power and to your own will, and so reject our demand, for the kingdom of France is not so exhausted or so weak that you may venture to prick us with your spurs.' {41} The threat uttered by Louis was not without effect. The Emperor hesitated a little longer, and then set the French prelates at liberty. Gregory IX. died, and under the pontificate of Innocent IV. the struggle between the Papal See and the Empire became more and more fierce. The two parties and the two adversaries divided the whole of Christendom; sovereigns and peoples were to be found first in one camp and then in the other, now estranged by the Pope's acts of violence and now by those of the Emperor. Doubt and indecision at length affected even the clergy. In 1245, Frederick II. was excommunicated for the third time, and at Paris the Curé of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois announced the sentence in the following words:-- 'Listen, all of you! I am commanded to pronounce a solemn sentence of excommunication--tapers lighted and bells tolling--against the Emperor Frederick. I do not know the reason of this. I know there is a fierce quarrel, and that inexorable hatred has grown up between him and another. I know that one of them is doing injustice to the other. But which of them? And to which?--I cannot tell. Therefore, so far as it is in my power, I hereby excommunicate, and declare to be excommunicated, that one who has done wrong to the other; and I absolve him who suffers the wrong--a wrong which embitters the whole Christian world.' [Footnote 10] [Footnote 10: Matthew Paris, ed. 1644, p. 442.] In the midst of this conflict of passions, and at a time of such great perplexity in the minds of men, the conduct of Louis remained unchanged. He took the part of neither one adversary nor the other; he preserved the most scrupulous neutrality in his relations with the Empire and the Papal See, and laboured hard to establish peace. {42} In the thirteenth century the principles of national law, especially that of the right of intervention on the part of one government in the struggles either of the sovereigns or the subjects of its neighbours, had not been as systematically laid down and defined as they are now. But the good sense and moral rectitude of St. Louis led him to follow the right path, and no temptation, not even his own fervent piety, ever induced him to swerve from it. It was his constant care not to allow either the State or Church of France to take any part in the struggle between the Papacy and the Empire, and he strove to uphold the dignity of his crown and the well-being of his subjects by using his influence to secure the establishment of a just and peaceful policy throughout Christendom. {43} Chapter VI. Christian Europe And Mahometan Asia In The Thirteenth Century.