I'm Innocent I Tell Ya!

Dear Folk,

On this day July 16, 1216 one of the greatest medieval popes went to find out if what he had been preaching was righteous or just plain mean. Lotario de' Conti, son of a count, nephew of a pope, was Innocent III.

Lotario was born around the year 1160 in Anagni, Italy. Well, it was not quite Italy in those days; there were many feuding and occupied city-states. His dad, Trasimund, was count of Segni. Lotario was a nerd: studied everything he could, hung out in Rome, Paris and Bologna. He became a lawyer specializing in church law. His uncle, Pope Clement III, made Lotario a cardinal. That meant he was able to elect popes and was in line to become one. After Uncle Clement there came Celestine III and then in Feb 22, 1198, Lotario was made pontiff himself. Pontiff means bridge builder. Interesting.

Innocent III supported kicking the Germans out of Italy. The Holy Roman Empire was none of the three at the time. The Germans and Swabs were battling for control of it. Otto IV, when he finally won the crown, continued the repression of the Church. Fredrick II (son of the late emperor Henry VI), who defeated Otto IV, had been Innocent's ward so you would think that Freddie would be delighted in returning the favor of guarding the Church. Freddie turned out to be a tad forgetful or maybe Innocent wasn't as innocent as his name. We will probably follow up on his story in a different musing.

Innocent was pope during the reigns of Philip of France, Richard the Lionheart and King John Lackland of England. When John needed to get his country out of excommunication (a dire strait for a Roman Catholic country) and a baronial rebellion, he made England a fief of the Vatican. Pedro II of Aragon did likewise. Think on that: Innocent III was sovereign lord not just over the Vatican, the whole of the Roman Catholic Church, the kingdoms of Aragon, and England. Not too shabby! He became the Judge Judy of his time and had many tough cases brought before him. Innocent even declared the Magna Carta null and void because it was extorted from his vassal by the threat of violence.

Remember when we mused on the Cathari and the Albigensian crusade? Yup, it was Innocent who declared the need for it. He encouraged Dominic de Guzman to kill all those heretical folk. He recognized Dominic's warrior friars as an order. To ensure everyone was on the same page of the Daily Missal, so to speak, he made a rule at the Fourth Lateran Council that all Catholics had to receive communion at least once a year, preferably on Easter. To give him his due, Innocent also recognized the spiritual craziness of Francis of Assisi as Divinely inspired.

Innocent III also had that divine crusading spirit against the Moslems. There was heathen to whack! He believed that the Church should be in charge of crusades not worldly kings. He ruled a husband did not even have to get his wife's permission to go on crusade. He sent the call to barons and knights, telling all the Christian kings to kiss and make up for just a second so that their people might be released to follow the pope's summons. Richard and Philip did declare a five year truce. Unfortunately Richard took that crossbow bolt which "elected" Prince John who promptly restarted the war.

The rest of the fourth crusade did not do much better. The Venetians, who were supposed to be simply ferrying the troops, played politics right heavily. Well, there was a significant lack of turn out for the crusade. Money promised the Venetians just did not show. The crusaders who were camped on the Lido, a small island outside of town, were running up enormous bills. As a relief, the Venetians struck a bargain: if the crusaders did a little contract job or two for them, the debt could be postponed until real looting and pillaging down in the Holy Land began. Seemed like a small request. The crusaders wound up attacking the Catholic city of Zara (under the king of Hungary, himself a dedicated crusader) and then sacking the Greek Orthodox city of Constantinople. In both cases Pope Innocent told them not to do it, but business is business. You know? Those battles await telling another day, I fear. Innocent excommunicated the crusaders. Knowing that those Moslems for the most part would remained unwhacked, King Aimery of Jerusalem signed a six year peace treaty with Saladin.

It was while trying to get another crusade going that Innocent III died at Perugia on July 16, 1216.

What have we learned from all of this? If you kill lots of folks, it helps if you call yourself Innocent? The folks who build the weapons and transports of war often are the ones who wind up directing it? In this world the smart and talented rise to the top but it helps to have an uncle in the business? No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy? I think I like: it is bad luck to tell husbands to disregard the wished of their wives.

As always, please forward these scribblings to whomever you like. Do keep my name and sig. intact. Remember what happened to the folk in Zara.

As innocent as any pope,
J. Ellsworth Weaver

SCA - Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS - Polyphemus Theognis
TRV - Sebastian Yeats