But a rebellion against Frederick took shape practically as a renewal of the papal-imperial contest.  Gregory prepared a league; then once more he launched his ban.  Europe was amazed by a sort of war of proclamations.  Nothing perhaps served the pope better now than the agency of the mendicant orders.  The military triumph of Frederick, however, seemed already assured when Gregory died.  Two years later, Innocent IV. was pope.  After hollow overtures, Innocent fled to Lyons, and there launched invectives against Frederick and appeals to Christendom.

Frederick, by attaching, not the papacy but the clergy, alienated much support.  Misfortunes gathered around him.  His death ensured Innocent’s supremacy.  Soon the only legitimate heir of the Hohenstaufen was an infant, Conradin; and Conradin’s future depended on his able but illegitimate uncle, Manfred.  But Innocent did not live long to enjoy his victory; his arrogance and rapacity brought no honour to the papacy.  English Grostete of Lincoln, on whom fell Stephen Langton’s mantle, is the noblest ecclesiastical figure of the time.

For some years the imperial throne remained vacant; the matter of first importance to the pontiffs—­Alexander, Urban, Clement—­was that Conradin, as he grew to manhood, should not be elected.  Manfred became king of South Italy, with Sicily; but with no legal title.  Urban, a Frenchman, agreed with Charles of Anjou, brother of St. Louis, that he should have the crown, on terms.  Manfred fell in battle against him at Beneventum, and with him all real chance of a Hohenstaufen recovery.  Not three years after, young Conradin, in a desperate venture after his legitimate rights, was captured and put to death by Charles of Anjou.

A temporary pacification of Western Christendom was the work of Gregory X.; his aim was a great crusade.  At last an emperor was elected, Rudolph of Hapsburg.  But Gregory died.  Popes followed each other and died in swift succession.  Presently, on the abdication of the hermit Celestine, Boniface VIII. was chosen pope.  His bull, “Clericis laicos,” forbidding taxation of the clergy by the temporal authority, brought him into direct hostility with Philip the Fair of France, and though the quarrel was temporarily adjusted, the strife soon broke out again.  The bulls, “Unam Sanctam” and “Ausculta fili,” were answered by a formal arraignment of Boniface in the States-General of France, followed by the seizure of the pope’s own person by Philip’s Italian partisans.

IV.—­Captivity, Seclusion, and Revival

The successor of Boniface was Benedict IX.  He acted with dignity and restraint, but he lived only two years.  After long delays, the cardinals elected the Archbishop of Bordeaux, a subject of the King of England.  But before he became Clement V. he had made his pact with the King of France.  He was crowned, not in Italy, but at Lyons, and took up his residence at Avignon, a papal fief in Provence, on the French borders.  For seventy years the popes at Avignon were practically the servants of the King of France.