INNOCENT III, Pope. - Born Lotario, b. at Gavignano (Segni) in 1160 or 1161 to Trasmondo, a member of the local nobility (whence the family name Conti), and to the noble Roman woman Clarice Scotti, elected pontiff on 8 January 1198, d. at Perugia on 16 July 1216. Rome, where he received his first education, was his true homeland; he was then sent to study theology in Paris and canon law in Bologna (there he had as his teacher the great decretalist Uguccione da Pisa). Having returned to Rome, he was ordained subdeacon by Gregory VIII, and by Clement III promoted to cardinal deacon of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus. In the Curia, also under the successor Celestine III, he distinguished himself by his ability and industriousness.
At the same time he composed two short works, which remained famous: the De miseria humane condicensis, better known under its later title De contemptu mundi (PL 217, 701-46), an ascetic treatise describing the state of man from birth to the afterlife (its influence down to the 16th century was very great, as the more than 400 manuscripts that survive of it demonstrate), and the De sacro altaris mysterio (PL 217, 763-915), a lengthy commentary on the Mass, important for sacramental theology and for the history of the liturgy. Even as pontiff, I. continued his literary activity, composing short works, numerous sermons (e.g.: De vita et passione Domini N. J. C. [PL 217, 815-18]; De omnibus Sanctis [PL 217, 917-18]; De quadripartita specie nuptiarum liber [PL 217, 921-68]; Commentarium in septem psalmos poenitentiales [PL 217, 967-1129]; Regula Ordinis S. Spiritus de Saxia [PL 217, 1129-1158]; Sermones de tempore [PL 217, 313-450]; Sermones de Sanctis [PL 217, 451-691]) and treating questions of theology and law in his letters. In 1210 he had the most important letters collected and sent them to the University of Bologna, the first official collection of decretals.
On the death of the aged Celestine III, Lotario was elected pontiff. He immediately began from the Lateran a remarkable and most intense activity in every field and in every part of Christendom. Two motives dominate and orient it, from the very beginning of the pontificate: the reform of the Church and the Crusade. A true disciple of St. Bernard, his favourite author, he began with the reform of the Curia, seeking to combat venality there; he attended to the formation of a better episcopate and clergy, at the same time favouring decentralization by strengthening the authority of bishops and metropolitans, by repressing abusive appeals to Rome, by provincial and national councils (that of 1212 in Paris being important). He further promoted the reform of male and female monasteries, and favoured the new foundations that were arising, more responsive to the needs of the time: thus he approved the Order of the Holy Spirit for the care of the poor sick (he summoned its founder Guy of Montpellier to Rome, having the great hospital of S. Spirito built), the Trinitarians for the liberation of prisoners, the Humiliati in Lombardy, and he stimulated the establishment of regular canons. He authoritatively helped St. Dominic and St. Francis in their beginnings, and to the former he suggested the idea of an Ordo Praedicatorum against the heretics of France, while to the latter he gave the faculty to preach, orally approving his way of life. It may be said that it was precisely the spirit and the work of reform of I. III that prepared the two great mendicant Orders and their establishment. The general Council held in Rome in November 1215 (Fourth Lateran) sanctioned the Church reform of the great Pope, promulgating a vast body of canon legislation in the field of dogma, morals, discipline and ecclesiastical organization, the most important before the Council of Trent.
I.'s efforts to organize a new Crusade (in 1187 Jerusalem had fallen, and the Third Crusade had ended miserably) were conducted with great constancy and energy. The hopes formed in 1202, when the crusading army was constituted under his impulse, were disappointed by the Venetians, who used the Crusaders against Zara and then against the Empire of Constantinople; I. strongly deplored the excesses of the Crusaders, yet rejoiced at the new Latin Empire that arose in the East (1204), in the (overly optimistic) hope of being able at last to achieve unity with the Eastern Church, for which he had already begun negotiations in 1198. After 1204 his efforts for a new Crusade resumed, and the Lateran Council had as its principal aim the preparation of the great enterprise, planned for 1217.
