Pope Innocent VIII

“ Christianity under their guidance, by the powerful religious exaltation which it inspired in the hearts of all men, became a potent factor in all forms of art. From Pope Innocent III to Boniface VIII probably no other series of Popes have been so misunderstood and so misrepresented by subsequent generations, as certainly the Popes of no other century did so much to awaken the enthusiasm of Christians for all modes of religious development, and be it said though credit for this is {139} only too often refused them, also for educational, charitable and social betterment. ”

“ Innocent III was a great and good Pope, but he lived in a turbulent age. During fourteen years of his reign two rivals, Philip and Otto, were rending Europe with their struggles for the supreme honours of the Holy Roman Empire; the Albigensian heresy was holding a hideous carnival of sacrilege, carnage, and obscenity in some of its fairest lands; Rome itself was the scene of ever-recurring battles between the great nobles, who would ride forth in the morning followed by great companies of armed men, on the chance of meeting an enemy or an enemy’s retainer to kill. ”

“ The first act of Innocent's papacy was the very legitimate attempt to establish his own authority and independence at home. The long subsistence of the idea that only a Pope-king with enough of secure temporal ascendency to keep him free at least from the influence of other sovereigns, could be safe in the exercise of his spiritual functions—is curious when we think of the always doubtful position of the Popes, who up to this time and indeed for long after retained the most unsteady footing in their own metropolis, the city which derived all its importance from them. ”

“ A very beautiful modern writer gives us the true character of Innocent III. It is fair to judge of all the Popes as this man has been judged; he is a correct model of the whole, and I doubt not but, taking him all and all, he is the best model that has been given of a Romish Pope. ”

“ In 1208, however, Philip, who had been reconciled with Rome in the previous year, was assassinated, and Otto, with Innocent's approval, mounted the throne. To the intense indignation of the Pope, the new Emperor at once cast his oaths of fidelity to the wind and told Innocent to confine himself to spiritual matters. He annexed Tuscany and Spoleto, in spite of all the Pope's entreaties and threats, and was about to march against Naples and Apulia when Innocent launched against him a sentence of excommunication and deposition. ”

“ The century opened with one of the greatest of the Popes on the throne, Innocent III, and it closed with the most misunderstood of Popes, who is in spite of this one of the worthiest successors of Peter, Boniface VIII. During the century there had been such men as Honorius IV, the Patron of Learning, Gregory IX, to whom Canon Law owes so much, and John XXI, who had been famous as a scientist before becoming Pope. There are such scholars as St. Thomas of Aquin, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, St. ”

“ For the Lord Jesus says, 'I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.'" And in accordance with this principle the Dictatus Papae lays it down that "the Roman Church has never erred, nor, as Scripture testifies, will it ever err." Innocent III pertinently asks how he could confirm others in the faith, which is recognised as a special duty of his office, unless he himself were firm in the faith. But many writers, including Innocent himself, believed that it was possible for a Pope to err in some individual point, and that it was the duty of the Church to convert him. ”

“ In none of his undertakings was the Pope so hotly in earnest. There is something of the shrillness of a man who has found himself impotent in many undertakings in the passion which Innocent throws into this. "Rise, soldier of Christ!" he cries to the king of France; "up, most Christian prince! The groans of the Church rise to your ears, the blood of the just cries out: up, then, and judge my cause: gird on your sword; think of the unity of the cross and the altar, that unity taught us by Moses, by Peter, by all the fathers. Let not the bark of the Church make shipwreck. ”

“ Through the untimely death of the Pope, however, while he was going to persuade Pisa to join in the crusade, the crusade did not mature, but later the Popes were not slow in claiming the leadership granted in this instance by the council to Innocent III.
In no direction did Innocent III. accomplish more than in his uncompromising attack on heresy. It must never be forgotten that heresy was the greatest crime of the Middle Ages. God had planted His Church on earth, appointed the Pope as vice-gerent, and prescribed laws and dogmas in the Bible and the canons to govern the Church. ”

