THE CHURCH UNDER INNOCENT III 435 Savoyards, Florentines, Venetians, Pisans, Bavarians, Bohemians, and Saxons then ; but there were no Presbyteri- ans, Methodists, Baptists, Christian Scientists, Quakers, ! Memnonites, and Congregationalists. The Church was the I one universal institution of the age and the pope at its head in consequence exercised far greater authority than did any other potentate. In many ways, indeed, the Church was comparable to the Roman Empire of old, whose territorial and administrative organization it had taken over and whose official language, Latin, it still maintained in its services, records, and literature. Both were international in character. Every one recognized the pope as every one had worshiped the emperor. The Church had its legal system and courts. Its cathedrals added to the massive architec- ture and stately sculpture of triumphal arches and amphi- theaters the glorious radiance of stained glass and the diaphanous stone lacework of spire, pinnacle, and flying buttress. Its missionaries and crusaders on the frontiers of Christendom were like the ancient legionaries on the Roman borders. Its monasteries were scattered over the face of the land as thickly as had been the Roman military camps and colonies. Its secular clergy corresponded to the adminis- trative bureaucracy of the Empire. And at the head and center of it all, watching over the whole world, interfering in everything, exercising temporal as well as spiritual power, receiving reports and questions and appeals from all quarters, and reserving to himself the settlement of all ques- tions in the last resort, sat Innocent III with an authority quite comparable to that of a Trajan or a Diocletian. We shall now describe the Church and clergy as organized under him. Associated with the pope at Rome was the college of cardinals, constituting a sort of cabinet, while a host of lesser assistants performed secretarial and legal The papal functions or attended to the court ceremonial. cuna At the beginning of his reign Innocent tried, like most popes, to reform the personnel of the papal curia, to restrict its membership to clergymen, and to prevent the taking of
