INNOCENT III, POPE. — Born Lotario, he was born at Gavignano (Segni) in 1160 or 1161 to Trasmondo, a member of the local nobility (from whom the family took the name Conti), and the noble Roman Clarice Scotti. He was elected pope on 8 January 1198 and died at Perugia on 16 July 1216. Rome, where he received his early education, was his true homeland; he was then sent to study theology in Paris and canon law in Bologna (where he had Uguccione da Pisa, the great decretalist, as his teacher). Returning to Rome, he was ordained subdeacon by Gregory VIII and made cardinal deacon of SS. Sergio e Bacco by Clement III. In the Curia, even under his successor Celestino III, he distinguished himself by his skill and industry.
At the same time, he composed two short works that remained famous: the *De miseria humane condicionis*, better known under the later title *De contemptu mundi* (PL 217, 701–46), an ascetical treatise describing the state of man from birth to the afterlife (its influence remained great until the 16th century, as evidenced by the more than 400 surviving manuscripts), and the *De sacro altaris mysterio* (PL 217, 763–915), a lengthy commentary on the Mass, important for sacramental theology and the history of liturgy. Even as pope, Innocent continued his literary activity, composing pamphlets and 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, 697–1129; *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 in his letters he addressed questions of theology and canon law. In 1210, he had his most important letters collected and sent to the University of Bologna, the first official collection of decretals.
Upon the death of the aged Celestine III, Lotario was elected pope. Immediately he launched from the Lateran a remarkable and intense activity in every sphere and throughout Christendom. Two motives guided and shaped this activity from the very beginning of his pontificate: the reform of the Church and the Crusade. A true disciple of St Bernard, his favorite author, he began with the reform of the Curia, seeking to combat venality there; he worked to improve the episcopate and the clergy, while decentralizing authority by strengthening the role of bishops and metropolitans, suppressing abusive appeals to Rome, and promoting provincial and national councils (notably the one held in Paris in 1212). He also promoted the reform of male and female monasteries and encouraged new foundations better suited to the needs of the time: thus he approved the Order of the Holy Spirit for the care of the sick poor (he summoned its founder Guy of Montpellier to Rome and had the great hospital of Santo Spirito built there), the Trinitarians for the liberation of captives, the Humiliati in Lombardy, and he encouraged the establishment of regular canons. He gave authoritative support to St Dominic and St Francis in their early efforts, suggesting to the former the idea of an Ordo Praedicatorum against the heretics of France, and granting the latter permission to preach and approving orally his manner of life. It may be said that it was precisely the spirit and work of reform of Innocent III that prepared the way for the two great mendicant orders and their affirmation. The general council held in Rome in November 1215 (Fourth Lateran Council) sanctioned the reform of the Church by this great pope, promulgating extensive canonical legislation in matters of dogma, morals, discipline, and ecclesiastical organization—the most important such legislation before the Council of Trent.
Innocent’s efforts to organize a new Crusade (Jerusalem had fallen in 1187, and the Third Crusade had ended in failure) were pursued with great constancy and energy. Hopes raised in 1202, when a crusader army was formed under his impetus, were dashed by the Venetians, who used the crusaders against Zara and then against the Empire of Constantinople. Innocent deplored the excesses of the crusaders but, unfortunately, rejoiced in the new Latin Empire that arose in the East (1204), in the (overly optimistic) hope of achieving at last the unity of the Eastern Church, for which he had already begun negotiations in 1198. After 1204, he renewed his efforts for a new Crusade, and the Lateran Council had as its principal aim the preparation of the great enterprise, scheduled for 1217.
Innocent’s zeal also extended to combating the Cathar and Waldensian heresies, which by the end of the 12th century had taken root and proved especially dangerous in southern France and Languedoc. The pope first sought to address the causes that favored heresy, reforming the morals of the clergy and episcopate, favoring groups that had converted (he approved the “Poor Catholics” of Durandus of Huesca), and promoting preaching in poverty, to which he turned the Cistercians and later St Dominic with his companions. The meager results of this action and the fatal murder of the papal legate Peter of Castelnau (1208) led him to seek the aid of secular authority to suppress by force the evil threatening the unity of the Church. The barons of northern France, led by Simon of Montfort, eager to deprive Raymond VI of Toulouse of his territories, responded to his call for a Crusade against the Albigensians; the Crusade thus became a bloody war of conquest that the pope was unable to control, not least because his legates were never of service to him, favoring Simon. At the Lateran Council, Innocent managed to secure for Raymond’s son a portion of his domains. Another, more successful Crusade was launched against the Muslims of Spain to aid the kings of Castile, which led to the victory at 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 secure its union with Rome, though without practical results. The union was, however, restored (for a brief time) with Bulgaria, whose ruler, John Asen I, sought the papal crown and offered his kingdom as a vassal state.
In his dealings with the rulers of Europe, Innocent pursued an intense policy dominated by the idea of Christian peace and unity for the Crusade. The Empire, after the death of Henry VI (1197), was divided between two claimants, Otto of Brunswick and Philip of Swabia, brother of Henry VI. Innocent adopted an attitude of caution and restraint, and only in 1201 did he recognize Otto; after Philip’s murder, he crowned Otto emperor in 1209. But soon he had to oppose him, as Otto invaded the territories of the Church and sought to conquer all Italy. He then turned to the young Frederick II, king of Sicily, of whom he had been guardian, and who promised to keep the crown of Sicily separate from the imperial crown (1213).
Thus circumstances compelled INNOCENT III to favor the ascent to the Empire of the son of Henry VI, whose policy he had so deplored. His relations with France were good, but he was steadfast against King Philip Augustus, even going so far as to place the kingdom under interdict to induce him to take back his legitimate wife Ingeburga; moreover, when war broke out in 1203 between France and England with the invasion of Normandy, he intervened authoritatively with the two sovereigns to restore peace, specifying the spiritual nature (ratione peccati) and not political of his intervention. A complicated question over the appointment of the archbishop of Canterbury and then the hostilities toward the Church by John Lackland led in 1208 to the interdict on the English domains and the deposition of the king: threatened with invasion by Philip Augustus, John sought absolution from INNOCENT III and offered his kingdom as a vassal of the Holy See. Other sovereigns, such as Peter II of Aragon, likewise pledged their kingdoms to the Pope in faith to secure the protection of his high spiritual authority.
In Italy, finally, INNOCENT III worked strenuously to strengthen his dominion in Rome and the Papal States, in Tuscany and 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 disposed by her will. The extension of his political authority over almost all of Europe has led to his being portrayed as a “distributor of crowns,” wholly intent on forming a universal political dominion, improperly called a theocracy. In reality, this was not his political conception: from the genuine foundations of papal primacy, he developed the doctrine of the unity of the Church and the plenitudo potestatis of the pope as Christ’s vicar; a disciple of Huguccio and of the Bolognese school of canonists, 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 Christian princes with a view to the Crusade, as well as his defense of the freedom and rights of the Church, led him to manifold and profound interventions in the temporal sphere, which in fact extended the political authority of the papacy and doubtless contributed to bind the temporal ever more closely to the spiritual. The later doctrine of Innocent IV, which asserts the supreme dominion of the pope as vicar of Christ over both powers, will be a development of this, but it does not yet appear in INNOCENT III.
He died at the age of fifty-five, after more than eighteen years of pontificate, while he was in Perugia preparing the Crusade. — See pl. III.