Pope Innocent III

Innocent III

(born 1160/61, Gavignano Castle, Campagna di Roma, Papal States — died July 16, 1216, Perugia) Pope (1198 – 1216). Innocent, who was trained in both theology and law, brought the medieval papacy to the height of its prestige and power. He crowned Otto IV as Holy Roman emperor, but Otto's determination to unite Germany and Sicily angered him, and in 1212 he gave his support to the Hohenstaufen candidate, Frederick II. After Innocent excommunicated King John of England for refusing to recognize Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, John was obliged to submit and to declare England a fief of the Holy See (1213). Innocent launched the Fourth Crusade, which captured Constantinople, and the Albigensian Crusade, which attempted to suppress heresy in southern France. He approved the Mendicant orders founded by St. Dominic and St. Francis of Assisi, and he convoked the fourth Lateran Council, which promulgated the doctrine of transubstantiation and endorsed annual confession for all Christians.

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Innocent III

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(8 Jan. 1198 — 16 July 1216)
On the day of Celestine III's death the cardinals, at the second ballot, unanimously elected Lotario, cardinal deacon of SS. Sergio and Bacco and the first canon of St Peter's to become pope. Ordained priest on 21 Feb., he was consecrated on 22 Feb. (the feast of St Peter's Chair). Only 37, he was born in 1160/61 at Gavignanon near Anagni, son of Trasimondo, count of Segni, and Claricia, of the patrician Scotti family, to which Clement III may also have belonged. As a young man he studied theology at Paris under Peter of Corbeil and from the end of 1186 canon law at Bologna with the celebrated decretist (i.e. student of ecclesiastical decrees) Huguccio of Pisa (d. 1210). While in Paris he made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. Clement III nominated him cardinal in Dec. 1189 or Jan. 1190, but Celestine III kept him in the background because his own family and the Scotti were enemies. This gave Lotario leisure to compose several mystical and dogmatic essays, notably The Wretchedness of Man's Lot and The Mysteries of the Mass, all learned but stilted and unoriginal. They gave no inkling of the brilliant and commanding role their author was to play as pope.

A man born to rule, uniting exceptional gifts of intellect and character with determination, flexibility, rare skill in handling men, and also humaneness, Innocent had an exalted conception of his position as Vicar of Christ (a title he made current), 'set midway between God and man, below God but above man', given 'not only the universal church but the whole world to govern'. But this theocratic doctrine represented for him an ideal rather than an actuality; the pope's 'plenitude of power' was for him spiritual, and he disclaimed the right to intervene in temporal affairs except where (as in the papal or vassal states) he was owed allegiance, where moral or spiritual issues were involved, or where there was no superior arbiter.

With characteristic resolution he at once established his authority in Rome, replacing officials of the empire and the commune with men who paid him homage. There were years of bitter struggles, however, including an enforced withdrawal to Praeneste (now Palestrina), before he finally mastered (1205) the infighting of rival families. Meanwhile he not only reasserted control over the papal states, virtually lost through Hohenstaufen policies, but, developing an initiative of Celestine III, added to them the duchy of Spoleto and the March of Ancona on the strength of so far unfulfilled promises of Pepin III (751 — 68) and Charlemagne (768 — 814). Although he failed to get possession of Romagna and the Matildine lands, the territory he now ruled effectively sundered northern Italy and the kingdom of Sicily. Empress Constance, left regent of Sicily on Henry VI's death in 1197, acknowledged him as overlord, surrendering to him the state's traditional rights over the church, and on her death (28 Nov. 1198) arranged for him to be regent and guardian of her infant son Frederick II (emperor 1220 — 50).

Innocent next had to deal with the crisis in Germany, where rival candidates, Philip of Swabia (1198 — 1208) and Otto of Brunswick (1198 — 1218), were elected in 1198 to succeed Henry VI as king. At first he remained neutral while exploiting the confusion in Germany by re-establishing papal control over central Italy, over Sicily, and over German bishops, but when both Philip and Otto applied to him for the imperial crown he indicated, in the decretal Venerabilem (1202), that the pope had a right to intervene because he alone could bestow it and must choose the man best suited to defend the church. What decided him in favour of Otto, whom he eventually crowned on 4 Oct. 1209, was his promise to recognize the enlarged papal states and to renounce the much disputed right to the spoils (i.e. the personal estates of deceased bishops and other ecclesiastics) in Germany. When Otto IV invaded southern Italy and Sicily, however, the pope excommunicated and deposed him (18 Nov. 1210) and, Philip being dead, transferred his support to Frederick of Sicily, who in the Golden Bull of Eger (12 July 1213) repeated Otto's assurances and also promised to leave Sicily independent. The German question occupied Innocent for years; he intervened in other countries, too, on the ground that princes were subject to the pope's judgement on sin. Thus he first (1209) excommunicated King John of England (1199 — 1216) for refusing to recognize Stephen Langton (d. 1228) as archbishop of Canterbury; then (1213), when John made full submission and made his Anglo-Irish domains a papal fief, he declared Magna Carta void as improperly extorted from the king by the barons without papal consent. He several times tried to mediate in the constant strife between France and England, but in 1203 had to confirm that Philip II of France (1179 — 1223) was not bound, in dealing with his vassals, to heed the pope's admonitions; for years he put pressure on Philip to reinstate his divorced wife, but when the king took her back he did so for purely political reasons. Other kingdoms, like Aragón, Portugal, and Poland, became fiefs of the holy see, while in 1204 he recognized Joannitza as king of Bulgaria (1197 — 1207), sending him the royal crown.

