erain
of the emperor, as he was already that of other kings. Finally, by his
efforts to purify the Church, by his indomitable firmness in defending
morality and law in the affair of Ingelburge and in many others, he was
gaining a moral strength which in times so disquieted was all the more
powerful for being so rare.

But this incomparable power had its hidden dangers. Occupied with
defending the prerogatives of the Holy See, Innocent came to forget that
the Church does not exist for herself, that her supremacy is only a
transitory means; and one part of his pontificate may be likened to
wars, legitimate in the beginning, in which the conqueror keeps on with
depredations and massacres for no reason, except that he is intoxicated
with blood and success.

And so Rome, which canonized the petty Celestine V., refused this
supreme consecration to the glorious Innocent III. With exquisite tact
she perceived that he was rather king than priest, rather pope than
saint.

When he suppressed ecclesiastical disorders it was less for love of good
than for hatred of evil; it was the judge who condemns or threatens,
himself always supported by the law, not the father who weeps his son's
offence. This priest did not comprehend the great movement of his
age--the awakening of love, of poetry, of liberty. I have already said
that at the opening of the thirteenth century the Middle Age was twenty
years old. Innocent III. undertook to treat it as if it were only
fifteen. Possessed by his civil and religious dogmas as others are by
their educational doctrines, he never suspected the unsatisfied
longings, the dreams, unreasoning perhaps, but beneficent and divine,
that were dumbly stirring in the depths of men's hearts. He was a
believer, although certain sayings of the historians[8] open the door
to some doubts on this point, but he drew his religion rather from the
Old Testament than from the New, and if he often thought of Moses, the
leader of his people, nothing reminded him of Jesus, the shepherd of
souls. One cannot be everything; a choice intelligence, an iron
will[9] are a sufficient portion even for a _priest-god_; he lacked
love. The death of this pontiff, great among the great ones, was
destined to be saluted with songs of joy.[10]

His reception of Francis furnished to Giotto, the friend of Dante, one
of his most striking frescos; the pope, seated on his throne, turns
abruptly toward Francis. He frowns, for he does not unders