Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

220 ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI.
will soon join themselves to you, and with you will preach
to kings, to princes, and to nations. 1
Soon after the humble tattered
squalid company bent their
steps towards Borne. Few things in history are more striking
than the meeting of Francis of Assisi and Innocent III.
We must pause here to look at the character and position
of the man to whom the poor beggars
of Christ draw near.
Innocent III. was, probably, on the whole the ablest man,
the greatest ruler, who has ever occupied the papal throne.
If Hildebrand, Gregory VII., was the Julius, Innocent was
the Augustus of the Church. Hildebrand had spent
his life
in fierce and constant struggle. He had fought a tremendous
battle for the supremacy of the Church. He won the battle
but at the cost of life. I have loved righteousness and
hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile were the bitter
words which faltered from his dying lips. After one hundred
years Innocent entered into the full enjoyment of the legacy
which Gregory bequeathed. He was the author of that
memorable simile which carries to the highest pitch the papal
claims, As God has placed two great luminaries in the
firmament, the one to rule the day, and the other to give
light by night, so He has established two great powers, the
pontifical and the royal, and as the moon receives the light
from the sun, so does Royalty borrow its
splendour from
the Papal authority. Innocent made this a reality and was
the supreme man in Christendom. Bernard and Becket, as
well as Hildebrand, had prepared his way. The proudest
monarch s submitted themselves to his authority. No power
in Europe was strong enough to stand up against
his will.
Philip Augustus of France, John of England, Otho of Germany,
Pedro of Arragon, had all been humbled to the very dust
before his footstool. Frederic, the young, the brilliant em
peror, the last of the great HohenstaufFen line, was his ward ;
1 Thomas of Celano, c. 4, and the Three Companions, c. 3.