Innocent rejoiced that his times saw the Church purged of its worst blemish. But in extending the benefits of a Crusade to Christians fighting against Christians, he handed on a precedent which was soon fatally abused by his successors. In crushing out the young national life of southern France the Papacy again set a people against itself. The denunciations of the German Minnesinger were re-echoed in the complaints of the last of the Troubadours. Rome had ceased to do harm to Turks and Saracens, but had stirred up Christians to war against fellow-Christians. God and His Saints abandon the greedy, the strife-loving, the unjust, worldly Church. The picture is darkly coloured by a partisan, but in every triumph of Innocent there lay the shadow of future trouble. [Sidenote: Innocent III.’s religious position.] Crusades, even against heretics and infidels, are the work of earthly force rather than of spiritual influence. It was to build up the great outward corporation of the Church that all these labours of Innocent mainly tended. Even his additions to the Canon Law, his reforms of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, dealt with the external rather than the internal life of the Church. The criticism of James of Vitry, that the Roman Curia was so busy in secular affairs that it hardly turned a thought to spiritual things, is clearly applicable to much of Innocent’s activity. But the many-sided Pope did not ignore the religious wants of the Church. His Crusade against heresy was no mere war against enemies of the wealth and power of the Church. The new tendencies that were to transform the spiritual life of the thirteenth century were not strange to him. He favoured the early work of Dominic: he had personal dealings with Francis, and showed his sympathy with the early work of the poor man of Assisi [see chapter xviii.]. But it is as the conqueror and organiser rather than the priest or prophet that Innocent made his mark in the Church. It is significant that, with all his greatness, he never attained the honours of sanctity. [Sidenote: The Fourth General Lateran Council, 1215.]