Thus does Daniel the historian express himself, the least suspected assuredly that we can instance here. Joinville relates how the clergy complained bitterly of the little concern of civil officers for sentences of excommunication, and how Louis IX. expressed himself so decisively, on the necessity of ascertaining the justice of these sentences, that they abstained from urging the matter on him. This pious monarch one day caused the money levied for the Holy See to be seized, being unwilling it should be applied to the accomplishment of the ambitious projects of Gregory IX. The pontiff, to be revenged, annulled the election of Peter Chariot to the bishoprick of Noyou; this person was a natural and a legitimated son of Philip Augustus. Louis IX. was not to be shaken; he declared that no other person should possess this bishoprick. Gregory, though he exaggerated his pontifical power, though he protested, that God had confided to the pope the privileges of empire on earth as well as in heaven, confined himself to simple menaces; and France was indebted to her pious sovereign for a firmness, which he had still further occasion to manifest under the succeeding pontificates. That of Gregory IX. more particularly memorable for the disputes with the emperor Frederick II., is so, likewise, for the publication of an ecclesiastical code compiled by Raymond de Pennafort the third general of the Dominicans. Since the decree of Gratian, decretals, and collections of decretals, had multiplied to that degree that one could scarcely see his way among them. Gregory had, to his own decisions, caused those of his predecessors from Eugenius III. to be added. There resulted from it a collection, of which the subjects are distributed into six books. A sorry verse²³⁶ which announces this distribution, maybe too faithfully translated and appreciated in the following: Judges, judgments, the clergy, marriages, and crimes. ²³⁷ Judex, judicium, clerus, sponsalia, crimen. The canonists cite this code under the name of ‘The Decretals of Gregory IX.’ or simply ‘The Decretals,’ and sometimes by the word ‘extra,’ that is, without the decree of Grattan; which decree had been for two centuries the sole source of ecclesiastical jurisprudence. As fruits of the vast correspondence of Alexander III., of Innocent III. and of Gregory IX., these five books are in every respect worthy to serve as a sequel to the decree: they have with it contributed to the propagation of maxims subversive of all government.