e
connected with his name; but with such things we need not here trouble
ourselves.

* * * * *

When Dominic and Francis each applied to Pope Innocent for his approval
of their designs to found new orders, he was not forward to give it;
but, on thinking the matter over, he granted them what they asked. Each
of them soon gathered followers, who spread into all lands. The
Franciscans, especially, made converts from heathenism by missions; and
these orders, by their rough and plain habits of life, made their way to
the hearts of the poorest classes in a degree which had never been known
before. And the influence which they thus gained was all used for the
papacy, which found them the most active and useful of all its servants.

In the year 1215, Innocent held a great council at Rome, what is known
as the fourth Lateran Council, and is to be remembered for two of its
canons; by one of which the false doctrine of the Roman Church as to the
sacrament of the Lord's Supper was, for the first time, established; and
by the other, it was made the duty of every one in the Roman Church to
confess to the priest of his parish at least once a year.

CHAPTER XIV.

FREDERICK II.--ST. LEWIS OF FRANCE.

A.D. 1220-1270.

PART I.

The popes still tried to stir up the Christians of the West for the
recovery of the Holy Land; and there were crusading attempts from time
to time, although without much effect. One of these crusades was
undertaken in 1228 by Frederick II., an emperor who was all his life
engaged in struggles against one pope after another. Frederick had taken
the cross when he was very young; but when once any one had done so, the
popes thought that they were entitled to call on him to fulfil his
promise at any time they pleased, no matter what other business he might
have on his hands. He was expected to set off on a crusade whenever the
pope might bid him, although it might be ruinous to him to be called
away from his own affairs at that time.

In this way, then, the popes had got a hold on Frederick, and when he
answered their summons by saying that his affairs at home would not just
then allow him to go on a crusade, they treated this excuse as if he had
refused altogether to go; they held him up to the world as a faithless
man, and threatened to put his lands under an interdict,[81] and to take
away his crown. And when at last Frederick found himself able to go to
the Holy La