I.'s zeal also turned to combating the Cathar and Waldensian heresy, which by the end of the 12th century had taken root and shown itself dangerous especially in southern France, in Languedoc: the Pope first sought to combat the causes that favoured it, carrying out an action of reform of the morals of the clergy and the episcopate, favouring the groups that had converted (he approved the "Catholic Poor" of Durand of Huesca) and promoting preaching in poverty, to which he urged the Cistercians and then St. Dominic with his companions. The scant results of this action, and the fateful killing of the papal legate Peter of Castelnau (1208), induced him to seek the help of the secular arm, in order to repress by force the evil that threatened the unity of the Church. The barons of northern France, led by Simon of Montfort, eager to deprive Raymond VI count of Toulouse of his territories, accepted the call to the Crusade against the Albigensians: the Crusade thus turned into a bloody war of conquest, which the Pope was unable to control, also because he was poorly served by his legates, who favoured Simon; at the Council of the Lateran, I. succeeded in having part of the domains maintained for Raymond's son. Another Crusade, more fortunate, he proclaimed against the Muslims of Spain, in aid of the kings of Castile, which led to the victory of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212). In northern Europe, in the still pagan regions of Finland, Prussia and especially Livonia, he sent missionaries and organized the Church; he also turned to Russia, to obtain its union with Rome, but without practical results; instead the union was re-established (for a short time) with Bulgaria, whose sovereign, Joannitza, asked the Pope for the crown, offering him his kingdom as a vassal.
Toward the sovereigns of Europe, I. carried out a very intense action, dominated by the idea of Christian peace and of unity for the Crusade. The Empire, after the death of Henry VI (1197), was divided between two contenders, Otto of Braunschweig and Philip of Swabia, brother of Henry VI: I. maintained an attitude of waiting and prudence, and only in 1201 recognized Otto; after Philip's killing he crowned him emperor in 1209. But soon he had to set himself against him, because he was invading the territories of the Church and aiming to conquer all of Italy; he then turned to the young Frederick II, king of Sicily, whose tutor he had been, who promised that he would keep the crown of Sicily separate from the imperial one (1213).
Thus circumstances forced I. to favour the ascent to the Empire of the son of Henry VI, whose policy he had so greatly deplored. With France relations were good, but he was most firm against King Philip Augustus, to the point of reaching an interdict on the kingdom, in order to induce him to take back his legitimate wife Ingeborg; moreover, when in 1203 war broke out between France and England with the invasion of Normandy, he intervened authoritatively with the two sovereigns so that they would restore peace, specifying the spiritual (ratione peccati) and not political nature of his intervention. A complicated question over the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury and then the hostilities against the Church of John Lackland led in 1208 to the interdict on the English domains and to the deposition of the King: threatened with an invasion by Philip Augustus, John asked I. for absolution and offered his Kingdom as a vassal of the Holy See. Other sovereigns too, such as Peter II of Aragon, offered their Kingdom in fief to the Pope, in order to have the protection of his high spiritual authority. In Italy, finally, I. worked hard to strengthen his dominion in Rome and in the lands of the Church, in Tuscany and in the north to bind the Communes to himself, and in southern Italy, seeking to make the Kingdom a vassal of the Holy See as the Empress Constance had provided in her testament. The extension of his political authority over almost all of Europe has caused I. to be represented as a "distributor of crowns," wholly intent on forming a universal political dominion, improperly called theocracy. In reality, this was not his political conception: from the genuine foundations of the papal primacy, he developed the doctrine of the unity of the Church and of the plenitudo potestatis of the pontiff as vicar of Christ; a disciple of Uguccione and of the canonistic school of Bologna, he maintained the traditional doctrine of the distinction and independence of the two powers, while emphasizing the superiority of the spiritual. On the other hand, his intense activity for peace and for the union of the Christian princes with a view to the Crusade, like his defense of the freedom of the rights of the Church, led him to manifold and profound interventions in temporal matters, which in fact extended the political authority of the papacy, undoubtedly contributing to bind the temporal ever more closely to the spiritual. The later doctrine of Innocent IV, which affirms the high dominion of the pope as vicar of Christ over both powers, will be a development of it, but it does not yet appear in I. III.
Death took him at the age of 55, after more than 18 years of pontificate, while he was at Perugia and preparing the Crusade. - See pl. III.
Bibliography3 works
Michele Maccarone