Pope Innocent III and His Times

About one-third of all popes throughout history have been canonized saints. And yet, if you have ever studied medieval history, most of your teachers will admit that the most significant medieval pope was Lothario Conti. Thankfully, we have Joseph Clayton’s Pope Innocent III and His Times [r. 1198-1216], for providing a fine introduction to Innocent’s life and papacy. Clayton gives the best reason canonization of this pope has scared people off to this day. “With the passing of Innocent III passed the fullness of papal power and papal fullness in Europe.” [p. 193].

We are fortunate to have excellent quality reprints of this and other vintage books thanks to Kessinger Publishing Rare Reprints in Whitefish, Montana. I don’t plan to visit Montana again soon—though Glacier National Park, which I have toured, is hauntingly beautiful and very close—but someday I will make my way to Whitefish to visit this operation. Kessinger’s mission is the restoration of out-of-print books for resale in today’s contemporary market. I strongly recommend you visit the publisher’s website and scroll down to do a few funky searches of the old books in the dozens of classifications listed. Kessinger is linked to Amazon [and in some cases Kindle] for ease in sampling and shopping. My purchased copy of Innocent III was published in 1941.

I first came across the name of Innocent III in the context of joining the Franciscan Order. It was Innocent who gave permission to both Francis and Dominic to continue their brotherhoods to preach a message of Catholic faith by word and example. In 1968 we were given a dramatic account of Pope Innocent’s nightmare in which the mother church of Rome, St. John Lateran, was falling over on its side until a humble man miraculously pushed it back upon its foundations. Clayton records a more practical account. In the early thirteenth century the Italian countryside was filled with independent bands of those protesting the sins of the Church and its leaders; it was not the golden age of clerical example. Pope Innocent was impressed that Francis and Dominic had sought his permission, recognizing him as Vicar of Christ and professing obedience, a commodity in small supply.

Clayton provides several maps of Eurasia to illustrate the political and religious complexity facing a new pope in 1198, and these maps cannot do justice to the numerous mystical movements which passed into and out of existence holding beliefs contrary to the body of Catholic creed and practice. Innocent III was an eminently practical man, trained and studied in theology and law. He was of the long-held but rapidly declining belief that his world and mission was the extension of the Holy Roman Empire, dating from Emperor Constantine [r. 306-337] in which the pope held unquestionable religious authority over the earth and gave legitimacy to even the lay emperors of the Empire.  

Unfortunately for Innocent, the kings, princes, and church leaders around the empire did not share his vision of papal supreme authority, particularly in matters of money and reform of lifestyle. A pope with little land [“the papal states”] and no standing army had few tools to establish order, and Innocent was reluctantly forced to compromise to achieve what he could of Church order. This is noticeably clear in his advocacy of the Fourth Crusade [see my review of The Fourth Crusade.]  It was becoming harder to recruit foot soldiers without promises from the pope of plenary indulgences—and this, three centuries before Luther--and the best military commanders to lead a crusade were engaged in protecting and/or expanding their holdings at home.

The Fourth Crusade [1203-1204] is possibly the medieval Church’s greatest scandal. Once dispatched by sea to Jerusalem to reclaim the Holy Land from the Islamic world, the crusade—in partnership with Venice—turned instead to the plunder of Christian Constantinople, the seat of Eastern Christianity and home of the majestic church, the Hagia Sophia. The violence and plundering of Constantinople ended any hopes for reunion between the Western Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Innocent neither ordered or approved the actions of this Crusade against baptized Christians [the Orthodox], but it happened on his watch, and he is forever associated with it. And he would advocate for a fifth crusade before his death in 1216.

Innocent devoted much of his papacy to negotiating peace between royalties and regions in what is today, Europe. He battled nobility for two prime reasons: to restore the pax Romana of a much earlier time, to end simony [the purchases of religious offices], and rejection of papal appointees. Clayton provides considerable detail, region by region, to papal efforts toward peace, good order, and clerical wholesomeness.

England is the best example. King John, whose understanding of his powers included the appointment of bishops who supported him, was challenged by Innocent on the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Innocent’s candidate to Canterbury was Stephen Langton [r. 1207-1228] who would become a major player in the watershed Magna Carta events. Meanwhile, in southern France, the Albigensian heresy was attracting so many followers that Innocent would call for a domestic crusade to suppress its spread.

The Albigensian heresy and its popularity gives us a pulse on the religious hunger and misunderstandings of Innocent’s time. Wikipedia describes the Albigensian movement:

The Albigensian Crusade (French: Croisade des albigeois), also known as the Cathar Crusade (1209–1229), was a military and ideological campaign initiated by Pope Innocent III to eliminate supposed heresy (nowdays grouped under the name Catharism) in Languedoc, what is now southern France. The Crusade was prosecuted primarily by the French crown and promptly took on a political aspect. It resulted in the significant reduction of practicing Cathars and a realignment of the County of Toulouse with the French crown. The distinct regional culture of Languedoc was also diminished. The Albigensian so-called Cathars may have originated from an anti-materialist reform movement advocating a return to the Christian message of perfection, poverty and preaching. The reforms may have been in some part a reaction against the often perceived scandalous and dissolute lifestyles of some Catholic clergy.

Clayton is emphatic that Innocent was a religious man of good intentions who ruled in a grim time and draws his book to conclusion with a description of the Church Council Fourth Lateran, planned and chaired by the pontiff himself. The results were mixed. The Council passed numerous statutes on the conduct and reform of the clergy [who were ordered not to perform surgery in the course of their duties, for example.] IV Lateran set the rule of annual communion and confession for all the laity, which tells us the bar was set pretty low for local parochial life. This council also formally defined the word “transubstantiation” as the doctrinal term for the change in the bread and wine at Mass into the Body and Blood of Christ.

On the other hand, Innocent sought and received the Council’s recommendation for yet another crusade, a fifth. Given the spiritual and material damage rendered by the fourth crusade, the only logical reason for planning a fifth was the powerful belief of Innocent that God wanted the holy places in Christian hands. Innocent died in 1216, and the actual military campaign took place during the reign of Pope Honorius. The crusaders of the fifth effort were defeated because the high command did not realize the Nile River floods every spring.

Innocent III was followed by a century of popes whose claims became more extravagant as their power diminished in every sense. Within a century of Innocent’s death, the successor of Peter was hijacked to Avignon in France and his successors resided there for nearly a century.