Towards the end of his life, Innocent held a General Council in the basilica of St. John Lateran. A vast gathering of bishops, heads of orders, and secular dignitaries gave brilliancy to the gathering and enhanced the glory of the Pontiff. Enthroned over more than four hundred bishops, the Pope proudly declared the law to the world. ‘Two things we have specially to heart,’ wrote Innocent, in summoning the assembly, ‘the deliverance of the Holy Land and the reform of the Church Universal.’ In its vast collection of seventy canons, the Lateran Council strove hard to carry out the Pope’s programme. It condemned the dying heresies of the Albigeois and the Cathari, and prescribed the methods and punishments of the unrepentant heretic. It strove to rekindle zeal for the Crusade. It drew up a drastic scheme for reforming the internal life and discipline of the Church. It strove to elevate the morals and the learning of the clergy, to check their worldliness and covetousness, and to restrain them from abusing the authority of the Church through excess of zeal or more corrupt motives. It invited bishops to set up free schools to teach poor scholars grammar and theology. It forbade trial by battle and trial by ordeal. It subjected the existing monastic orders to stricter superintendence, and forbade the establishment of new monastic rules. It forbade superstitious practices and the worship of spurious or unauthorised relics. The whole series of canons sought to regulate and ameliorate the influence of the Church on society. If many of the abuses aimed at were too deeply rooted to be overthrown by mere legislation, the attempt speaks well for the character and intelligence of Pope and Council. All mediæval lawmaking, civil and ecclesiastical alike, was but the promulgation of an ideal, rather than the issuing of precepts meant to be literally executed. But no more serious attempt at rooting out inveterate evils was ever made in the Middle Ages than in this Council. The formal enunciation of this lofty programme of reform brought Innocent’s pontificate to a glorious end. The Pontiff devoted what little remained of his life to hurrying on the preparations for the projected Crusade, which was to set out in 1217. [Sidenote: Death of Innocent III., 16th July 1216.] But in the summer of 1216 Innocent died at Perugia, when only fifty-six years old. If not the greatest, he was the most powerful of all the Popes. For nearly twenty years the whole history of Europe groups itself round his doings. CHAPTER XV THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY, THE FOURTH CRUSADE, AND THE LATIN EMPIRE IN THE EAST (1095–1261)[27]