Some of them lay the blame on the papacy; and it is true that the papacy had contributed towards the decay of the Crusades when it had allowed its own particular interests to overbear the general welfare of Christianity, and had dignified with the name and the benefits of a Crusade its own political war against the Hohenstaufen.
There was no dispute as to his possessing the authority in spiritual matters necessary to impose reform and overbear the resistance which might arise; no one was better qualified than he to treat with the holders of the temporal power and obtain the support which was necessary from them.
He wanted a system strong enough, he would have said, to overcome the anarchic tendencies loosed by war, and represented by those notions of natural rights which he had himself once championed; strong enough to overbear all local, state and sectional prejudices, powers or influence, and to control - not, as Jefferson would have it, to be controlled by - the people.