Though a master of politics, Innocent's overriding concerns were the crusade, reform, and the combating of heresy. To achieve the first, he corresponded with Emperor Alexius III Angelus (1195 — 1203) about reunion and imposed a special tax on the clergy. Through the intrigues of Venice the Fourth Crusade (1202 — 4) was against his will diverted to Constantinople, but when the city fell (12 Apr. 1204) he accepted the fait accompli in the mistaken belief that the establishment of a Latin patriarchate there would assist reunion of the churches. Undiscouraged, he appealed in 1213 for a fresh crusade, and at the fourth Lateran council fixed it for 1217. He fostered peace among the Spanish kings to enable a crusade to be mounted against the threat from the Almohads, who were invading the peninsula from Morocco. The Almohad army was decisively defeated at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (16 July 1212) after the only major campaign against Muslims during Innocent's pontificate, despite his enthusiasm for crusades.

As a reformer Innocent began with the curia, simplifying living standards and promoting honest business practices. He restored the balance between episcopal and papal administration by limiting appeals to Rome and encouraging provincial and national councils; but he took care to reserve weightier matters to himself and insisted that bishops visit Rome every four years. He took steps to improve the quality and moral behaviour of the clergy and to restore the observance of their rules by religious houses. Sympathetic to the evangelical poverty preached by certain heretical groups, with his agents and advisers he was able to win back some of them (e.g. the Humiliati of Lombardy), and encouraged the realization of their ideals within the church, notably by authorizing the itinerant preaching of the first Franciscans. Against heresy itself he took energetic measures, declaring it (Vergentis 25 Mar. 1199, issued in Viterbo against the Cathars) high treason against God; but he urged bishops to look for its causes and remedies and commissioned the austere Spaniard Dominic Guzmán (1170 — 1221), later founder of the Friars Preachers, to counter the Albigenses of the Midi with their own weapon of public disputation. It was only after the murder in 1208 of his legate, who had been sent to convert them, that he ordered a crusade against the Albigenses in southern France, which resulted in bloodshed and devastation and cast a shadow over the second half of his reign.

Innocent's legislative output was enormous; many of his more than 6,000 extant letters were decretals which canonists began collecting in his lifetime. In 1209/10 he himself issued a collection compiled by Cardinal Peter of Benevento (the Compilatio tertia) and sent it to the university of Bologna. The fourth Lateran (Twelfth General) council, which he held in Nov. 1215 and which more than twelve hundred prelates attended, both summed up his previous reform activity and prepared the ground for the new crusade he contemplated. Its 70 decrees included a definition of the eucharist in terms of transubstantiation, the condemnation of all heresies and a summons to the secular power to assist in their repression, a ban on the founding of new religious orders, and the requirements that Catholics should make a yearly confession, that Jews and Muslims should wear a distinctive dress, and that Christian rulers should observe a four-year truce so that the crusade could be launched.

In summer 1216 Innocent travelled north in order, in the interest of the crusade, to settle personally differences between the seaports of Pisa and Genoa, and suddenly died at Perugia from one of the bouts of fever to which he was subject. A great and influential pope whose reign marked the climax of the medieval papacy, he was buried in Perugia, but Leo XIII (a former bishop of Perugia) had his remains transferred to the right-hand transept of St John Lateran, where his tomb by G. Lucchetti (1891) can be seen.

Previous (chronologically): Celestine III, Clement III, Gregory VIII
Next (chronologically): Honorius III, Gregory IX, Celestine IV

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Innocent III

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Innocent III (1160-1216), an Italian aristocrat, theologian, and canon lawyer, reigned as pope from 1198 to 1216. His pontificate has customarily been taken to mark the most splendid moment of the medieval papacy.

Born Lothar of Segni, the future pope was the son of Count Thrasimund of Segni. He studied theology at Paris and law at Bologna, the leading medieval centers of these studies, and at about the age of 30 had already attained the rank of cardinal deacon. He owed his elevation to the Sacred College to his uncle, Pope Clement III, but this could not obscure the fact that he was a man of outstanding ability and energy. Not even the temporary eclipse of his fortunes during the pontificate of Celestine III prevented the cardinals from turning to him in January 1198, when that aged and unsuccessful pontiff died. The years of eclipse, indeed, had enhanced rather than diminished Lothar's stature, because they were for him years of literary activity; out of them came the two conventional works which nonetheless attained considerable fame: De contempt mundi and De sacro altaris mysterio.

Lothar was chosen pope by his fellow cardinals less, it would seem, because they were impressed by the quality of his spirituality than because they saw in him a man of proven strength who could be relied upon to combat the rise of heresy, now for the first time in the Middle Ages a serious threat to the unity of the Church, and to restore the badly damaged political fortunes of the papacy in Italy and elsewhere. As a result, Innocent III expended a great deal of his energy on matters diplomatic and political. The greatest and most enduring achievements of his pontificate lay, nevertheless, in the realm of ecclesiastical government - in his contribution to the development of canon law, his promotion of administrative centralization in the Church, his imaginative encouragement of the Franciscans and Dominicans, and, above all, his convocation and direction of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215).

Conception of the Papacy

An unusually young man at the time of his election to the papacy, Innocent was small and dark and had a commanding presence, a driving dynamic personality, and notable rhetorical gifts which he exploited to the full in expounding and defending his conception of the papal office and responsibilities. It was a lofty conception, well exemplified by a text on which he chose to preach at his consecration: "See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant" (Jeremiah 1:10).

What this exalted conception meant for Innocent's dealings with the clerical hierarchy and the local churches of Christendom is clear enough. As pope, he was successor to Peter and vicar of Christ, with supreme authority in the Universal Church and the ultimate responsibility for the health of that Church. "Others," he said, "were called to a part of the care, but Peter alone assumed the plenitude of power." Hence his willingness to regard the jurisdictional powers of the bishops as deriving from his own fullness of power; hence, too, his vigorous and wide-ranging judicial activity, his extension of papal rights over episcopal appointments, and his frequent efforts to make the force of his authority felt in the national churches by means of cardinal legates endowed with the broadest of powers.

