7 8 THE THRONE OF THE WORLD
century received in the Samma of St. Thomas Aquinas, grand-nephew of Barbarossa and heritor of both German and Latin blood, a marvel- lously harmonious reflection of its inner structure. At the same time, however, it witnessed efforts of unparalleled vigour to effect emanci- pation from its religious and spiritual communion. To live in the Catholic state of tension was unendurable to many spirits; and both good and evil men found in the administration of the Church an excuse, or even an incentive, for separating themselves from it. To one who looks closely the whole Middle Ages are like a landscape shot through with fissures and chasms in spite of all these cleavages. The fact that Europe held together out of a sense of devotion to the ulti- mate highest things can hardly be understood unless one has recourse to the mysterious law which governs the throne of Peter. Again and again it has learned the truth of salus ab inimicis; and this was also to be the case during the storms of the turbulent thirteenth century. The fact that many who opposed the Church were subjectively right and in conformity with Christian principle, compelled the Popes to be on guard and despite everything to guide the wild waters at last behind the dams of the universal Church. Generally they achieved it with spiritual means, as for instance through the movement which fostered poverty. Where these failed, sometimes through the fault of those who applied them, the result was a baneful recourse to force, as in the Albigensian Wars.
The Mendicant Orders of Franciscans and Dominicans had been founded under Innocent III. Legend has it that in a dream the Pope had seen the two founders, the Umbrian and the Spaniard, supporting the tottering Lateran Basilica. This story enshrines the historical truth that the best men of the time entertained dark fears when wide- spread apostasy proved a reality in France. The long and tedious process by which the spiritual world-state was eventually to be dis- rupted had already begun. Prophecies of the Calabrian Abbot Joachim di Fiore, who died in 1202, declared that a great judgment would be held over "the Church which anti-Christ ruled." An age of the Eternal Gospel that is of deeper spiritual understanding of the Bible was to begin. Joachim preached of a coming new Or- der which would substitute a Church of the spirit for a Church of the flesh. At the same time the call to penance and poverty preached
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