Saints celebrated on the 16th of June
INNOCENT III., POPE
(Lotario de' Conti) He was one of the greatest popes of the Middle Ages, son of Count Trasimund of Segni and nephew of Clement III, born 1160 or 1161 at Anagni, and died June 16, 1216, at Perugia.
He received his early education at Rome, studied theology at Paris, jurisprudence at Bologna, and became a learned theologian and one of the greatest jurists of his time. Shortly after the death of Alexander III (August 30, 1181) Lotario returned to Rome and held various ecclesiastical offices during the short reigns of Lucius III, Urban III, Gregory VIII, and Clement III. Pope Gregory VIII ordained him subdeacon, and Clement III created him Cardinal-Deacon of St George in Velabro and SS. Sergius and Bacchus, in 1190. Later he became Cardinal-Priest of St Pudentiana.
During the pontificate of Celestine III (1191-1198), 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 January 8, 1198. 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 1197, 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. In like manner the Duchy of Spoleto and the Districts of Assisi and Sora were wrested from the German knight, Conrad von Uerslingen. The league which had been formed among the cities of Tuscany was ratified by the pope after it acknowledged him as suzerain.
The death of the Emperor Henry VI left his four-year old child, Frederick II, King of Sicily. 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. She appealed to Innocent III to save the Sicilian throne for her child. 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. The pope then solemnly invested Frederick II as King of Sicily in a Bull issued about the middle of November, 1198. 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 1209 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 Ghibellines had elected Philip of Swabia on March 6, 1198, while the Guelfs had elected Otto IV, son of Henry the Lion and nephew of King Richard of England, in April of the same year. The former was crowned at Mainz on September 8, 1198, the latter at Aachen on July 12, 1198.
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 emphasised especially that the conferring of the imperial crown belonged to the pope alone.
In 1201 the pope openly espoused the side of Otto IV. On July 3, 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. Innocent III made clear to the German princes by the Decree "Venerabilem" which he addressed to the Duke of Zähringen in May, 1202, in what relation he considered the empire to stand to the papacy. This decretal, which has become famous, was afterwards embodied in the "Corpus Juris Canonici".
There was scarcely a country in Europe over which Innocent III did not in some way or other assert the supremacy which he claimed for the papacy. He excommunicated Alfonso IX of Leon, for marrying a near relative, Berengaria, a daughter of Alfonso VIII, contrary to the laws of the Church, and effected their separation in 1204. For similar reasons he annulled, in 1208, the marriage of the crown-prince, Alfonso of Portugal, with Urraca, daughter of Alfonso of Castile. From Pedro II of Aragon he received that kingdom in vassalage and crowned him king at Rome in 1204. He prepared a crusade against the Moors and lived to see their power broken in Spain at the battle of Navas de Tolosa, in 1212. He protected the people of Norway against their tyrannical king, Sverri, and after the king's death arbitrated between the two claimants to the Norwegian throne. He mediated between King Emeric of Hungary and his rebellious brother Andrew, sent royal crown and sceptre to King Johannitius of Bulgaria and had his legate crown him king at Tirnovo, in 1204; he restored ecclesiastical discipline in Poland; arbitrated between the two claimants to the royal crown of Sweden; made partly successful attempts to reunite the Greek with the Latin Church and extended his beneficent influence practically over the whole Christian world.