What Innocent's view of the papal office meant for his relations with temporal rulers is by no means as clear. The formulas in which he couched his claims were undoubtedly often extreme. To Peter was left "not only the Universal Church but the whole world to govern." The pope "set between God and man, lower than God but higher than man … judges all and is judged by no one." Innocent claimed, "Just as the moon derives its light from the sun and is indeed lower than it in quantity and quality, in position and in power, so too the royal power derives the splendor of its dignity from the pontifical authority."

On the basis of these and of similar theocratic utterances, some have concluded that Innocent was clearly laying direct claim to the supreme temporal as well as spiritual authority in Christendom, that it was his ambition, in fact, to be nothing less than "lord of the world." Others, however, have noted the disparity between the extremism of such theoretical claims and the caution and scrupulous attention to legality with which he proceeded when he actually did choose to intervene in matters pertaining to the jurisdiction of temporal rulers.

It is true that for Innocent the pope succeeded to the position of Christ, who, like Melchisedech, had been king as well as priest and, as a result, was in some sense possessed of a monarchical authority even in secular matters and over temporal rulers. However, he did not seek to absorb temporal structures of government into ecclesiastical, and he could often defend his intervention in temporal affairs as necessitated by his spiritual responsibilities. Furthermore, his policies in such matters were usually distinguished by a pragmatic rather than a doctrinaire quality.

Political Activity

Matrimonial affairs led to Innocent's intervention in the kingdoms of León, Argon, and France (although in the last case diplomatic considerations also played a role), and a disputed election to the archbishopric of Canterbury led him to intervene in English affairs. King John's refusal to accept Cardinal Stephen Langton, who had been elected to that see after Innocent had invalidated the earlier election, led in 1208 to the imposition of an interdict on England, in 1209 to the King's excommunication, and in 1212 to his deposition and a papal invitation to the French king to invade England. Under this last threat John finally capitulated, accepted Stephen Langton's election, and sought (successfully) to ensure papal support in the future by surrendering and receiving back the kingdoms of England and Ireland as papal fiefs.

In most of these cases Innocent could claim that the need to preserve ecclesiastical discipline dictated his policy, but he could hardly do so in the cases of Portugal, Aragon, and other kingdoms that also became his feudal fiefs. Here he was motivated presumably by the view that he had expressed at the start of his pontificate: "Ecclesiastical liberty is nowhere better cared for than where the Roman church has full power in both temporal and spiritual matters."

Certainly this belief influenced his vigorous efforts to reestablish papal hegemony at Rome and in the affiliated papal territories, where the German emperors Frederick I and Henry VI had done much to extend imperial control at the expense of the papacy. Thus he was able to transfer the feudal allegiance of the city perfect from the emperor to himself, to restore a considerable measure of papal control in the Romagna, and to establish some sort of papal administration for the first time in much of the territory bequeathed to the papacy a century earlier by Countess Matilda of Tuscany.

If Innocent's Italian policy met with a fair degree of success, it did so in part because of the confused conditions prevailing in the empire. Henry VI, already ruler of Germany and large parts of northern Italy, had acquired by marriage the old Norman kingdom of Sicily. His objective to make good his control of all these territories, including the Italian, threatened the papal freedom of action in the future. But Henry VI died 4 months before Innocent became pope, and his widow, Constance, died a few months after, leaving a 3-year-old son, Frederick of Hohenstaufen, under papal guardianship. Although Innocent took his duties as guardian with great seriousness and defended Frederick's rights as king of Sicily, it was clearly in the interest of the papacy permanently to sever the connection between Sicily and the empire. Accordingly, between the years 1198 and 1209, he sought to influence imperial politics by arbitrating between the rival claimants to the imperial succession: Philip of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick, both of them adult relations of Henry VI.

Unable to enforce his claim to arbitrate and later disappointed in the attitude of his own candidate, Otto IV, whom he had crowned emperor after Philip's death, Innocent then compounded the woes of Germany by declaring Otto deposed and finally, in 1213, by throwing his support to the candidacy of Frederick of Hohenstaufen. In return, Frederick pledged not to reunite the German and Sicilian kingdoms, a pledge which he broke in the years after Innocent's death. At the battle of Bouvines in 1214 Frederick was able to make good his claim to be emperor.

Schism, Heresy, and the Crusade

Just as Innocent's imperial policy failed to achieve its ultimate goal, so did his attempts to recover the holy places in Palestine, to revivify the crusading movement, and to bring it once more under papal leadership. His efforts did indeed bring about the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204), but the crusade escaped his control and was diverted into attacking the Christian city of Byzantium, culminating in its capture and the establishment for some decades of a Latin Eastern Empire. The resulting bitterness in the Eastern Orthodox Churches did much to perpetuate the schism between them and the Latin Church, which Innocent himself had longed to terminate.

Comparably questionable results attended Innocent's inauguration of a crusade against the Albigensian heretics in the south of France. Fought with great ferocity and benefiting primarily the northern French nobles and the French monarchy, it succeeded, indeed, in ending the aristocratic protection upon which the survival of the heresy had so largely depended, but it did so at the cost of degrading still further an already degraded crusading ideal.

Ecclesiastical Government

Innocent's sponsorship of the mendicant friars, who set an example of dedicated poverty and preached the Gospel to the poor and neglected, possibly did more to contain the growth of heresy than did his espousal of more violent methods. Here, as with his ecclesiastical government in general, a more positive judgment is appropriate.

He gave immense impetus to the development of canon law (his Compilation tertia, issued in 1210, was the first officially promulgated collection of papal laws) and displayed vigor and industry in supervising the administration of the local churches and the centralization of the Church in Rome. These things helped no doubt to spawn the excessive legalism and papal centralization of the later Middle Ages, but they also helped to retard the growth of royal and aristocratic control over the local and national clergy that also became a problem in the later Middle Ages.

