The fourth Lateran Council was his last work, and one of the most important Councils of the Middle Ages. He summoned all the bishops, abbots, and priors of Christendom to come, on November 1, 1215, to discuss the reform of the Church, the suppression of heresy, and the recovery of Palestine. A vast audience listened to his opening sermon on November 11th, and for nineteen days they framed laws against heretics, Jews, and schismatics: vainly thundered against the vice, sensuality, and rapacity of the clergy: reduced the forbidden degrees of kindred (in marriage) to four--since there were only four humours in the body: imposed on all Christians a duty of confessing at least once a year: and fixed the next Crusade for June 1, 1216. But Innocent, if he marked with pride the contrast of that gorgeous assemblage to the little group of Christians who had met in an inn in the Transtiberina a thousand years earlier, cannot have been content. Not a single Greek had responded to his summons: grave murmurs at his hard policy and despotic action arose in the Council itself: half the prelates, at least, were unfit to impose reforming measures on their priests: and the ghastly mockery of his last Crusade gave little hope for the future. He did not even appreciate the new forces for good which were rising. He had coldly received, if not actually discouraged, Dominic and Francis. His ideal was power: of love he knew nothing. He flung himself ardently into the preparation for the new war on the Saracens, and died, on June 16, 1216, with the call to arms on his lips. He sacrificed himself nobly in the interest of his high ideal, and was one of the greatest makers of the Papacy, but he sacrificed also much that men inalienably prize, and he began the unmaking of the Papacy. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 237: The clergy were to be free to elect their bishop, though in Germany the election had to take place in the presence of the Emperor or his representatives; this was a virtual retention of the imperial veto. Investiture with ring and crozier was replaced by a touch with the royal sceptre.] [Footnote 238: Fortunately, his work is little complicated by dispute, since his letters are so abundant. There is a contemporary life or panegyric (_Gesta Innocentii Tertii_), but it must be read with caution. Of modern biographies the great work of Achille Luchaire (6 vols., 1904-8) has superseded all others; though, as it scarcely ever indicates its authorities, the less discriminating work of Hurter is still useful. In English there is a good, but rather affected, sketch by C.H.C. Pirie-Gordon, _Innocent the Great_ (1907). Milman is particularly good on Innocent III.] [Footnote 239: _Ep._, i., 410.] [Footnote 240: ii., 226.] [Footnote 241: This is affirmed in the contemporary _Chronique d'Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier_, ch. xxx.] [Footnote 242: _Ep._, ii., in the Register, "On the Affairs of the Empire": Migne, col. ccxvi.] [Footnote 243: _Ep._, xiv.]