CRUSADES FOR THE PAPACY. 189 authorized to reconcile them on receiving proper security that they will be obedient for the future and make proper amends for the past. In this closing act of the bloody drama it is noteworthy that there is no allusion to any of the specific heresies which had been alleged as a reason for the extermination of the heretics. Perhaps the breaking of Conrad of Marburg's bubble had shown the falsity of the charges, but whether this were so or not those charges had been w T holly supererogatory except as a means of ex- citing popular animosity. Disobedience to the Church was suffi- cient ; resistance to its claims was heresy, punishable here and here- after with all the penalties of the temporal and spiritual swords.* It is not to be supposed that Gregory neglected to employ in his owm interest the moral and material forces which he had thus put at the disposal of Gerhardt of Bremen. When, in 1238, he became involved in a quarrel with the Viterbians and their leader Aldobrandini, he commuted the vow of the Podesta of Spoleto to serve in Palestine into service against Yiterbo, and he freely of- fered Holy Land indulgences to all who would enlist under his banner. In 1241 he formally declared the cause of the Church to be more important than that of Palestine, when, being in want of funds to carry on his contest with Frederic II., he ordered that crusaders be induced to commute their vow t s for money, while still receiving full indulgences, or else be persuaded to turn their arms against Frederic in the crusade which he had caused to be preached against him. Innocent IV. pursued the same policy when he had set up a rival emperor in the person of William of Holland, and a crusade was preached in 1248 for a special expedition to Aix-la- Chapelle, of which the capture was necessary in order to his coro- nation, and vows for Palestine were redeemed that the money should be handed over to him. After Frederic's death his son Conrad IV. was the object of similar measures, and all who bore arms in his favor against William of Holland were the subject of papal anathemas. To maintain the Italian interests of the
- Potthast No. 9777.— Hartzheim III. 554.
As the contemporary Abbot Emo of Wittewerum says, in describing the af- fair — " principalior causa fuit inobedientia, quse scelere idololatriae non est infe- rior" (Mattbaei Analect. III. 142).