Fourth Lateran Council

Regarded by Roman Catholics as an ecumenical council, preceded by 2 years of preparation, and assembled in November 1215 at the Lateran basilica, the Fourth Lateran Council was attended by over 400 bishops, twice as many abbots and priors, and representatives of many secular rulers. So constituted, it was perhaps the greatest of medieval assemblies. Its decrees began with a profession of faith, which, by defining the doctrine of transubstantiation, closed the long medieval dispute about the nature of Christ's presence in the Eucharist.

The Council then endeavored to establish the procedures to be followed in dealing with heresy, requiring all bishops in whose sees the presence of heresy was suspected to hold there an annual inquisition. Another decree, by requiring that all adults confess their sins at least once annually to their own parish priests, buttressed this attempt to establish the responsibility of the local clergy for the elimination of local heresy.

Of related importance were further decrees requiring bishops to ensure the adequate proclamation of the Gospel by appointing suitable priests as diocesan preachers and requiring that an adequately endowed position be set aside at all cathedral and metropolitan churches to support a master charged with the instruction of the diocesan clergy. This last provision was an important one at the time, given the absence of seminaries. Other decrees forbade the foundation of new religious orders; required episcopal supervision and visitation of existing monasteries; sought to eliminate practices by which ecclesiastical positions could become in fact if not in theory hereditary; tried to curtail the trade in relics and the spread of superstitions surrounding them; and attempted by a whole series of disciplinary and administrative regulations to eliminate existing corruptions, to prevent new ones, and to foster a general improvement in the quality of religious life. Of critical importance were those decrees which required the holding of annual provincial councils and which sought to withdraw the clergy from involvement in activities pertaining to secular government.

On July 16, 1216, not long after the close of the Council which was his greatest achievement and a fitting summation to a distinguished career, Innocent suddenly died. Had the reforming legislation of the Fourth Lateran Council been implemented in the years after Innocent's death, many of the corruptions which were to bring the later medieval clergy into disrepute would have been curtailed. Even so, the Council's decrees helped mold the life of the Church for centuries to come.

Innocent III

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Innocent III, b. 1160 or 1161, d. 1216, pope (1198-1216), an Italian, b. Anagni, named Lotario di Segni; successor of Celestine III. Innocent III was succeeded by Honorius III.

Papacy

Innocent came from an important family, the counts of Segni, to which belonged also Gregory IX and Alexander IV. He was trained as a theologian and perhaps as a jurist, and under Celestine III (his uncle) he became (1190) a cardinal. At the time of his election as pope, Innocent seems already to have formed his ecclesiastico-political doctrine that since things of the spirit take preeminence over things of the body, and since the church rules the spirit and earthly monarchs rule the body, earthly monarchs must be in all things subject to the pope; the doctrine that the sphere of the church was limited had no real place in Innocent's idea. He set out immediately after his election to realize his ideal of the pope as ecclesiastical ruler of the world with some secular political power.

Political Successes

In imperial affairs he was constantly active. He acknowledged as king of Sicily the future Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II after Frederick's mother, the Empress Constance, had accepted papal suzerainty over Sicily and given up certain ecclesiastical privileges; on Constance's death, Innocent accepted Frederick as his ward, a trust he faithfully executed, as even his enemies admitted. In Germany the dispute between Philip of Swabia and Otto IV was arbitrated by the pope in favor of Otto (1201). Later (1207-8) the pope favored Philip, but after Philip's murder, Innocent crowned Otto (1209) as emperor, only to excommunicate him (1210) and dictate the election of the papal ward, Frederick, as German king (1212). Frederick made elaborate promises (as had Otto) favorable to the Holy See.

Innocent's relations with England proceeded to the same political end, but this was hastened by a purely ecclesiastical quarrel over the election of an archbishop of Canterbury. Innocent set aside the two rival claimants and procured the election of Stephen Langton; King John, enraged at what he felt was unwarrantable interference by the pope and at the obduracy of the clergy in opposing the demands of the king, persecuted the church. As a result the pope laid England under the interdict, excommunicated John (1209), and even considered deposing him. The people and the barons supported the church, and John had to submit; he received England and Ireland in fief from the pope, promising annual tribute to the Holy See. Subsequently the pope stood by John after the barons coerced him into granting the Magna Carta, for Innocent declared it null as a forcibly exacted promise and also as a vassal's promise made without his overlord's knowledge. Pandulf became Innocent's legate in England.

Innocent was also the virtual overlord of Christian Spain, Scandinavia, Hungary, and the Latin East. Philip II of France remained independent of Innocent politically. On the moral question of Philip's divorce, however, Innocent forced the king to bow to the canon law.

Political Failures

The great failures of Innocent's policy were the Fourth Crusade (see Crusades) and the conduct of Italy. That crusade, proclaimed and blessed by Innocent, never went to the Holy Land, but attacked instead Christians on the island of Zara and in the Byzantine Empire. Innocent excommunicated the disobedient crusaders, but later accepted the fait accompli and tried to spread the Latin rite over the Latin Empire of Constantinople; in spite of a new Latin patriarchate, these efforts were futile, and the schism of East and West was only exacerbated.

In Italy, Innocent reclaimed the Patrimony of St. Peter (see Papal States), the duchy of Spoleto, the March of Ancona, and the Ravenna district; he was recognized as temporal overlord by Tuscany, but northern Italian cities were unruly and maintained their independence throughout Innocent's pontificate. Innocent initiated the Albigensian mission and the Albigensian Crusade (see under Albigenses); when he heard of the misbehavior of the crusaders of Simon de Montfort, he protested in vain. He supported the Teutonic Knights in the incursions along the Baltic.

