In the world, Pope Innocent III was known as Lothario de Segni. He was born near the city of Anagni. The exact date of birth of the pontiff is not known. This is either 1160 or 1161. His father, Trasimono, was a count, and his mother was a Roman patrician. Lothario was related by kinship to two other popes. Clement III was his uncle and Gregory IX was his nephew.
Youth
The future head of the Catholic Church Innocent 3 from a young age was distinguished by outstanding intellectual abilities. He studied law in Bologna and theology in Paris. A year after the assassination of Thomas Becket, Lothario went on a pilgrimage to Canterbury.
In 1190, a 30-year-old Italian had already become a cardinal. Celestine III, however, kept him out of his circle. Therefore, the capable cardinal took up literary activity. His treatise "On Contempt for the World, or On the Insignificance of the Lot of Man" was widely distributed. Lothario liked the members of the curia. In 1198, after the death of Celestine, they elected him as the new pope, who took the name of Innocent III.
Pontiff and Empire
From the early days of the newfor himself as Innokenty was noticeably lucky. For a long time, the papacy was in conflict with the imperial power of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1197, the monarch Henry VI died, and his state was mired in internal conflicts between the Ghibellines and the Guelphs. Germany plunged into a civil war. All this only strengthened the positions occupied by Innocent 3. The biography of his youth was associated with a variety of European countries that he visited for study and pilgrimages. Now Innocent, as the head of the Catholics, had to contact the monarchs of all these states.
The paralysis of imperial power allowed the pope to regain control of the Papal State, expanding its borders to the Adriatic Sea after the annexation of the Ancona March and Spoleto. Under Celestine, the Eternal City suffered from anarchy due to conflicts between aristocratic factions. Innocent himself was a maternal patrician and, using family ties, was able to reconcile the nobility. The political successes of the head of the Catholic Church in Italy were crowned with the fact that he became the regent of the Kingdom of Sicily, located in the south of the Apennine Peninsula. Shortly before her death, his ruler Constance asked the pontiff to become the guardian of her young son Frederick until he came of age. Innocent 3 accepted this offer.
The Fourth Crusade
The Pope was not so lucky in the fight against Muslims. Following his predecessors, Innocent 3 tried to recapture Jerusalem from the infidels, and to this end he blessed the Fourth Crusade. ATIn 1198, a decree was issued according to which a tax of 2.5% of the income of the church was established on the organization of a military campaign. Money was collected for several years, but they were never enough. According to the plan, the crusaders were supposed to cross the Mediterranean on Venetian ships. However, having arrived in the trading republic, the princes and knights could not pay the amount required from them (84 thousand silver marks).
Enterprising Doge of Venice Enrico Dandolo offered the crusaders to help him capture the Hungarian city of Zara on the Adriatic coast. In exchange for support, the elderly politician promised to still transport the army, which was striving to get to Palestine. As a result, Zara was captured and plundered. The fall of a Christian city in the heart of Europe was accompanied by looting and killing of civilians.
Pope Innokenty 3, who learned about the incident, was furious. He excommunicated all participants in the campaign from the church. Soon, however, politics intervened. The general anathema meant the final failure of the campaign, which could still be saved. In addition, the pope was not going to quarrel with the feudal lords from all over Europe. After weighing all the pros and cons, the pontiff lifted the anathema, leaving the curse only on the initiators of the attack on Zara, the Venetians.
Fall of Constantinople
The worst, however, was yet to come. The crusaders made contact with the deposed Byzantine emperor Alexios, who asked them to help him regain his throne. In exchange for this, the applicant promised to support the Catholics in theirwar against the Muslims with reinforcements and money. He also agreed to subordinate the Greek Church to the Western one. A tempting offer turned the plans of the crusaders and the Venetians. In 1204 they captured and sacked one of the greatest cities of the Middle Ages, Constantinople. On the ruins of Byzantium, the Catholic Latin Empire was created, in which the power belonged to the Franks.
