INNOCENT
13
INNOCENT
vaded the lands granted to Rainulph. In 1139 St.
Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh, left Ireland to visit
the shrine of the Apostles. Innocent received him
with great honours and made him papal legate for all
Ireland, hut would not grant him permission to resign
his see in order to join the community of St . Bernard at
Clairvaux (Bellesheim, "Ireland ", I, 356). In the East,
Innocent II curbed the pretension to independence on
the part of William, Patriarch of Jerusalem and of
Raoul, Patriarch of .\ntioch (Hergenrother, II, 410).
.\fter the death of Alberic, Archbishop of Bourges, in 1141, Louis VII of France wanted to secure the nomination of a man of his own choice whom the chapter did not consider the fit person, and they chose Pierre de La Chatre, whereupon Louis refused to ratify the election. The bishop-elect in person brought the matter to Home, and Innocent, finding after due ex- amination that the election had been made according to the requirements of ecclesiastical law, confirmed it anil himself gave the episcopal consecration. When Pierre returned to France, Louis would not allow him to enter his diocese. After useless negotiations Inno- cent placed France under interdict. Only during the reign of the next pope was the interdict removed and peace restored.
In the trouble between Alfonso of Spain and .Ailfonso Henriquez who was making Portugal an independent monarchy and had placed his kingdom under the pro- tection of the Holy See, Innocent acted as mediator (.A.schbach, "Gesch. Span. u. Port.", 1833, 304,458). Ramiro II, a monk, had been elected King of Aragon. Innocent II is said to have given him dispensation from his vows, though others claim that this is a cal- umny spread Ijy the enemies of the pope (Damberger, " We'ltgeschichte ", VIII, 202).
Several minor synods were held during the last few years of the life of Innocent, one at Sens in 1140, at Vienne in 1141 and in the same year at Vienne and Reims; in 1142 at Lagny, in which Ralph, the Duke of Vermandois is said to have been excommunicated by the legate Yvo of Chartres for having repudiated his lawful wife and married another (Hefele, X, 488). A synod was held under the presidency of the papal leg- ate 7 .\pril. 1141, at Winchester; and 7 Dec, 1141, at Westminster. During his pontificate Innocent II enrolled among the canonized saints of the Church: at Reims in 113:), St. Godeliard, Archbishop of Reims; at Pisa in 1134, St. Hugo, Bishop of Grenoble, who had died in 1132, and had been a zealous defender of the rights of Innocent; at the Lateran in 1139, St. Stur- raius. Abbot of Fulda (Ann. Pont. Cath., 1903, 412). To St. Norbert, the founder of the Premonstraten- sians, he granted in 1131 a document authorizing him to introduce his rule at the cathedral of Magdeburg (Heimbucher, "Die Orden u. Congr.", II, Pader- born, 1907, 55); to St. Bernard he in 1140 gave the church of Sts. Vincent and Anastasius near Rome (ibid., I, 42S); he also granted many privileges to others. His letters and privileges are given in Migne (P. L., CLXXIX). According to the "Liber Pontifi- calis" (ed. Duchesne, II, 379) he ordained eighteen deacons, twenty priests, and seventy bishops.
He was buried in St. .John Lateran, but seven years later was transferred to Santa Maria in Trastevere. Innocent II is praised by all. especially by St. Ber- nard, as a man of irreproachable character. His motto was: ".Adjuva nos, Deus salutaris noster". The pol- icy of Innocent is characterized in one of his letters: "If the .siicred authority of the popes and the im- perial power are imbued with mutual love, we must thank God in all humility, since then only can peace and harmony exist among Christian peoples. For there is nothing so sublime as the papacy nor so ex- alted as the imperial throne" (Weiss, V, 25).
BnisrHAR in Kirckenlex.,s. v.: Denzinger. Enchiridion (10th ed., Freiburg, 1907), 167. See also under Anacletus II. Francis Mershman.
IS OF In
Innocent III, Pope (Lot ARio de' CoNTi),oneof the
grcatot ii(i|)os of the Middle .^ges, son of Count Trasi-
niund (if Srgni and nephew of Clement III, born 1160
or 1161 at .\nagni, and died 16 June, 1216, at Perugia.
He received his early education at Rome, studied
theology at Paris, jurisprudence
at Bologna, and became a learned
theologian and one of the great-
est jurists of his time. Shortly
after the death of Alexander III
(30 .Aug., 1181) Lotario returneil
to Rome and held various ecclesi-
astical offices during the short reigns
of Lucius III, LIrban III, Gregory
VIII, and Clement III. Pope Greg-
ory VIII ordained him subdeacon,
and Clement III created him Cardi-
nal-Deacon of St. Cieorge in Velabro and Sts. Sergius
and Bacchus, in 1190. Later he became Cardinal-Priest
of St. Pudentiana. During the pontificate of Celestine
III (1191-1198), a member of the House of the Orsini,
enemies of the counts of Segni, he lived in retirement,
probably at Anagni, devoting him.self chiefly to medi-
tation and literary pursuits. Celestine III died 8
January, 1198. Previous to his death he had urged
the College of Cardinals to elect Giovanni di Colonna
as his successor; but Lotario de' Conti was elected
pope, at Rome, on the very day on which Celestine III
died. He accepted the tiara with reluctance and took
the name of Innocent III. At the time of his acces-
sion to the papacy he was only thirty-seven years of
age. The imperial throne had become vacant by
the death of Henry VI in 1197, and no successor had
as yet been elected. The tactful anrl energetic pope
made good use of the opportunity offered him by this
vacancy for the restoration of the papal power in
Rome and in the States of the Church. The Pre-
fect of Rome, who reigned over the city as the em-
peror's representative, and the senator who stood for
the communal rights and privileges of Rome, swore
allegiance to Innocent. When he had thus re-estab-
lished the papal authority in Rome, he availed himself
of every opportunity to put in practice his grand con-
cept of the papacy. Italy was tired of being ruled by
a host of German adventurers, and the pope experi-
enced little difficulty in extending his political power
over the peninsula. First he sent two cardinal leg-
ates to Markwald to demand the restoration of the Ro-
magna and the March of .\ncona to the Church. Upon
his evasive answer he was excommunicated by the leg-
ates and driven away by the papal troops. In like
manner the Duchy of Spoleto and the Districts of As-
sisi and Sora were wrested from the German knight,
Conrad von Uerslingen. The league which had been
formed among the cities of Tuscany was ratified by the
pope after it acknowledged him as suzerain.
'The death of the Emperor Henry VI left his four- year-old child, Frederick II, King of Sicily. The em- peror's widow Constance, who ruled over Sicily for her little son, was unable to cope singly against the Nor- man barons of the Sicilian Kingdom, who resented the German rule and refused to acknowledge the child- king. She appealed to Innocent III to save the Sicil- ian throne for her child. The pope made use of this opportunity to reassert papal suzerainty over Sicily, and acknowledged Frederick II as king only after Constance had surrendered certain privileges con- tained in the so-called Four Chapters, which William I had previously extorted from .\drian IV. The pope then solcmnlv invested Frederick II as King of Sicily in a Hull issuV.l about the miildleof November, 1198. Before the B\dl reached Sicily ( '(instance had died, but before her tieatli she had appointed Innocent as guar- dian of the orphan-king. With the greatest fitlelity the pope watched over the welfare of his ward during the nine years of his minority. Even the enemies of the papacy admit that Innocent was an unselfish
