Innocent III

original name Giovanni Lotario de' Conti. ?1161--1216, pope (1198--1216), under whom the temporal power of the papacy reached its height. He instituted the Fourth Crusade (1202) and a crusade against the Albigenses (1208), and called the fourth Lateran Council (1215)

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Innocent III

(secular name, Lotario di Segni). Born 1160 or 1161, in Anagni; died July 16, 1216, in Perugia. Pope from 1198. Son of the wealthy count of Segni.

The time of Innocent Ill’s pontificate was the period of the medieval papacy’s greatest power. Innocent III strove to establish the supremacy of papal authority over secular government. He interfered in the internal affairs of European states. In 1198 he became guardian of Frederick II, the heir to the Sicilian throne, and he temporarily subordinated the Kingdom of Sicily to his own power. By instigating a struggle for the imperial throne between the Welfs and Hohenstaufens in Germany, Innocent weakened its central authority. The kings of England, Aragon, and Portugal, as well as the tsar of Bulgaria, all acknowledged themselves to be vassals of the pope.

Innocent III abolished Rome’s urban autonomy and restored the power of the pope over the entire territory of the papal state. He was the initiator of the Fourth Crusade. In striving to extend the domination of the Catholic Church to all of Eastern Europe he sanctioned the founding of the Order of the Knights of the Sword in 1202; in 1215 he organized the Crusade of the Teutonic knights against the Prussians. In 1209 he called for a crusade against the Albigensians. He persecuted heresy mercilessly and facilitated the organization of the Inquisition. Innocent III converted the mendicant orders that were coming into being at that time (especially the Franciscan Order) into a powerful weapon of papal policy.

REFERENCES

Luchaire, A. Innocent III, vols. 1–6. Paris, 1904–08.
Haller, I. Innozenz III (Meister der Politik), 2nd ed., vol. 1. Stuttgart, 1923.
Tillmann, H. Papst Innozenz III. Bonn, 1954.
Schneider, R. Innozenz der Dritte. Cologne-Olten, 1960.

M. L. ABRAMSON

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References in periodicals archive

Innocent III was furious and issued a bull of excommunication, although this was soon withdrawn from the French crusaders after a penitent delegation persuaded him that the liberation of the Holy Land was best served by such a inove.

The Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople: Jonathan Phillips sees one of the most notorious events in European history as a typical 'clash of cultures'

The papacy of Innocent III was emblematic: like all great leaders, Innocent III was in tune with his time and addressed its needs with a magisterial vision of papal leadership and support for new secular forms of clerical and lay piety.

Agostino Paravicini-Baglioni, The Pope's Body & Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages

The shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury was in a class of its own, drawing pilgrims from far and wide, including King Louis VII of France and Lothar de Segni, an Italian student in Paris who later became Pope Innocent III. Other major shrines drew pilgrims from all corners of the British Isles, while lesser ones enjoyed local popularity.

Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages

Innocent III, the duke of Segni, who was only 37 when he was elected pope, was a born ruler; he was a theologian educated in Paris, a shrewd lawyer, a clever speaker, a capable administrator and a sophisticated diplomat.

The paradox of Pope Francis

Kendall, "'Mute Dogs, Unable to Bark': Innocent III's Call to Combat Heresy"; Charles Donahue Jr., "Johannes Faventinus on Marriage (With an Appendix Revisiting the Question of the Dating of Alexander III's Marriage Decretals)."

Medieval Church Law and the Origins of the Western Legal Tradition: A Tribute to Kenneth Pennington

By the time he finishes his description of grassroots lay religion at the time of Innocent III, one is ready to ask, how could there not have been a crusading response from the children?

The Children's Crusade: Medieval History, Modern Mythistory

These concepts include Charlemagne's ideas about the Carolingian empire, the revival of Roman law in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the imperial ideas of the medieval German emperors, the Roman notion of imperium, Pope Innocent III's ideas of sovereignty, Dante's challenge to the papacy in De Monarchia, the series of empires referred to by the prophet Daniel as part of God's providential plan for humankind, and to the tyrannical governments that destroyed the Roman republic.

Controlling the State: Constitutionalism from Ancient Athens to Today

A fortress city, Orvieto appealed to popes such as Innocent III and Boniface VIII who sought to expand the power of the papacy; at the same time it was a vital intellectual and artistic center, with notable scholars, mathematicians, sculptors, and architects among its residents.

POWER AND PURITY: CATHAR HERESY IN MEDIEVAL ITALY

Pope Innocent III is described as a charming man with dynamic vision, who also "had a loftier conception of the powers of his office than any pope since Gregory VII." But for the most part popes and kings come onto and off the pages unfleshed by physical descriptions or colorful profiles.

The medieval church's ideological warfare

1284: Pope Innocent III predicted the Second Coming for this year.

GOODBYE ..POSSIBLY; Loony preacher claims world will end on May 21

1070-1145) on the Church, and Innocent III's by identifying a similar pyramidical structure in their depictions of Church hierarchy.

Plenitude of Power: The Doctrine and Exercise of Authority in the Middle Ages; Essays in Memory of Robert Louis Benson

The diversion of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 was one of the great atrocities of medieval history, and Pope Innocent III placed most of the blame on Venice.

The Medieval Crusade