Pope Innocent 3 tried to stop the feudal lords heading to Constantinople. He failed to do so. Moreover, no unification of churches ever took place. The split between Catholics and Orthodox only widened. However, Innocent 3, whose brief biography is an example of a pontiff who relentlessly persecuted apostates and infidels, did not lose faith in the effectiveness of the crusader movement.
Fight against heretics
Even at the beginning of the XI century in the French province of Languedoc, a Christian sect of the Albigenses arose (in modern science they began to be called Cathars). They denied the sacraments of the church, sacred images, and the saints themselves. Most of the Cathars concentrated in the south-west of France. They were helped by some bishops who were dissatisfied with church orders, as well as local we althy aristocrats.
After ascending the papal throne, Innocent set about eradicating apostates. It is curious that for a start he sent negotiators to the heretics, among whom were St. Dominic and Abbot Sito. In 1209, an attempt at a diplomatic settlement failed, and the pontiff announcedthe beginning of a new crusade that ended up lasting twenty years.
Legend of the Franciscans
In 1209, not only did the crusade against the Albigensians begin, but the first great mendicant order of the Franciscans was created. The history of its appearance formed the basis of a popular medieval legend. Preacher Francis of Assisi brought his followers to Rome, wanting to get permission from the Pope to create a new religious order. This man had no connections in the upper echelons of the church. However, his popularity among the poor and his own charisma helped him convince the Catholic bishops to organize a meeting between the traveler and the pontiff.
According to legend, Innocent 3 established the Franciscan order only after he had a dream in which St. Francis held the Lateran Basilica with his own hands. Prior to this sign, he was suspicious of the unknown itinerant preacher, of whom there were a great many in Italy at that time. Many of them were no different from holy fools and sectarians.
Francis was not like other false messiahs in that he preached asceticism, love of neighbor and the desire for poverty. His followers began to be called "little brothers". Innocent 3 founded the Franciscan order only after his doubts were dispelled by a mystical dream. However, if there was a sign, it turned out to be prophetic. The order quickly became extremely popular. Using the patronage of the Catholic Church, he consistently increased the ranks of his members. In just ten years, there were already 3,000man, which for that time was a significant figure.
Dominican and Teutonic Order
The trend towards the emergence and expansion of new Catholic orders under Innocent was not limited to the Franciscans alone. In his era, the community of St. Dominic appeared in Toulouse. She became the basis of another order. Innocent did not have time to bless its creation because of his sudden death. Instead, in 1216, it was the successor Honorius III who did it. The Dominican order was educational - its monks were engaged in theological research in monasteries and university cities throughout Europe.
In 1199 Innocent issued a bull granting autonomy to another community of pilgrimage protectors in Palestine. This was the beginning of the Teutonic Order, which later moved to the B altic, where its knights fought with the pagans and Russian specific principalities. The organization was subordinate not only to the head of the church, but also to the imperial authorities.
The Teutonic Order and Pope Innocent 3 have been cooperating for many years. The pontiff patronized Heinrich Walpot, the first Grand Master of this community. In 1215, Innocent initiated a crusade against the Prussians. It was the Teutonic Order that became the driving force in that campaign. The Eastern policy of Innocent himself was not limited to the fight against the pagans. Back in 1204, he proposed to Volhynia Prince Roman Mstislavovich to accept Catholicism and receive the title of King of Galicia. These negotiations ended in nothing, since Rurikovich did not want to changefaith.
Bulla Venerabilem
The papal bulls of Innocent 3, important for their era, diplomatically explained to contemporaries the position of the Holy See on key religious and political issues. The most famous such document of this pontiff was the Venerabilem, published in 1202. The bull contained theses in which the head of the church briefly explained his attitude to the imperial power.
In Venerabilem, Innocent confirmed the right of the German princes to elect a king. In the Holy Roman Empire, it was he who became emperor. At the same time, only the pope could anoint him to the kingdom and crown him. If he considered a candidate unworthy of the imperial title, then the princes had to elect another person. Innocent argued his privilege by the fact that the church at all times needed a secular patron and protector. In the event of the inability of the princes to elect a worthy candidate, the pontiff reserved the decisive right to appoint a new emperor. Soon he had to use these powers.
