INNOCENT I, POPE, saint. – According to the *Liber Pontificalis*, he was a native of Albano and succeeded Pope Anastasius I in 401. His pontificate coincided with a very critical period for the Western Empire due to the incursions of the barbarians. Rome itself, besieged for three years, was occupied by the hordes of Alaric on 24 August 410. Innocent was spared the sight of the devastation, having gone to Ravenna with a senatorial embassy to seek aid and guidance. His activity as supreme pastor and in asserting the primacy and privileged authority of Rome within the universal Church makes him the Pope who, together with Leo I, contributed most to the theoretical and practical development of the primacy of the bishop of Rome. This may perhaps be explained by the political crisis: seeing the impending collapse of the Empire, Innocent sought to strengthen the ecclesiastical structure and reaffirm the unity of the Church under the successor of Peter.
First and foremost, one must consider his actions in matters concerning the Western Church. Bishops of Italy, Gaul, and Spain sought from Innocent directives on various aspects of ecclesiastical life: liturgy, the sacraments, the admission of candidates to Holy Orders, clerical celibacy, the canon of Scripture, and ecclesiastical disputes. To all of them Innocent replied, as attested by letters to Victricius of Rouen, Exsuperius of Toulouse, the Spanish bishops who attended the Council of Toledo, Decentius of Gubbio, three bishops of Apulia, and others. He did not merely indicate solutions to the cases submitted to him but proposed the usages of the Roman Church as a model, requiring all to conform: “what has been taught to the Roman Church by the Prince of the Apostles and is observed there must be followed by all” (*Epistle to Decentius of Gubbio*), justifying this command with the—partially inaccurate—assertion that all the Churches of the West had been founded by envoys of St Peter and his successors. Likewise, while acknowledging the competence of provincial councils in ecclesiastical causes, he insisted that the prerogative of Rome to receive appeals be safeguarded, and indeed required that the most important cases, after judgment by the bishops, be referred to the Apostolic See.
Closely linked to his efforts to assert primacy in the West was his activity in Illyricum. His predecessors, from Damasus onward, had established close ties and granted special faculties to the metropolitan of Thessalonica. Innocent, from the beginning of his pontificate, confirmed this right, and in 412 he created the vicariate of Thessalonica, appointing Bishop Rufus as his vicar with special prerogatives over all the metropolitans of the Prefecture of Illyricum. In this way he asserted the rights of the Apostolic See over those regions and at the same time diverted the bishop of Thessalonica from looking toward Constantinople.
The misfortune of St John Chrysostom required his intervention in the East. In response to the initial reports from Chrysostom and his adherents and from Theophilus of Alexandria, he declared that he maintained communion with both and proposed to examine the matter in a council of Eastern and Western bishops. When later informed, through new messengers from Chrysostom’s party and from Theophilus with the Acts of the Oak Council, of the grave injustices perpetrated, he convened a synod at which the convocation of a council at Thessalonica was decided. He informed Emperor Honorius of this and urged him to communicate the decision to Arcadius in a letter carried by Western and Eastern bishops. The embassy was unsuccessful: upon arriving in Eastern territory, the bishops were imprisoned, the letter was confiscated, the Westerners were sent back, and the Easterners were exiled. Thereupon Innocent broke communion with Chrysostom’s enemies and wrote several letters of consolation to Chrysostom himself. After Chrysostom’s death, he made the inscription of his name in the diptychs a condition for the restoration of communion.
Innocent’s pontificate was also significant for the condemnation of Pelagianism. The rehabilitation obtained by Pelagius at the Synod of Diospolis (415) deeply struck the African bishops. In the summer of 416 they held two councils, at Carthage and Milevis, at which they confirmed the sentence pronounced at the Carthaginian synod of 411 against Pelagian errors and their authors. To give greater weight to their judgment, they sent three urgent letters to the Pope, requesting that he condemn the errors with his apostolic authority. On 27 January 417 Innocent replied with three letters in which, while approving the judgment of the Africans and solemnly excommunicating Pelagius and Caelestius by virtue of his apostolic authority, he praised the Africans for having turned to the Apostolic See, “from which, as from a source, they love to receive responses to their inquiries.” For “especially when the question is one of faith, so I think that all our brother and fellow bishops should have recourse to Peter, the originator of their name and dignity, as your reverence has just done” (*Epistle 30, to the Council of Milevis*). The letters filled the Africans with joy, so that Augustine, in a sermon delivered at Carthage on 23 September 417, could exclaim: “The decrees of two councils on this question were sent to the Apostolic See; from there came the rescripts. The case is closed. May God will that the error also come to an end” (*Sermon 131, 10*). But Innocent had already died on 12 March. The Church venerates him as a saint and celebrates his feast on 28 July.