INNOCENT II, POPE. - Gregory, of the Roman family, indeed of the Papareschi, may have been a monk in his youth, then for many years a cardinal deacon, of the title of S. Angelo, elected by Paschal II around 1116 (though some sources say he was elected even in the time of Urban II).
He accompanied Gelasius II to France and seems to have been present at the election, at Cluny, of Callistus II. But the episode that secured his rise, from that point onward, within the College of Cardinals, was his presence, together with Lamberto, Bishop of Ostia and his predecessor in the papacy, at the Concordat of Worms in September 1122, representing Callistus II, to whom he then reported in Rome on the achieved agreement. Already, moreover, in 1119, just after Callistus’s election, under the influence of the moderating ideas of the Burgundian Church—natural mediator between the two powers, just as from its ranks had emerged the highest affirmation of the Church’s internal reform—the negotiators themselves had met with Henry V at Verdun and Metz, though without any result. As legate in France, together with Pietro Pierleoni, who would later become his rival for the papacy, Gregory of S. Angelo carried out active governance of the local churches between 1120 and 1124, also convening several synods (at Chartres, Beauvais, Clermont, and Vienne).
Perhaps preceding the college of legates, upon his return to Rome, he may have been present at the election of Honorius II and at the renewed outbreak of violence, fomented by the Frangipane, who were determined to have one of their own on the papal throne. That conclave thus became the immediate prelude to the schism that would erupt, upon Honorius’s death, both in Rome and within the Church itself. Favored by the new pope and highly esteemed in his circle, where Cardinal Aimeric, the chancellor, predominated, Gregory remained prominent during the not inconsiderable length of that pontificate. Not so for Pierleoni: he, his family, and his faction—according to the author of the *Vita Honorii* by Pandulf—had much to complain about regarding the pope’s open hostility. This explains why, as Honorius’s end approached, the Pierleoni and their allies in the College of Cardinals did not hesitate to stir up discontent so that the events of December 1124 would not recur. But likewise—and with even greater secrecy and cunning—they were plotting against Cardinal Aimeric.
Preceded by underhanded negotiations, more for the purpose of misleading one party or the other, the death of Honorius II, who had been taken a few days earlier to the fortified convent of S. Andrea in Clivo Scauri, was immediately followed, in the night between 12 and 13 February, in the absence of most of the cardinals, by the election (in *angulo, in abscondito, in tenebris*, as Peter, Cardinal Bishop of Porto and dean of the College, would say) of Gregory of S. Angelo, who was enthroned in the Lateran at dawn under the name Innocent II.
Confident in his undisputed majority, the opposing faction gathered (whether the meeting had already been arranged or was hastily convened upon receipt of the news, brought by the other Peter, the cardinal priest of S. Susanna) in S. Marco late that same morning of the 13th. At one o’clock, to one election another was opposed: and the matter was left to violence. Soon, as polemics flared from both chancelleries (based even on a misinterpretation of the *Statutum de electione Pontificis* of Nicholas II), the Pierleoni, with their Anacletus II, prevailed in Rome, and Innocent was forced to flee, leaving the fortified monastery of the Palladium, in mid-May, from the Tiberine port to Pisa and Genoa, and on to France. It was to be his fortune: even before he arrived there, the fame of the pope as an exile and fugitive had struck a chord in the still-recent tradition of misfortune and exile that, from the first reforming popes to Gelasius II, had always renewed the Church’s vigor and aroused fresh enthusiasm; and the welcome he received from the rival maritime cities was a sign that, by losing Rome, Innocent II was gaining the world.
Convened at Étampes by Louis VI the Fat, King of France, a council was held there, and the opinion of St. Bernard of Clairvaux prevailed in favor of Innocent. The latter learned of this while slowly ascending the Rhône, having reached Cluny. Even if Aquitaine—with its legate, Bishop Gerard—remained hostile, the rest of France would follow Innocent, and through Norbert of Magdeburg, imperial chaplain, Lothair III and Germany would be won over; while from a meeting between Henry I of England and St. Bernard would come the adhesion of the English Church as well. From France, Innocent’s chancery activity was intense, extending even to the churches (especially those he had visited) of Italy, where the situation remained unfavorable: the churches of Milan and Aquileia had declared for Anacletus, and cleverly the great Roger, builder of the Norman monarchy in southern Italy (consecrated precisely by Anacletus), had also aligned himself with the pope of Rome.
Only an imperial expedition could resolve the Italian situation in Innocent’s favor. Prepared throughout 1132 and decided at the meeting in Liège the previous year, a single expedition was not enough. Lothair was able to bring his pope back to the Lateran, but not to keep him there, whether or not Anacletus’s attempt to secure, through a judgment of the imperial tribunal, the annulment of both elections was sincere. As soon as Lothair was forced to return north, abandoning the proclaimed anti-Norman crusade, Innocent could no longer hold Rome. This time, however, he did not leave Italy: from Pisa, with greater hope that the schism would soon end, he dated the documents of his chancery for three years. In August 1136, Lothair was able to renew the expedition to Italy with greater forces. The objective of the march was the Mezzogiorno: only the defeat of Roger II would lead to the elimination of Anacletus. And, after a troubled course, the imperial plan seemed to succeed: but it was only an apparent victory. As soon as Innocent and Lothair had taken the road to Rome (and grave, especially regarding Montecassino, was the necessity for Innocent once again to defend the Church from Lothair’s demands, eager to restore to the crown at least some of the concessions of Worms), Roger, landing at Salerno, took control of the situation. Yet this quickly unraveled (despite the death of Lothair, on crossing the Alps in the autumn of 1137, and after a meeting at Salerno and the conversion effected by St. Bernard of Peter of Pisa) with the sudden death of Anacletus on 25 January 1138. Innocent, reinstalled in Rome since the previous year, still had to wait for the last embers of the schism to die out (the surviving Anacletians gave the dead pope a successor in Victor IV).
The Second Lateran Council of 1139, intended as a solemn closure and condemnation of the disorders of the schism, with a severity that contemporaries—and even St. Bernard—found excessive, ended with the submission of Roger II. To bend him, Innocent, with the support of the Capuan princes, marched on S. Germano: but, like Leo IX at Civitate, he too was imprisoned by his enemy and had to recognize his contested dignity and return to Rome under escort.
From that moment, the drama of Innocent’s pontificate—troubled by an eight-year schism fraught with consequences for a Church in ferment—resumed after the brief affirmation and turned sadly toward its close: before the spectacle of the rise of the *communitates* around him, and of an even more powerful one with the uprising of Rome itself, following the war of Tivoli and its failure to be destroyed. Amid the turmoil of the violent insurrection of the Roman people—while the Senate was being restored and efforts were made to distinguish ecclesiastical power from civil power, in accordance with what would become the watchword of the great agitator Arnold of Brescia—Innocent II died on 24 September 1143.