Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/93

 INNOCENT 83 belonged to the noble Roman family of Scotti. His own baptismal name was Lothario. After receiving the rudiments of his education in Home, he studied theology under Peter of Corbeil at Paris, and canon law at Bologna, On his return to Home in 1181 he became a canon of St Peter s ; and through family influence, combined with the increasing evidence he gave of remarkable ability, his subsequent promotion was rapid. By Gregory VIII. he was appointed one of the subdeacons, and in 1190 (while barely thirty) he was, at the instance of his maternal uncle Clement III., made cardinal-deacon of St Sergius and St Bacchus. On the death of Clement (1191), who was succeeded by Celestine III., a member of the rival house of Orsini, Cardinal Lothario was but little employed in church affairs ; the unsought leisure which he now possessed he devoted to the composition of three works, two of which have come down to our times. Of these the most remark able by far is that entitled De Contemptii Mimdi, sive de Miseria Ihnnanx Conditionis, written &quot;in not inelegant Latin,&quot; full of the best learning of that age, and everywhere manifesting the moral depth, earnestness, and insight, if also the somewhat gloomy and severe temperament, of its author. 1 On the death of Celestine III. (January 8, 1198), Lothario was without a day s delay unanimously chosen to succeed him ; his ordination to the priesthood (hitherto he had held only deacon s orders), his episcopal consecration, and his coronation as pope (February 22, 1198), followed one another in rapid succession. The state of Europe and of the known world at that juncture was such as might have suggested even to a less able and energetic man than Innocent the ambition of once more seeking to obtain for the papacy that absolute supremacy, both spiritual and temporal, in the struggle for which his great predecessor Gregory, more than a century before him, had lost his throne, and, one might almost say, his life. The owner of the crown of Naples (Frederick II., born 1197) was an infant, incapable of protecting his dominions from the numerous adventurers by whom they were overrun ; the Lombard republics were at deadly feud with one another, or rent by increasing domestic faction ; the empire was convulsed by the struggles of the rival claimants to the throne rendered vacant by the death of Henry VI.; in France Philip Augustus since 1180 had been disgusting his subjects with his tyranny and scandalous vice; at Constantinople the cruel and wicked Alexius III., after dethroning his elder brother Isaac Angelus, was struggling to maintain his precarious grasp of the sceptre, while the kingdom of Jerusalem, which half a century before had extended along nearly the whole coast of Syria, was now almost entirely confined to the city of Acre. Innocent s first care was to deliver Rome itself from the claims to supreme authority asserted by the prefect, who for many years had been nominated by the emperor, but whom now he compelled to swear allegiance to himself, thus for the first time practically establishing the temporal sovereignty of the bishop of Rome over his own city. In another direction the popular rights in connexion with the choice of a &quot; senator &quot; were curtailed. Measures were next taken to free the so-called patrimony of St Peter from the various German adventurers who, professing to hold of the empire, had divided it amongst them. Markwald of Anweiler, duke of Ravenna, was by a papal army driven from the March of Ancona, with which he had been invested, and compelled to withdraw to the south of Italy ; Conrad of Lutzenberg, duke of Spoleto, was driven into Germany; Innocent personally visited Reate, Spoleto, Perugia, Todi, 1 The other extant work belonging to this period of Innocent s life
 * is the Mysteriorum Evangelicee, Leyis et Sacramenti Eucharistise

Libri VI. The De Quadripartita, Specie Nuptiarum has not survived. and everywhere was welcomed as sovereign and deliverer. His claim to&quot; the sovereignty of the duchy of Tuscany as heir of the countess Matilda, Hildebrand s friend, was successfully asserted next ; and on the death of Constantia, widow of Henry VI. of Germany, Innocent, who had been acknowledged by her as liege lord, became, as guardian of the young Frederick II., master of the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. By the help of Walter of Brienne, Diephold of Acerra was compelled to relax his hold of Apulia ; and in 1202 the death of Markwald at Palermo removed one of the most vigorous of the many troublers of Italian peace. The rivalry between Philip of Swabia, brother of Henry VI., and the Guelph Otto of Brunswick, for the imperial crown, in the next place offered a favourable opportunity for intervention in German politics after the more immediately pressing affairs of Rome and Italy had been settled. The tardy (but not reluctant) decision finally given (March 1201) by Innocent in favour of the Guelph did not indeed avert protracted civil war, resulting in humiliation and disaster both to emperor and pope ; yet ultimately the murder of Philip (June 21, 1208) paved the way for the peaceful coronation of Otto in the following 3 7 ear, and the long-continued efforts of Innocent seemed to have met with an absolute success when the new emperor not only ratified previously exacted promises faithfully to maintain the territories, fiefs, and rights of the see of Rome as these had been defined by the see itself, but also renounced even the small share in episcopal elections which had been reserved to the empire in the concordat of Worms. The triumph, it is true, proved a hollow one ; Otto soon broke his oath, claiming the kingdom of Apulia as a fief of the empire, and losing no time in commencing a war for the subjugation of Naples. Nor did his excommunication in 1211 result greatly to the advantage of the papacy, except in so far as it strikingly showed how dangerous to the individual was a collision with the supreme spiritual power. The battle of Bouvines (July 27, 1214) finally disposed of the last hopes of Otto, but by it there was left master of the field one who was destined to prove still more formidable in his opposition to ecclesiastical ascendency. The immense influence which the energy, persistence, and political skill of Innocent enabled him to wield throughout the whole duration of his pontificate in the affairs of the empire was equally exemplified in his relations with almost every other state of Christendom. Thus one of his first acts after his accession was to signify his disapproval of the conduct of Philip Augustus of France in dismissing his lawful wife Ingeburga of Denmark. By a rigorous interdict laid upon the kingdom from December 1199 to September 1200, the headstrong and refractory king was at last compelled to take her back with all the honour clue to the queen of France. So, when in England King John began to persecute the clergy in consequence of their adherence to the cause of Stephen Langton, the papal nominee to the archbishopric of Canterbury (1207), his own excommunication followed forth with; the kingdom was laid under an interdict (March 24, 1208), his subjects released from their allegiance, and his throne offered to any con queror, with effects which again were far from being such as Innocent had anticipated, but which could not fail to impress the minds of the men of that time with a new and deep sense of the vigour and far-reaching power of the vicars of Christ. In Castile, in Portugal, in Leon, in Navarre, in Denmark, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, the same story repeats itself, with equal distinctness, if with less pro minent results. Another outlet of the zeal and ambition of Innocent was found in the fifth crusade, the leading events of which, including the pact with Venice and the fall of Constantinople, have been elsewhere related (vol. vi. p. 628-9). In the west also, a new crusade against here-