At the coronation of Innocent III the officiating priest had used these words: ‘Take the tiara and know that thou art the father of princes and kings, the ruler of the world, the Vicar on earth of our Saviour Jesus Christ.’ To Lothario di Conti this utterance was but the confirmation of his own beliefs, as unshakable as those of Hildebrand, as wide in their scope as the imperialism of Frederick Barbarossa or Henry VI. ‘The Lord Jesus Christ,’ he declared, ‘has set up one ruler over all things as His Universal Vicar, and as all things in Heaven, Earth, and Hell bow the knee to Christ, so should all obey Christ’s Vicar that there be one flock and one shepherd.’ Again: ‘Princes have power on earth, priests have also power in Heaven.’ In illustration of these views he likened the Papacy to the sun, the Empire to the lesser light of the moon, and recalled how Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane gave to St. Peter two swords. By these, he explained, were meant temporal and spiritual power, and emperors who claimed to exercise the former could only do so by the gracious consent of St. Peter’s successors, since ‘the Lord gave Peter the rule not only of the universal Church but also the rule of the whole world’. Gregory VII had made men wonder in the triumph of Canossa whether such an ideal of the Papacy could ever be realized; but as if in proof he had been hunted from Rome and died in exile. It was left to Innocent III to exhibit the partial fulfilment, at any rate, of all that his predecessor had dreamed. In character no saintly Bernard of Clairvaux, but a clear-brained practical statesman, he set before himself the vision of a kingdom of God on earth after the pattern of earthly kingdoms; and to this end, that he sincerely believed carried with it the blessing of God for the perfecting of mankind, he used every weapon in his armoury. Sometimes his ambitions failed, as when, in a real glow of enthusiasm, he preached the Fourth Crusade--an expedition that ended in Venice, who had promised the necessary ships, diverting the crusaders to storm her a coveted port on the Dalmatian coast, and afterwards to sack and burn Constantinople in the mingled interests of commerce and pillage. His anger at the news that the remonstrances of his legates had been ignored could hardly at first be extinguished. Not thus had been his plan of winning Eastern Christendom to the Catholic Faith and of destroying the infidel; for the Latin Empire of Constantinople, set up by the victorious crusaders, was obviously too weak to maintain for long its tyranny over hostile Greeks, or to serve as an effective barrier against the Turks. Statesmanship, however, prompted him to reap what immediate harvest he could from the blunders of his faithless sons; and he accepted the submission of the Church in Constantinople as a debt long owing to the Holy See.