially the same offers to the Pope that
Ignatius Loyola did in after times,--to go where they were sent as
teachers, preachers, and missionaries without condition or reward. They
renounced riches, professed absolute poverty, and wandered from village
to city barefooted, and subsisting entirely on alms as beggars. The
Dominican friar in his black habit, and the Franciscan in his gray,
became the ablest and most effective preachers of the thirteenth
century. The Dominicans confined their teachings to the upper classes,
and became their favorite confessors. They were the most learned men of
the thirteenth century, and also the most reproachless in morals. The
Franciscans were itinerary preachers to the common people, and created
among them the same religious revival that the Methodists did later in
England under the guidance of Wesley. The founder of the Franciscans was
a man who seemed to be "inebriated with love," so unquenchable was his
charity, rapt his devotions, and supernal his sympathy. He found his way
to Rome in the year 1215, and in twenty-two years after his death there
were nine thousand religious houses of his Order. In a century from his
death the friars numbered one hundred and fifty thousand. The increase
of the Dominicans was not so rapid, but more illustrious men belonged to
this institution. It is affirmed that it pr