Celestine III died less than four months after the Emperor Henry VI, and the centre of interest immediately shifted from the Empire to the Papacy. For, in their desire to shut out the Roman clergy and people from any share in the election, the Cardinals made haste to find a successor. As it happened, the object of their choice was also the favourite of the Roman people. Lothair of Segni was the youngest of the Cardinals, being only thirty-seven years of age. He was sprung from a German family which had settled in the tenth century in the Campagna. He had studied in Paris and Bologna, and had been made Cardinal by his uncle, Clement III. Celestine was of the rival family of Orsini, and during his reign the young Cardinal remained in retirement and consoled himself by writing a book on the _Despite of the World_. Thus he was young, noble, wealthy, and distinguished. He showed his power of self-control at once by doing nothing to shorten the canonical time before his consecration as priest and bishop; while the magnificence of the coronation ceremonies typified the view which he took of the office and position. [Sidenote: The condition of Europe.] The work of Innocent III was European in importance, and he found his opportunity in the disturbed condition of the time. The rivalry of Ghibelline and Guelf in Germany and Italy, and the rivalry of the houses of Capet and Plantagenet in France, forbade any concerted action on the part of Christendom, whether against pagans on the eastern frontier of Germany or against Mohammedans in Spain or Syria. Hungary and Poland were both in a state of ferment; in Spain the Almohades from Morocco were making serious advances. Saladin's death might seem to offer a peculiarly favourable chance of recovering for Christendom what had been so recently lost. But the Empire was divided; England and France neutralised each other, the Eastern Empire was weakened by the success of an usurper, the knightly orders were quarrelling with each other. And this state of disunion was not the most dangerous feature of the moment. The moral condition of Europe was seldom worse. Philip of France had repudiated his Danish wife, Ingebiorg, apparently for no more valid reason than that he liked some one better; Alfonso of Castile took his own half-sister to wife. Oriental manners, imported from Palestine or learnt from commercial intercourse in the Mediterranean, seemed to be invading the furthest regions of the West. Perhaps to the same influence may be attributed the spread of religious heresies. Much of this was provoked by direct antagonism to a powerful and corrupt Church; but the actual form assumed by the positive beliefs of those who organised themselves apart from the Catholic Church were largely Oriental in character.