Like many preceding popes, Innocent had at heart the recovery of the Holy Land, and for this end undertook the Fourth Crusade. The Venetians had pledged themselves to transport the entire Christian army and to furnish the fleet with provisions for nine months, for 85,000 marks. When the crusaders were unable to pay the sum, the Venetians proposed to bear the financial expenses themselves on condition that the crusaders would first assist them in the conquest of the city of Zara. The crusaders yielded to their demands and the fleet started down the Adriatic on 8 October, 1202. Zara had scarcely been reduced when Alexius Comnenus arrived at the camp of the crusaders and pleaded for their help to replace his father, Isaac Angelus, on the throne of Constantinople from which he had been deposed by his cruel brother Alexius. In return he promised to reunite the Greek with the Latin Church, to add 10,000 soldiers to the ranks of the crusaders, and to contribute money and provisions to the crusade. The Venetians, who saw their own commercial advantage in the taking of Constantinople, induced the crusaders to yield to the prayers of Alexius, and Constantinople was taken by them in 1204. Isaac Angelus was restored to his throne but soon replaced by a usurper. The crusaders took Constantinople a second time on April 12, 1204, and after a horrible pillage, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was proclaimed emperor and the Greek Church was united with the Latin. The reunion, as well as the Latin empire in the East, did not last longer than two generations. When Pope Innocent learned that the Venetians had diverted the crusaders from their purpose of conquering the Holy Land he expressed his great dissatisfaction first at their conquest of Zara, and when they proceeded towards Constantinople he solemnly protested and finally excommunicated the Venetians who had caused the digression of the crusaders from their original purpose. Since, however, he could not undo what had been accomplished he did his utmost to destroy the Greek schism and latinize the Eastern Empire.
Innocent was also a zealous protector of the true Faith and a strenuous opponent of heresy. His chief activity was turned against the Albigenses who had become so numerous and aggressive that they were no longer satisfied with being adherents of heretical doctrines but even endeavoured to spread their heresy by force. They were especially numerous in a few cities of Northern an in Southern France. During the first year of his pontificate Innocent sent the two Cistercian monks Rainer and Guido to the Albigenses in France to preach to them the true Faith and dispute with them on controverted topics of religion. The two Cistercian missionaries were soon followed by Diego, Bishop of Osma, then by St Dominic and the two papal legates. Peter of Castelnau and Raoul. When, however, these peaceful missionaries were ridiculed and despised by the Albigenses, and the papal legate Castelnau was assassinated in 1208, Innocent resorted to force. He ordered the bishops of Southern France to put under interdict the participants in the murder and all the towns that gave shelter to them. He was especially incensed against Count Raymond of Toulouse who had previously been excommunicated by the murdered legate and whom, for good reasons, the pope suspected as the instigator of the murder. The count protested his innocence and submitted to the pope, probably out of cowardice, but the pope placed no further trust in him. He called upon France to raise an army for the suppression of the Albigenses. Under the leadership of Simon of Montfort a cruel campaign ensued against the Albigenses which, despite the protest of Innocent, soon turned into a war of conquest.
THE FOURTH LATERAN COUNCIL
The culminating point in the glorious reign of Innocent was his convocation of the Fourth Lateran Council, which he solemnly opened on November 15, 1215. It was by far the most important council of the Middle Ages. Besides deciding on a general crusade to the Holy Land, it issued seventy reformatory decrees, the first of which was a creed (Firmiter credimus), against the Albigenses and Waldenses, in which the term "transubstantiation" received its first ecclesiastical sanction.
The labours of Innocent in the inner government of the Church appear to be of a very subordinate character when they are put beside his great politico-ecclesiastical achievements which brought the papacy to the zenith of its power. Still they are worthy of memory and have contributed their share to the glory of his pontificate.
His reign saw the two great founders of the mendicant orders, St Dominic and St Francis, who laid before him their scheme of reforming the world. Innocent was not blind to the vices of luxury and indolence which had infected many of the clergy and part of the laity. In Dominic and Francis he recognised two mighty adversaries of these vices and he sanctioned their projects with words of encouragement. The lesser religious orders which he approved are the Hospitallers of the Holy Ghost, the Trinitarians, and the Humiliati. In 1209 he commissioned the Cistercian monk, Christian, afterwards bishop, with the conversion of the heathen Prussians.
At Rome he built the famous hospital Santo Spirito in Sassia, which became the model of all future city hospitals and exists to the present time.
Innocent died at Perugia, while travelling through Italy in the interests of the crusade which had been decided upon at the Lateran Council. He was buried in the cathedral of Perugia where his body remained until Leo XIII, a great admirer of Innocent, had it transferred to the Lateran in December, 1891. Innocent is also the author of various literary works.
(From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)
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