“ Pope Innocent III., whose pontificate began just before the century opened, and occupied the first fifteen years of it, well deserves a place beside Francis the Saint, Thomas the Scholar, Dante the Poet, and Louis the Monarch of this great century. More than any other single individual he was responsible for the great development of the intellectual life that took place, but at the same time his wonderfully broad influence enabled him to initiate many of the movements that meant most for human uplift and for the alleviation of suffering in this period. ”

“ They attempted to attack the Saracens first at Tunis, and there Louis died of fever. The crusades perished with him. [14]
POPE AND EMPEROR With the wane of the crusading fervor waned also the power of the popes. Innocent had extended his authority by terror and physical force. But men soon ceased to find religious inspiration for such "holy wars," and the calls of later popes fell upon deafened ears. The democratic policy of Innocent's predecessors had rallied all Italy around them ”

“ Toward the end of his life, Innocent held a general council in the basilica of St. John Lateran. A vast gathering of bishops heads of orders, and secular dignitaries gave brilliancy to the gathering and enhanced the glory of the Pontiff. Enthroned over more than four hundred bishops, the Pope proudly declared the law to the world. "Two things we have specially to heart," wrote Innocent, in summoning the assembly, "the deliverance of the Holy Land and the reform of the Church Universal." In its vast collection of seventy canons, the Lateran Council strove hard to carry out the Pope's programme. ”

“ It seemed as if, after a century of delays, the Papacy was going to enjoy the inheritance of Matilda, and Innocent eagerly set himself to work to provide for its administration. In the north the Pope maintained friendly relations with the rival communities of the Lombard plain. But his most immediate and brilliant triumph was in establishing his authority over Rome and the Patrimony of St. Peter. On his accession he found his lands just throwing off the yoke of the German garrisons that had kept them in subjection during Henry VI.’s lifetime. |The subjection of Rome and of the Patrimony of St. ”

“ There was much persecution, but it was not systematic. There is reason to think that in the pursuit of heresy the Church was mainly guided by considerations of its temporal interest, and was roused to severe action only when the spread of false doctrine threatened to reduce its revenues or seemed a menace to society. At the end of the twelfth century Innocent III became Pope and under him the Church of Western Europe reached the height of its power. He and his immediate successors are responsible for imagining and beginning an organized movement to sweep heretics out of Christendom. ”

“ If this happened where there was no Apostolic See to build upon, but simply the privileges of the royal city, how much more in the case of Rome, which stood alone in the West the single object of common reverence; "since it is well known," says this same Pope Innocent, "that there were no churches founded by any one, either in Italy, the Gauls, Spain, Africa, Sicily, or in the adjacent islands, unless by those whom the Apostle St. Peter, or his successors, had appointed Bishops." [46] So that the Pope, on the Patriarchal theory, was the common father of the whole West. ”

“ The system of Gregory VII. made no claim of doctrinal infallibility for the Holy See, though his ignorance of history led him to suppose that no heretic had ever presided over the Roman church, and his understanding of Luke xxii. 32 made him confidently expect that none ever would. Innocent III., indeed, publicly acknowledged that even the pope might err in matters of faith, and then, but only then, become amenable to the judgment of the church. And Innocent IV., fifty years later, taught that the pope might err. It is therefore wrong to say, “I believe what the pope believes;” ”

“ The Christian bishop has become important enough for his election to count in profane history. Paganism is writhing in death pangs; Christianity is growing haughty and wanton in its triumph.
Innocent I., at the opening of the fifth century, seems the first pope who grasped the conception of Rome's universal ecclesiastical dominion. The capture of Rome by Alaric ended the city's claims to temporal supremacy; it confirmed the spiritual ascendancy of her bishop throughout the West. ”

