He viewed the role of the pope as not merely a spiritual leader but a secular one as well, and while he held the papal office he made that vision a reality. Crusade Sponsor Pope Writer. Born: c. Lothair's mother was nobility, and his aristocratic relatives may have made his studies at the Universities of Paris and Bologna possible. Blood ties to Pope Clement III may also be responsible for his elevation to a cardinal deacon in However, he didn't get very involved in papal politics at this point, and he had time to write on theology, including the works "On the Miserable Condition of Man" and "On the Mysteries of the Mass.
Almost immediately upon his election as pope, Innocent sought to reassert papal rights in Rome, bringing about peace among the rival aristocratic factions and gaining the respect of the Roman people within a few years. Innocent also took a direct interest in the German succession. He believed that the pope had the right to approve or reject any election that was questionable on the grounds that the German ruler could claim the title of "Holy" Roman Emperor, a position that affected the spiritual realm.
At the same time, Innocent explicitly disclaimed secular power in most of the remainder of Europe; but he still took a direct interest in matters in France and England, and his influence in Germany and Italy alone was enough to bring the papacy to the forefront of medieval politics.
Innocent called the Fourth Crusade, which was diverted to Constantinople. The pope excommunicated the Crusaders who attacked Christian cities, but he made no move to halt or overturn their actions because he felt, erroneously, that the Latin presence would bring about a reconciliation between the Eastern and Western Churches.
Later he became Cardinal-Priest of St. During the pontificate of Celestine III , a member of the House of the Orsini, enemies of the counts of Segni , he lived in retirement, probably at Anagni , devoting himself chiefly to meditation and literary pursuits. Celestine III died 8 January, Previous to his death he had urged the College of Cardinals to elect Giovanni di Colonna as his successor; but Lotario de' Conti was elected pope , at Rome , on the very day on which Celestine III died.
He accepted the tiara with reluctance and took the name of Innocent III. At the time of his accession to the papacy he was only thirty-seven years of age. The imperial throne had become vacant by the death of Henry VI in , and no successor had as yet been elected.
The tactful and energetic pope made good use of the opportunity offered him by this vacancy for the restoration of the papal power in Rome and in the States of the Church.
The Prefect of Rome , who reigned over the city as the emperor's representative, and the senator who stood for the communal rights and privileges of Rome , swore allegiance to Innocent. When he had thus re-established the papal authority in Rome , he availed himself of every opportunity to put in practice his grand concept of the papacy.
Italy was tired of being ruled by a host of German adventurers, and the pope experienced little difficulty in extending his political power over the peninsula. First he sent two cardinal legates to Markwuld to demand the restoration of the Romagna and the March of Ancona to the Church. Upon his evasive answer he was excommunicated by the legates and driven away by the papal troops.
The league which had been formed among the cities of Tuscany was ratified by the pope after it acknowledged him as suzerain. The emperor's widow Constance, who ruled over Sicily for her little son, was unable to cope singly against the Norman barons of the Sicilian Kingdom, who resented the German rule and refused to acknowledge the child-king. The pope made use of this opportunity to reassert papal suzerainty over Sicily , and acknowledged Frederick II as king only after Constance had surrendered certain privileges contained in the so-called Four Chapters, which William I had previously extorted from Adrian IV.
Before the Bull reached Sicily Constance had died, but before her death she had appointed Innocent as guardian of the orphan-king. With the greatest fidelity the pope watched over the welfare of his ward during the nine years of his minority. Even the enemies of the papacy admit that Innocent was an unselfish guardian of the young king and that no one else could have ruled for him more ably and conscientiously. To protect the inexperienced king against his enemies, he induced him in to marry Constance, the widow of King Emeric of Hungary.
Conditions in Germany were extremely favourable for the application of Innocent's idea concerning the relation between the papacy and the empire. After the death of Henry VI a double election had ensued. The former was crowned at Mainz on 8 September, , the latter at Aachen on 12 July, Immediately upon his accession to the papal throne Innocent had sent the Bishop of Sutri and the Abbot of Sant' Anastasio as legates to Germany , with instructions to free Philip of Swabia from the ban which he had incurred under Celestine III , on condition that he would bring about the liberation of the imprisoned Queen Sibyl of Sicily and restore the territory which he had taken from the Church when he was Duke of Tuscany.
When the legates arrived in Germany , Philip had already been elected king. Yielding to the wishes of Philip, the Bishop of Sutri secretly freed him from the ban upon his mere promise to fulfil the proposed conditions. After the coronation Philip sent the legates back to Rome with letters requesting the pope's ratification of his election; but Innocent was dissatisfied with the action of the Bishop of Sutri and refused to ratify the election.
Otto IV also sent legates to the pope after his coronation at Aachen , but before the pope took any action, the two claimants of the German throne began to assert their claims by force of arms. Though the pope did not openly side with either of them, it was apparent that his sympathy was with Otto IV.
Offended at what they considered an unjust interference on the part of the pope , the adherents of Philip sent a letter to him in which they protested against his interference in the imperial affairs of Germany. In his answer Innocent stated that he had no intention of encroaching upon the rights of the princes, but insisted upon the rights of the Church in this matter.
He emphasized especially that the conferring of the imperial crown belonged to the pope alone. In the pope openly espoused the side of Otto IV. On 3 July, , 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.
This decretal , which has become famous, was afterwards embodied in the "Corpus Juris Canonici". The following are the chief points of the decretal : 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. Turning the fait accompli to his best advantage, Innocent set up a Latin rite church in the ruins.
The thirteenth century was a time of religious ferment, which saw the eruption of sects—orthodox, heretical, and schismatic—reacting to church corruption.
After trying persuasion with the heretical Albigensians, Innocent declared a bloody crusade against them. More than 15, peasants were slaughtered in one town alone. Innocent instituted a wide-ranging series of church reforms. Clergy excesses from luxurious clothing to drunken carousing were attacked. He promoted honest business practices in the church, encouraged provincial and national councils, required bishops to visit Rome every four years, restored observation of rules in religious orders, and encouraged the foundation of schools.
During his reign, he recognized and gave patronage to two newly established reform groups, the Franciscans and the Dominicans. He issued over 6, decrees and formalized many of his reforms with the Fourth Lateran Council—where the term "transubstantiate" meaning, the bread of Communion becomes the real body of Christ was first officially used.
Innocent died of recurring fevers on a trip to settle a dispute between Pisa and Genoa, a dispute he feared would hinder his next crusade. 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 , 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 Frederick was able to make good his claim to be emperor. 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 , 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.
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 , 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.
Regarded by Roman Catholics as an ecumenical council, preceded by 2 years of preparation, and assembled in November at the Lateran basilica, the Fourth Lateran Council was attended by over 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.
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