Castling of Emperors
Bulla Venerabilem has become the next stage in the struggle between secular and ecclesiastical authorities in Western Europe. Innocent sought to stop the growth of the influence of the emperors, including the accession to their possessions of the Sicilian kingdom. The young Frederick II then claimed the throne, but he could not take the throne as a child. Meanwhile, half of the German princes wanted Philip of Swabia to become emperor, while the other half supported Otto of Brunswick. On thethe candidacy of the latter was also stopped by Innocent III. The Pope anointed Otto as king in 1209.
However, having gained power, the new emperor refused to obey the policy of the pontiff. He began to restore his imperial influence in Italy and Sicily, which were forbidden to him. Then Innocent excommunicated Otto from the church. In 1212, the Pope promised the imperial dignity to the grown-up Frederick (he became emperor eight years later, after the death of his patron and guardian).
Otto, on the other hand, lost his monarchical influence after he was defeated at the Battle of Bouvine in 1214, when he was defeated by the French king Philip II Augustus. A few months later he resigned his title of emperor. Deprived of the support of the electors and the pontiff, Otto IV died due to dysentery that struck him in 1218. In all this political struggle that engulfed Europe at the beginning of the 13th century, a clear characteristic of Pope Innocent III can be traced. Under him, the institution of the papacy reached the peak of its secular influence on the monarchs of the Old World.
Conflict with John Landless
The relations of the Holy See with England were also difficult at that time. In 1207, Innocent appointed Stephen Langton as the new Archbishop of Canterbury. The English king John Landless refused to recognize the protege of Rome. For this, the head of the Catholic world imposed an interdict on the country, banning religious services from being held in it. In response, John described all the church property in England, thanks to which he earned an incredibleamount of 100 thousand pounds. It seemed that the conflict with the spiritual authorities only benefited him.
As the legend of Innocent 3 says, according to his dreams, he decided to approve the founding of the Franciscan order, but in real politics, the pontiff was guided by much more objective reasons in his decisions. Seeing the stubbornness of the English monarch, the pope excommunicated him from the church. British bishops voluntarily went into exile.
The conflict went on for several years. Finally, in 1213, John, who also fought with his feudal lords, submitted to Innocent. After that, the pope began to protect the king. He forbade the French monarch Philip II Augustus to declare war on England because of claims to Normandy. In addition, Pope Innocent 3, whose biography was associated with a long-standing pilgrimage to Canterbury, excommunicated the barons who tried to deprive John the Landless, who signed the Magna Carta, of power.
The Fourth Lateran Council and death
The culmination of Innocent III's pontificate was the Fourth Council of the Lateran. It opened in November 1215. 400 archbishops and bishops, as well as several patriarchs of the Eastern churches, arrived at the landmark event. At the same time, there were no Greek hierarchs. Even eleven years later, the horror of the sack of Constantinople scared the Byzantines away from any collaboration with the Catholics.
The Council promulgated more than seventy canons on a variety of issues related to religious life. For example, he forbadeChristians to have commercial relations with Jews. Discrimination against Jews was a characteristic feature of the era, and Innokenty and his entourage were people brought up by their time.
The Pope left behind not only the decisions of the Lateran Council and bulls, but also thousands of letters. Many of them were devoted to questions of law: as you know, the pontiff was an outstanding medieval lawyer. The original collection of his correspondence was deposited with the University of Bologna.
Innocent 3, whose photos of medieval images show a still quite young man, died on July 16, 1216 in Perugia at the age of 55. The cause of the early death of the pontiff was malaria. Innocent fell ill on the road to northern Italy, where he went after the completion of the Lateran Council to settle disputes between Pisa and Genoa. The pope hoped for help from the two republics in organizing a new Fifth Crusade. He was buried in Perugia. Innocent's remains were transferred to Rome in 1891.
