Innocent VI, Pope (INNOCENZO VI, PAPA) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, p. 34

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

INNOCENZO VI, POPE. - A native of Limousin, Étienne Aubert was elected pope on Dec. 18, 1352 and crowned on the 30th. He was an esteemed jurist who

Article illustration — (phot. Alinari) INNOCENZO V, pope, blessed - Detail of the series of blessed and Dominican saints painted by Beato Angelico beneath the Crucifixion - Florence, Convent of S. Marco.

had exercised the functions of iudex maior in the seneschalship of Toulouse, before ascending to the episcopal sees of Noyon, Clermont, and Ostia, and before obtaining the office of grand penitentiary.

I. must be counted among the reforming popes; he hastened (July 6, 1353) to declare null the capitulation signed during the Conclave by the members of the Sacred College, as an infringement upon the fullness of the power that Christ had conferred upon Peter (const. Sollicitudo pastoralis, in Bullarium Romanum, ed. Ch. Coquelines, III, 11, Rome 1741, pp. 316-18). Furthermore, he ensured that the clergy observed residency, repressed abuses that had crept into certain religious Orders, and imposed new Rules upon the latter. With energy, albeit in vain, he defended the rights of marriage which Peter the Cruel, king of Castile, had violated. If he did not protest against the publication of the "Golden Bull" (Jan. 14, 1356) which instituted a new regime for the election of the king of the Romans (passing over in silence the claims of the Holy See to approve and confirm such an election and to replace imperial authority in Italy during the vacancy of the Empire), it was undoubtedly because the famous edict detached the peninsula from this very Empire and consequently favored his personal policy beyond the Alps.

I. indeed set out to reconquer the Papal States. He had the merit of discovering a man of genius in Card. Gil Álvarez Carrillo de Albornoz, who knew how to reduce to obedience the prefect of Rome, Giovanni di Vico, the barons of the Patrimony of St. Peter, the March of Ancona, and Romagna, and succeeded in wresting Bologna from the hands of Bernabò Visconti.

The worries caused him by the Hundred Years' War and the diplomatic setbacks he had to suffer undermined his precarious health. D. Sept. 12, 1362; he was buried in the church of the Charterhouse of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, founded by him.

BIBL.: C. Cipolla, I. VI. e la casa di Savoia (Miscellanea di storia italiana, 6), Turin 1902, pp. 149-215; K. Zeumer, Die Goldene Bulle Kaiser Karls IV., Weimar 1908; E. Déprez, Innocenz VI. Lettres closes, patentes et curiales se rapportant à la France, Paris 1909; W. Scheffler, Karl IV. und Innocenz VI. Beiträge zur Geschichte ihrer Beziehungen, Berlin 1912; St. Baluzius, Vitae paparum Avenionensium, ed. G. Mollat, I. Paris 1916, pp. 309-46; II. ivi 1928, pp. 433-91; E. Filippini, Il card. Egidio Albornoz, Bologna 1933 (insufficient book); G. Biscaro, Le relazioni dei Visconti con la Chiesa, Bernabò e il vicariato di Bologna, I. VI e i primi processi 1355-62, in Archivio storico lombardo, nuova serie, 2 (1937), pp. 119-93; G. Mollat, Les papes d'Avignon, 9th ed., Paris 1930, pp. 97-108 (with abundant bibl.).