INNOCENT VI, POPE. — Stephen Aubert, a native of Limousin, was elected pope on 18 December 1352 and crowned on the 30th. He was a respected jurist who had served as *index maior* in the seneschalty of Toulouse before ascending to the episcopal sees of Noyon, Clermont, and Ostia, and before obtaining the office of Grand Penitentiary.
I. is to be numbered among the reforming popes; he promptly (6 July 1353) declared void the capitulation subscribed by the members of the Sacred College during the Conclave, as it was an infringement upon the fullness of power which Christ had conferred upon Peter (Constitution *Sollecitudo pastoralis*, in *Bullarium Romanum*, ed. Ch. Coquelin, III, II, Rome 1741, pp. 316-18). He also endeavored to ensure that the clergy observed residence, corrected abuses that had crept into certain religious Orders, and imposed new Rules upon them. With energy, though in vain, he defended the rights of marriage which Peter the Cruel, King of Castile, had violated. Though he did not protest the publication of the *Golden Bull* (14 Jan. 1356), which established a new regime for the election of the King of the Romans (passing over in silence the Holy See’s claims to approve and confirm such elections and to substitute its authority for the imperial in Italy during the vacancy of the Empire), this was doubtless because the famous edict severed the peninsula from that same Empire and thus favored his own policy beyond the Alps.
I. indeed aimed to reconquer the Papal States. He merited the discovery of a man of genius in Cardinal Egidio Albornoz, who succeeded in bringing the Prefect of Rome, Giovanni di Vico, the barons of the Patrimony of St. Peter, the March of Ancona, and Romagna to obedience, and even wrested Bologna from the grasp of Bernabò Visconti.
The concerns occasioned by the Hundred Years’ War and the diplomatic setbacks he suffered undermined his frail health. He died on 12 September 1362 and was buried in the Charterhouse of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, which he had founded.