“ Interdict was followed by excommunication and threatened deposition. At last the English King surrendered his crown to the papal agent Pandulf, and, like Peter of Aragon, received it back as a vassal of the papacy, bound by an annual tribute.
Nor were these the only kings that sought the support of the great Pope. The schismatic princes of the East vied in ardor with the Catholic princes of the West in their quest of Innocent's favor. King Leo of Armenia begged for his protection. The Bulgarian prince John besought the Pope to grant him a royal crown. ”

“ Wetzer and Welte, Kirchenlexikon, 2nd ed., 1481. The most elaborate biography is H. Reuter, Geschichte Alexanders III. und der Kirche seiner Zeit (3 vols., 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1860) . (W. W. R.*)
ALEXANDER IV. (Rinaldo) , pope from 1254 to 1261, was, like Innocent III. and Gregory IX., a member of the family of the counts of Segni. His uncle Gregory IX. made him cardinal deacon in 1227 and cardinal bishop of Ostia in 1231. On the death of Innocent IV. he was elected pope at Naples on the 12th of December 1254. He is described as a stout man, kindly, cheerful, but of no great brilliancy. ”

“ Innocent, however, was not so good a Guelf as his party, for the Pope was the guardian and chief defender, during his troubled royal childhood, of Frederic of Sicily, afterwards the Emperor Frederic II., but at the beginning of Pope Innocent's reign a very helpless baby prince, fatherless, and soon, also, motherless, and surrounded by rapacious Germans, each man fighting for a scheme of his own, by which to transfer the insecure crown to his own head, or at least to rob it of both power and revenue. ”

“ The Emperor again had said to the Papal Nuncio, "Your Pope, my lord, has an easy time of it, with Madame Olympia to put him to sleep."
Driven by these and many other such manifestations [Pg 358] of public feeling, Innocent determined to make a great effort. He announced to Olympia with every expression of regret for the hard necessity, that she must quit the Vatican; and knowing well what he would have to endure, if he exposed himself to her reproaches and entreaties, he forbade her to come for the future into his presence. ”

“ We find him rebuking two priests of Constantinople, one of whom had only preached five times between his expulsion and October, while the other had not preached once; setting on foot a mission to the pagans of Phœnicia; anxious to have a good bishop consecrated for the Goths; drawing tighter the old ties which bound him to the clergy of Antioch, and employing part of his friend's contributions in the redemption of captives, and the relief of the poor.
Pope Innocent now boldly espoused his cause, as that of a confessor for righteousness' sake. ”

“ The Conclave assembled at Naples and elected a nephew of Gregory IX., who took the name of Alexander IV. The new Pope was described by Matthew Paris as ‘kindly and pious, assiduous in prayer and strenuously ascetic, but easily moved by flatterers and inclined to avarice.’ He had not the inflexible will of his predecessor and (though he continued Innocent’s policy) he was not very successful in his efforts, despite the fact that it was easier to carry on the war against the Hohenstaufen now that the legitimate stock was almost extinct and Germany entirely isolated from Sicily. ”

“ They preached Papal indulgences, they stirred up men to crusades in behalf of the Papacy, they gathered money for the Papal use. ... The Emperor Frederic II., who had been brought up under Innocent's guardianship, proved the greatest enemy of the newly-won sovereignty of the Pope. King of Sicily and Naples, Frederic was resolved to assert again the Imperial pretensions of North Italy, and then win back the Papal acquisitions in the centre; if his plan had succeeded, the Pope would have lost his independence and sunk to be the instrument of the house of Hohenstaufen. ”

“ It is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trodden under foot of men. For this reason much is demanded from him to whom much is given."
Thus Innocent began his career, solemnly conscious of the greatness of his position. But the reader will perceive that nothing could be more evangelical than his doctrine. Exalting as he does the high claims of Peter, he never falls into the error of supposing him to be the Rock on which the foundations of the Church are laid. On the other hand his idea of the Pope as beneath God but above men, lower than God but greater than men, is startling. ”