Influence on the Church

Amid all his political activity Innocent was most energetic in the administration of the church. In this direction the triumph of his pontificate was the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), one of the greatest of councils. His was the original impetus behind St. Dominic's mission, and he provided the first approbation of the institute of St. Francis. Innocent's interest in law was ever active; thus as pope he constantly held court, with a good name for impartiality. He wrote extensively; his tract De contemptu mundi [on the contempt of this world] was widely read in the Middle Ages. Innocent's theories of the papal monarchy had a profound effect on the development of the papacy.

Bibliography

See C. E. Smith, Innocent III, Church Defender (1951, repr. 1971); S. R. Packard, Europe and the Church under Innocent III (rev. ed. 1968); H. Tillman, Pope Innocent III (tr. W. Sax, 1980).

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Pope Innocent III

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This article's lead section may not adequately summarize its contents. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points. (January 2011)

Pope Innocent III should not be confused with Antipope Innocent III.

Innocent III

Papacy began	8 January 1198
Papacy ended	16 July 1216
Predecessor	Celestine III
Successor	Honorius III
Personal details
Birth name	Lotario de' Conti di Segni
Born	1160 or 1161 Gavignano, Papal States, Holy Roman Empire
Died	16 July 1216 (aged 54–55) Perugia, Papal States, Holy Roman Empire
Other Popes named Innocent

Papal styles of Pope Innocent III

Reference style	His Holiness
Spoken style	Your Holiness
Religious style	Holy Father
Posthumous style	None

Pope Innocent III (1160 or 1161 – 16 July 1216) was Pope from 8 January 1198 until his death. His birth name was Lotario dei Conti di Segni, sometimes anglicised to Lothar of Segni. Pope Innocent was one of the most powerful and influential popes in the history of the papacy. He exerted a wide influence over the Christian regimes of Europe, indeed claiming supremacy over all of Europe's kings. Pope Innocent was central in supporting the Catholic Church's reforms of ecclesiastical affairs through his decretals and the Fourth Lateran Council. This resulted in a considerable refinement of the Western canon law. Pope Innocent is notable for using interdict and other censures to compel princes to obey his decisions, although these measures were not uniformly successful. The pope called for crusades against militant heretics like the Cathars as well as Muslims. One of Pope Innocent's most critical decisions was calling upon Christian forces to begin The Fourth Crusade. Although the Crusades were, in part, originally intended to support the Byzantine Empire at Constantinople from attack by Turkish invaders, the Fourth Crusade resulted in the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, which greatly upset Pope Innocent.

Contents

1 Biography
2 Works
3 Notes
4 References
5 Further reading
6 External links

Biography

Early life

Lotario de' Conti was born in Gavignano, near Anagni.^[1] His father was Count Trasimund of Segni and was a member of a famous house, Conti, which produced nine Popes, including Gregory IX, Alexander IV and Innocent XIII. Lotario is commonly identified as the nephew of Pope Clement III, an error arose from the similarity between Clement's family name, Scolari, with that of Scotti, the noble Roman family of Lotario's mother, Clarice.^[2]^{[dubious – discuss]}

Lotario received his early education in Rome, studied theology in Paris, and (possibly) jurisprudence in Bologna. As Pope, Lotario was to play a major role in the shaping of canon law through conciliar canons and decretal letters. He became one of the greatest legislators of his time.^[1]

Shortly after the death of Alexander III (30 August 1181) Lotario returned to Rome and held various ecclesiastical offices during the short reigns of Lucius III, Urban III, Gregory VIII, and Clement III, reaching the rank of Cardinal-Deacon in 1190. He subscribed the papal bulls between 7 December 1190 and 4 November 1197.

As a cardinal, Lotario wrote De miseria humanae conditionis (On the Misery of the Human Condition).^[3] The work was very popular for centuries, surviving in more than 700 manuscripts.^[4] Although he never returned to the complementary work he intended to write, On the Dignity of Human Nature, Bartolomeo Facio took up the task writing De excellentia ac praestantia hominis.^[5]

Election to the Papacy

Main article: Papal election, 1198

Celestine III died on 8 January 1198. Before his death he had urged the College of Cardinals to elect Giovanni di San Paolo as his successor, but Lotario de' Conti was elected pope on the very day on which Celestine III died. He accepted the tiara with reluctance and took the name Innocent III. He was only thirty-seven years old at the time.^[1]

Reassertion of Papal power

As pope, Innocent III began with a very wide sense of his responsibility and of his authority. The Muslim recapture of Jerusalem in 1187 was to him a divine judgment on the moral lapses of Christian princes. He was also determined to protect what he called "the liberty of the Church" from inroads by secular princes. This determination meant, among other things, that princes should not be involved in the selection of bishops, and it was focused especially on the "patrimonium" of the papacy, the section of central Italy claimed by the popes and later called the Papal State. The patrimonium was routinely threatened by Hohenstaufen German kings who, as Roman emperors, claimed it for themselves. The Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI expected to be succeeded by his infant son Frederick as king of Sicily, king of the Germans, and Roman Emperor, a combination that would have brought Germany, Italy, and Sicily under a single ruler and left the patrimonium exceedingly vulnerable.^[1]

The early death of Henry VI left his 4-year-old son Frederick II as king. Henry VI’s widow Constance of Sicily ruled over Sicily for her young son before he reached the age of majority. She was as eager to remove German power from the kingdom of Sicily as was Innocent III. Before her death in 1198, she named Innocent as guardian of the young Frederick until he reached his majority. In exchange, Innocent was also able to recover papal rights in Sicily that had been surrendered decades earlier to King William I of Sicily by Pope Adrian IV. The Pope invested the young Frederick II as King of Sicily in November 1198. He also later induced Frederick II to marry the widow of King Emeric of Hungary in 1209.^[1]

Involvement in Imperial elections

Papal power was based on more than scriptures. The popes acquired large amounts of land, and bishops and clergy were, in theory, agents of papal programs. Pope Innocent III’s increased involvement in Imperial elections took historically documented form when he called the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 during which time he beckoned about 1200 bishops, abbots and nobles from around Europe to assist in either tweaking current laws or creating new ones to further influence the masses in supporting the Pope as the universal authority of the Empire.

