HONORIUS IV, Pope. - Giacomo Savelli, cardinal deacon of the title of S. Maria in Cosmedin, pope from 1285 to 1287. He was elected unanimously, only four days after the death of Martin IV, on 2 April 1285, ordained priest on 19 May and crowned the following day. A nephew of Honorius III, brother of one of the two Savelli senators, he enjoyed the friendship of the Romans and resided peacefully in the Vatican, then on the Aventine. The knowledge he had of Italian affairs (Urban IV had appointed him prefect in Tuscany and captain of his army) allowed him to obtain from Florence and from Bologna the abolition of the laws against the clergy; he lifted the interdict launched by Martin IV against Venice, hostile to Charles I of Anjou.
By temperament and also because of his frail health (he was afflicted with gout), he was a conciliatory type. If on the one hand he annulled the renunciation of Sicily, signed by Charles II of Anjou in prison, as contrary to the rights of the Holy See, and encouraged the war against the Aragonese; on the other hand he gave the Sicilians a constitution milder than the Angevin regime, and accepted the mediation of Edward I in favor of Alfonso of Aragon.
Reserved in his dealings with the Empire, he deferred to an indefinite time the coronation of Rudolf of Habsburg.
The mendicant orders had their privileges confirmed by him, despite the hostilities of the secular clergy, gathered in a national Council at Paris; the University took no position. The Pope, grateful to his old teachers, favored the creation of chairs of oriental languages, to facilitate the union of the Eastern Churches and the conversion of the infidels. He thus continued the work of Gregory X, whom he had accompanied at the Council of Lyon.
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Guglielmo Mollat