CHAPTER Ⅶ　THE INQUISITION

IN the year 1198 a certain Lotario, Count of Segni, succeeded to the high honors which his uncle Paolo had held only a few years before and as Innocent III took possession of the papal chair.

He was one of the most remarkable men who ever resided in the Lateran Palace. Thirty-seven years old at the time of his ascension.An honor-student in the universities of Paris and Boulogne.Rich, clever, full of energy and high ambition, he used his office so well that he could rightly claim to exercise the “government not of the Church alone but of the entire world.”

He set Italy free from German interference by driving the imperial governor of Rome from that city; by reconquering those parts of the peninsula which were held by imperial troops; and finally by excommunicating the candidate to the imperial throne until that poor prince found himself beset by so many difficulties that he withdrew entirely from his domains on the other side of the Alps.

He organized the famous fourth Crusade which never even came within sight of the Holy Land but sailed for Constantinople, murdered a goodly number of the inhabitants of that town, stole whatever could be carried away and generally behaved in such a way that thereafter no crusader could show himself in a Greek port without running the chance of being hanged as an outlaw. It is true that Innocent expressed his disapproval of these proceedings which shrieked to high Heaven and filled the respectable minority of Christendom with disgust and despair. But Innocent was a practical man of affairs.