In order to define fundamental doctrines, the council reviewed the nature of the Eucharist, the ordered annual confession of sins, and prescribed detailed procedures for the election of bishops. The council also mandated a strict lifestyle for clergy, banning their participation in judicial procedures involving extremely painful punishments by which the accused would either atone for their sins or prove themselves innocent of often frivolous charges. One doctrine that confirmed the “power over the spirit” theory was the implementation by the council mandating that Jews wear special identifying markings on their clothing – a sign of the increased hostility felt by Christians towards Jews in the region.^[6]

Another tool Innocent III used to attempt to gain universal authority and have more involvement in Imperial elections was letters he wrote to power brokers in the region. While the content of the letters was subtle in their inferred goal of securing his authority, when read in total, his goal becomes more obvious:

Papal Authority: Letter to the prefect Acerbius and the nobles of Tuscany, 1198,
Just as the founder of the universe established two great lights in the firmament of heaven, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, so too He set two great dignities in the firmament of the universal church..., the greater on to rule the day, that is, souls, and the lesser to rule the night, that is, bodies. These dignities are the papal authority and the royal power. Now just as the moon derives its light from the sun and is indeed lower than it in quantity and quality, in position and in power, so too the royal power derives the splendor of its dignity from the pontifical authority.....^[7]

Other letters that Innocent III sent during this attempt to mandate and secure the papal proprietor as the universal authority by demeaning and attempting to minimize the authority of the emperors were written under the title “Papal Policies”:

"On Heresy: Letter to the Archbishop of Auch, 1198
"On Usury: Letter to the French bishops, 1198
"On Church Independence/Tithes: Letter to a bishop, 1198
"On the crusade and Trade with Saracens: Letter to the Venetians, 1198
"On Jews: Decree of 1199”^[7]

One of the most direct public notices of the universal authority of the pope came in Innocent III’s “Papal Decree on the choice of a German King, 1201". It was his opportunity to force the acceptance of his decree amidst a chaotic election of three men for emperor:

It is the business of the pope to look after the interests of the Roman empire, since the empire derives its origin and its final authority from the papacy; its origin, because it was originally transferred from Greece by and for the sake of the papacy...its final authority, because the emperor is raised to his position by the pope who blesses him, crowns him and invests him with the empire....Therefore, since three persons have lately been elected king by different parties, namely the youth [Frederick, son of Henry VI], Philip [of Hohenstaufen, brother of Henry VI], and Otto [of Brunswick, of the Welf family], so also three things must be taken into account in regard to each one, namely: the legality, the suitability and the expediency of his election......Far be it from us that we should defer to man rather than to God, or that we should fear the countenance of the powerful....On the foregoing grounds, then, we decide that the youth should not at present be given the empire; we utterly reject Philip for his manifest unfitness and we order his usurpation to be resisted by all....since Otto is not only himself devoted to the church, but comes from devout ancestors on both sides.....therefore we decree that he ought to be accepted and supported as king, and ought to be given the crown of empire, after the rights of the Roman church have been secured.^[7]

Feudal power over Europe

During the reign of Pope Innocent III, the papacy was at the height of its powers. He was considered to be the most powerful person in Europe at the time.^[8] His papacy asserted the absolute spiritual authority of his office, while still respecting the temporal authority of kings.

After the death of Emperor Henry VI, who had recently also conquered the Kingdom of Sicily, the sucession became disputed: as Henry's son Frederick was still a small child, the partisans of the Staufen dynasty elected Henry’s brother, Philip, Duke of Swabia, king in March 1198, whereas the princes opposed to the Staufen dynasty elected Otto, Duke of Brunswick, of the House of Welf. King Philip II of France supported Philip's claim, whereas King Richard of England supported his nephew Otto.^[9]

Pope Innocent was determined to prevent the continued unification of Sicily and the Holy Roman Empire under one monarch^[10] and seized the opportunity to extend his influence. In 1201, the pope openly espoused the side of Otto IV, whose family had always been opposed to the house of Hohenstaufen.^[11] Otto himself also seemed willing to grant any demands that Innocent would make. The confusion in the Empire allowed Innocent to drive out the imperial feudal lords from Ancona, Spoleto and Perugia, who had been installed by Emperor Henry VI.^[12] On 3 July 1201, the papal legate, Cardinal-Bishop Guido of Palestrina announced to the people, in the cathedral of Cologne, that Otto IV had been approved by the pope as Roman king and threatened with excommunication all those who refused to acknowledge him. At the same time, Innocent encouraged the cities in Tuscany to form a league, called the League of San Genesio against German imperial interests in Italy, and they placed themselves under Innocent’s protection.^[12]

In May 1202, Innocent issued the decree "Venerabilem", addressed to the Duke of Zähringen, in which he explained the relation he considered the Empire to stand to the papacy. This decree, which has become famous, was afterwards embodied in the "Corpus Juris Canonici"^[13], contained the following major items:

The German princes have the right to elect the king, who is afterwards to become emperor. This right was given them by the Apostolic See when it transferred the imperial dignity from the Greeks to the Germans in the person of Charlemagne.
The right to investigate and decide whether a king thus elected is worthy of the imperial dignity belongs to the pope, whose office it is to anoint, consecrate, and crown him; otherwise it might happen that the pope would be obliged to anoint, consecrate, and Crown a king who was excommunicated, a heretic, or a pagan.
If the pope finds that the king who has been elected by the princes is unworthy of the imperial dignity, the princes must elect a new king or, if they refuse, the pope will confer the imperial dignity upon another king; for the Church stands in need of a patron and defender.
In case of a double election the pope must exhort the princes to come to an agreement. If after a due interval they have not reached an agreement they must ask the pope to arbitrate, failing which, he must of his own accord and by virtue of his office decide in favour of one of the claimants. The pope's decision need not be based on the greater or less legality of either election, but on the qualifications of the claimants.^[1]

Despite papal support, Otto could not oust his rival Philip until the latter was murdered in a private feud. His rule now undisputed, Otto reneged on his earlier promises and now set his sights on reestablishing Imperial power in Italy and claiming even the Kingdom of Sicily. Given the papal interest to keep Germany and Sicily apart, Innocent now supported his ward, King Frederick of Sicily, to resist Otto's advances and restore the Staufen dynasty to the Holy Roman Empire. Frederick was duly elected by the Staufen partisans.

