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Updated: June 5, 2025
In every one of the lesser kingdoms of Europe, Innocent asserted his authority. Innocent's efforts for a fresh crusade begot not the overthrow of the Saracen, but the substitution of a Latin kingdom under the Roman obedience for the Greek empire of Byzantium. In effect it gave Venice her Mediterranean supremacy.
In the April of 1216 his son Lewis accepted the crown in spite of Innocent's excommunications, and landed soon after in Kent with a considerable force. As the barons had foreseen, the French mercenaries who constituted John's host refused to fight against the French sovereign and the whole aspect of affairs was suddenly reversed.
Meanwhile Innocent's portrait on which he had worked for a considerable time was nearly completed. It was one of the best things he had ever done, and he contemplated it with a pleasant thrill of artistic triumph, forgetting the "woman" entirely in satisfied consideration of the "subject."
Doubtless John expected this from the pope, and if his own view of the charter were correct, Innocent's action would be entirely within his rights. No vassal had a right to enter into any agreement which would diminish the value of his fief, and John had done this if the rights that he was exercising in 1213 were really his.
At last the English King surrendered his crown to the papal agent Pandulf, and, like Peter of Aragon, received it back as a vassal of the papacy, bound by an annual tribute. Nor were these the only kings that sought the support of the great Pope. The schismatic princes of the East vied in ardor with the Catholic princes of the West in their quest of Innocent's favor.
Italy rang with the scandal of it, we are told. Under Innocent's lethargic rule the Church again began to lose much of the vigour with which Sixtus had inspired it. If the reign of Sixtus had been scandalous, infinitely worse was that of Innocent a sordid, grasping sensualist, without even the one redeeming virtue of strength that had been his predecessor's.
But no more serious attempt at rooting out inveterate evils was ever made in the Middle Ages than in this council. The formal enunciation of this lofty programme of reform brought Innocent's pontificate to a glorious end. The Pontiff devoted what little remained of his life to hurrying on the preparations for the projected crusade, which was to set out 1217.
At his death John had driven from his side even the most loyal of his barons; but William Marshal had clung to him to the last, and with him was Gualo, the Legate of Innocent's successor, Honorius the Third. The position of Gualo as representative of the Papal overlord of the realm was of the highest importance, and his action showed the real attitude of Rome towards English freedom.
It was the bitterest disappointment of Innocent's life that the Fourth Crusade never reached Palestine, but was diverted to the conquest of the Greek empire. Yet the establishment of a Catholic Latin empire at Constantinople, at the expense of the Greek schismatics, was no small triumph. Not disheartened by his first failure, Innocent still urged upon Europe the need of the holy war.
Innocent's successors reaped the benefit of his triumph in the influence which they were able to exert in England during the greater part of the reign of Henry III. Nor was John the only King who laid his crown at the feet of the Pope. Peter, King of Aragon, hoped to escape the claims of the King of Castile and the tyranny of his own barons by making his kingdom tributary to the Papacy.
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