The conflict was decided by the Battle of Bouvines on 27 July 1214, which pitted Otto, allied to King John of England against Philip II Augustus. Otto was defeated by the French and thereafter lost all influence. He died on 19 May 1218, leaving Frederick II the undisputed emperor. Meanwhile, King John was forced to acknowledge the Pope as his feudal lord and accept Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury.^[14]

Innocent III played further roles in the politics of France, Sweden, Bulgaria, Spain and England.^[14] In return for King John's submission to his authority, Pope Innocent III declared the Magna Carta annulled, though many English Barons did not accept this action.

Innocent called the Fourth Crusade, which was diverted to Constantinople. The pope excommunicated the Crusaders who attacked Christian cities, but was unable to halt or overturn their actions. Erroneously, he felt that the Latin presence would bring about a reconciliation between the Eastern and Western Churches. Innocent also ordered an Albigensian Crusade, which successfully subdued the Cathar heresy in France.^[15]

Crusades and suppression of heresy

The Albigensian Crusade, which led to the brutal slaughter of approximately 20,000 men, women and children, Cathar and Catholic alike.

Innocent III was a vigorous opponent of heresy, and undertook campaigns against it.

At the beginning of his pontificate, he focused on the Albigenses, also known as the Cathars, a sect that had become widespread in the area that is now southernwestern France, but which at that time was under the control of local princes, such as the Counts of Toulouse. The Cathars rejected the authority and the teachings of the Catholic Church, and what they viewed in it as corrupt.

In 1199, Innocent III condemned the public preaching of heretical teachers. Two Cistercian monks were sent to dispute the teachings of the Cathars and to reassert papal authority.

The 1208 murder of Pierre de Castelnau, a papal representative in Albigensian territory, changed Innocent's focus from words to weapons. Innocent called upon King Louis IX of France to suppress the Albigenses. Under the leadership of Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, a campaign was launched. The Albigensian Crusade, which led to the brutal slaughter of approximately 20,000^{[citation needed]} men, women and children, Cathar and Catholic alike^{[citation needed]} essentially destroyed the previously flourishing civilization of Occitania and brought the region firmly under the control of the king of France. It was directed not only against heretical Christians, but also the nobility of Toulouse and vassals of the Crown of Aragon. King Peter II of Aragon, "the Catholic," was directly involved in the conflict, and was killed in the course of the Battle of Muret in 1213. The conflict largely ended with the Treaty of Paris of 1229, in which the integration of the Occitan territory in the French crownwas agreed to. Military action ceased in 1255.

Burning of the Waldensians. Toulouse in the 13th century.

Innocent also decreed the Fourth Crusade of 1198, intended to recapture the Holy Land. The pope directed his call towards the knights and nobles of Europe rather than to the kings; he did not deliberately try to exclude kings, but Henry of Germany had just died, and King Richard I of England and King Philip II of France were not anxious to resume the cross after just being at war.

Innocent III's call was generally ignored until November 1199, when a crusade was finally organized in Champagne. The Crusaders were redirected to capture Zara (Zadar) in 1202 to pay the Venetians for ships and transport of the army over the sea. Constantinople would be captured for prince Alexius IV in 1204 in exchange for men, money, weapons and more ships. Innocent III was horrified by the attack on the Byzantines. By attacking Zara they had automatically been excommunicated according to Innocent's threats. Prior to the launching of the Crusade he had insisted that no Christian cities be attacked, even if they were populated by the Eastern Orthodox, whom the Catholic Church considers schismatic.^[16]

Fourth Council of the Lateran

On 15 November 1215 Innocent opened the Fourth Lateran Council, considered the most important church council of the Middle Ages. By its conclusion it issued seventy reformatory decrees. Among other things, it encouraged creating schools and holding clergy to a higher standard than the laity. It also forbade clergymen to participate in the practice of the judicial ordeal, effectively banning its use.

At the Fourth Lateran Council, Innocent III and his prelates legislated against subordination of Christians to Jews. Canon 69 forbade "that Jews be given preferment in public office since this offers them the pretext to vent their wrath against the Christians."^[17]

Death and legacy

Innocent III honored by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Council had set the beginning of the Fifth Crusade for 1217, under the direct leadership of the Church. After the Council, in the spring of 1216, Innocent moved to northern Italy in an attempt to reconcile the maritime cities of Pisa and Genoa by removing the excommunication cast over Pisa by his predecessor Celestine III and concluding a pact with Genoa.^[18]

Innocent III, however, died suddenly at Perugia^[1] on 16 July 1216. He was buried in the cathedral of Perugia, where his body remained until Pope Leo XIII had it transferred to the Lateran in December 1891.

Innocent III was believed to be in purgatory on the very day he died. He is said to have appeared to St. Lutgarda in her monastery at Aywieres in Brabant. Engulfed in flames, he declared to her, “I am Pope Innocent”. He continued to explain that he was in purgatory for three faults which had caused him to arrive in this state. Innocent asked St. Lutgarda to come to his assistance, saying, “Alas! It is terrible; and will last for centuries if you do not come to my assistance. In the name of Mary, who has obtained for me the favour of appealing to you, help me!” At that moment he disappeared and St. Lutgarda informed her sisters of what she had seen.^[19]

Innocent III is commemorated as one of the world's great lawmakers by the U.S. House of Representatives.^{[citation needed]}^{[dubious – discuss]}

Works

His Latin works include De Miseria Humanae Conditionis, a tract on asceticism that Innocent III wrote before becoming pope, and De Sacro Altaris Mysterio, a description and exegesis of the liturgy.

Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g "Catholic Encyclopedia: Pope Innocent III". Newadvent.org. 1910-10-01. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08013a.htm. Retrieved 2010-02-17.
^ Michele Maccarrone, "Innocenzo III prima del pontificato," Archivo della R. Deputatazione romana di Storia patria, 66 (1943):59–134 at 66. Werner Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg von 1191 bis 1216, Vienna 1984, p. 101–104, do not mention this relationship at all.
^ Open Library
^ "LOTARIO DEI CONTI DEI SEGNI [POPE INNOCENT III, De miseria humanae conditionis [On the Misery of Human Condition] In Latin, manuscript on parchment likely Italy, c. 1250"]. LES ENLUMINURES, LTD. 2006. http://www.textmanuscripts.com/descriptions_manuscripts/description_246.pdf. Retrieved 13 January 2011.
^ The Cambridge history of Renaissance ... - Google Books. Books.google.com. http://books.google.com/books?id=jJnyxg3xxTEC&pg=PA306&lpg=PA306&dq=on+the+dignity+of+human+nature+pope+innocent+iii&source=bl&ots=51MboaoZMe&sig=HT_RkH169wDun87RZhDog8k2Rv0&hl=en&ei=PnuXScWXJse_tgekhKCgCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result. Retrieved 2010-02-17.
^ Civilization in the West,” Kishlansky, Geary, O’Brien, Volume A to 1500, Seventh Edition, page 277
^ ^a ^b ^c Medieval Sourcebook: Innocent III: Letters on Papal Polices. Fordham.edu
^ “Civilization in the West,” Kishlansky, Geary, O’Brien, Volume A to 1500, Seventh Edition, pg. 278
^ Comyn, pg. 275
^ Schulman, Jana, The rise of the medieval world, 500-1300, Greenwood, 2002, pg. 329
^ Bryce, pg. 206
^ ^a ^b Comyn, pg. 277
^ "Home". New Advent. http://www.newadvent.org. Retrieved 2010-02-17.
^ ^a ^b Powell, James M. Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World? Washington: Catholic University of American Press, 2nd ed., 1994. ISBN 0813207835
^ http://historymedren.about.com/library/who/blwwinnocent3.htm, http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pope_Innocent_III
^ "The Crusades". Crusades.boisestate.edu. http://crusades.boisestate.edu. Retrieved 2010-02-17.
^ "Medieval Sourcebook: Twelfth Ecumenical Council: Lateran IV 1215". Fordham.edu. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.html. Retrieved 2010-02-17.
^ "School of Theology". Sthweb.bu.edu. 2009-09-02. http://sthweb.bu.edu/archives. Retrieved 2010-02-17. ^{[dead link]}
^ Schouppe, Fr. F.X., Purgatory. TAN, 2005

References

Sayers, Jane. Innocent III: Leader of Europe, 1198–121. Longman, 1994.
Werner Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg von 1191 bis 1216, Wien, 1984.
Lavergne, Félix Jr. (1993). The Glory of Christendom. Christendom Press.
Rendina, Claudio (1983). I papi — Storia e segreti. Rome: Newton Compton.
Barraclough, Geoffrey (1968). The Medieval Papacy. London: Thames and Hudson.
Moore, John C. "Pope Innocent III, Sardinia, and the Papal State." Speculum, Vol. 62, No. 1. (Jan., 1987), pp 81–101.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIII. Published 1910. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Papal Monarchy. August 27, 2007. Union County College . October 12, 2007."Papal Monarchy". Faculty.ucc.edu. http://faculty.ucc.edu/egh-damerow/papal_monarchy.htm. Retrieved 2010-02-17.
“A Source Book for Medieval History,” New York, 1905.
“Civilization in the West,” Kishlansky, Geary, O’Brien, Volume A to 1500, 7th Ed.
Powell, James M., Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World? 2nd ed.(Washington: Catholic University of American Press, 1994).
Andrea Sommerlechner (ed), Innocenzo III: Urbs et Orbis. Atti del Congresso Internazionale, Roma, 9–15 settembre 1998. 2 vols. (Rome, 2003).
Schouppe, Fr. F.X., Purgatory (TAN, 2005).
Rainer Murauer and Andrea Sommerlechner (hg), Die Register Innocenz' III. Pontifikatsjahr, 1207/1208: Texte und Indices (Wien, Verlag de Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2007) (Publikationen des historischen Instituts beim Österreichischen Kulturforum in Rom, II. Abteilung: Quellen, 1. Reih: Die Register Innocenz' III, Band 10).
John C. Moore, Pope Innocent III (1160/61-1216): To Root Up and to Plant (Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre Dame Press, 2009).

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Persondata
Name	de' Conti di Segni, Lotario
Alternative names	Innocent III (English); Innocentius III (Latin
Short description	Pope, r. 1198–1216: height of mediaeval church's power
Date of birth	ca. 1161
Place of birth	Gavignano, near Anagni, modern Italy
Date of death	16 June 1216
Place of death	Perugia, modern Italy

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Pope Innocent III

Innocent III

Innocent III

Innocent III

Innocent III

Pope Innocent III

Biography

Early life

Election to the Papacy

Reassertion of Papal power

Involvement in Imperial elections

Feudal power over Europe

Crusades and suppression of heresy

Fourth Council of the Lateran

Death and legacy

Works

Notes

References

Further reading

External links