Innocent IV

Innocent IV (born 12th century, Genoa—died Dec. 7, 1254, Naples) was one of the great pontiffs of the Middle Ages (reigned 1243–54), whose clash with Holy Roman emperor Frederick II formed an important chapter in the conflict between papacy and empire. His belief in universal responsibility of the papacy led him to attempt the evangelization of the East and the unification of the Christian churches.

Early life and early career

Sinibaldo Fieschi’s father, Hugo, called Fliscus, was the count of Lavagna and member of a rising family in both the economic and ecclesiastical realms. Sinibaldo, the 6th of 10 children, studied at Parma under the direction of one of three uncles who were bishops and then at Bologna in the school of the most illustrious canonists of the age, where he himself became a master of canon law. He was a canon of the cathedral of Genoa and later of Parma. He was consecrated bishop of Albenga, Italy, in 1225; in 1227 he was made vice chancellor of the Roman Church and cardinal priest of St. Lawrence in Lucina by Pope Gregory IX. He continued the work and, in great part, the spirit of Gregory IX, first as rector to the March of Ancona (1235–40), where he took up the side of the Guelphs at Camerino and at Ravenna, and later during his own reign as pope.

His study and experience in the field of law (testimony of his expertise exists in his celebrated commentary on canon law, Apparatus in quinque libros Decretalium) prepared him to enter as one of the key figures into the conflict between the church and the empire. The emperor Frederick II sought to restructure the imperial authority, with a strong state in Italy as the basis; he was convinced that he had the right to exercise autocratically his imperial power, the imperialis potestas. He thus came into head-on collision with the church’s claim to universal power, the universalis potestas, theoretically elaborated by the canonists of that time, including Sinibaldo Fieschi. According to their theory, the pope possessed universal dominion, which in the abstract juridical order extended to all kingdoms, although in the practical order he had to leave the temporal rule to the emperor and to the kings. On the basis of these two antithetical conceptions, the interests of different parties came into conflict time after time. The last phase of his conflict, which began under Gregory IX, reached its zenith under Innocent IV.

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Pontificate

Frederick II was encouraged by the election of Cardinal Fieschi on June 25, 1243, after the see of Rome had been vacant for 18 months following the brief reign of Celestine IV. He immediately entered into negotiations with the new pope, who took the name Innocent IV, to have the excommunication imposed on him by Gregory IX lifted. The Pope, however, did not trust Frederick, despite an agreement reached on March 31, 1244. He felt unsafe in Rome and secretly fled the city, interrupting the negotiations with the Emperor. Genoese galleys prepared by his relatives were waiting for him at the port of Civitavecchia to take him to Genoa and then to Lyon. Although Lyon was nominally subject to the empire, Innocent IV was under the protection of Louis IX of France.

Late in 1244 the Pope called a general council to meet in Lyon the following summer. Gregory IX had earlier announced such a council, but Frederick II had impeded it by holding as prisoners more than 100 bishops who had fallen into the hands of the Pisans in the naval battle of Meloria. Three themes were to be treated in the council: the question of the Emperor, the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre, and the defense of Christianity against the advance of the Mongols. Thaddeus of Suessa tried in vain to defend the Emperor before the council. Frederick II was solemnly condemned, his subjects were freed from their bond of loyalty to him, and he was deposed on the basis of the triple charge of perjury, sacrilege, and suspicion of heresy. The Pope himself admonished the German princes to elect a new emperor. They named Henry Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia, and, at his death in 1247, William of Holland. The condemnation of Frederick II did not obtain the desired political effects in Germany, but it did show the effectiveness of the network of ties that the papal family had succeeded in tightening in northern Italy, which contributed to the Emperor’s defeat at Parma (1247).

Frederick II died on Dec. 13, 1250. The Pope left Lyon and triumphantly returned to Rome in 1253. Meanwhile, he had to continue the struggle against Frederick II’s son Conrad IV and also to find a king to whom he could entrust the Kingdom of Sicily as a fief. The Pope offered Sicily first to Richard of Cornwall, then to Charles of Anjou, both of whom refused, and later to Henry III of England, who accepted for his son Edmund. After the death of Conrad IV in May 1254, the papal army was defeated by Manfred, Frederick II’s illegitimate son, who had become regent for Conradin, the infant son of Conrad IV. The Pope died soon after at Naples in December 1254.

Legacy

The struggle against Frederick II brings to light a striking characteristic of Innocent’s pontificate and of the period as a whole. A close relationship existed between the political activity and the personal and family fortunes of the Pope and the cardinals. Only relatives and those who received benefices could be counted upon to maintain their political loyalty beyond ideological motivations. That explains the constant presence of Innocent’s family in his ecclesiastical, political, and military affairs and his frequent recourse to the distribution of ecclesiastical benefices in their behalf. He took steps to return the expenses incurred by his nephews in their combat with Frederick II, distributed the bishoprics of England and the East to cousins, and supported the creation of a strong family estate at the foot of the Ligurian Apennines, provoking opposition from bishops and lay lords in that area.

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In this policy of giving church offices to his relatives, Innocent went far beyond what his predecessors had done and established a pattern of nepotism that came to be recognized as a normal papal prerogative as time went on. In addition, it was his habit to systematically intervene in the affairs of local churches, disposing of ecclesiastical posts in order to settle disputes, to help university students, to reward devout persons, or to help needy clergy. This long-distance intervention often made situations worse, because the Pope ended up promising people more benefices than were available. Innocent’s successor, Alexander IV, condemned the practice.

Innocent IV’s attention to all parts of Christendom and his interventions carried him beyond his conflict with the Emperor to a vivid awareness of other problems that agitated Europe even to its borders. Echoing the appeals of the Christians in Palestine, he induced Louis IX to undertake a crusade, which ended dramatically with the King’s imprisonment (1250); he sent a mission (1245–47) to the Grand Khan of the Mongols, led by Giovanni Carpini, in the hope of arresting the advance of the Mongols on eastern Europe; he established contacts with the Eastern Church to prepare for ecumenical union with Russia and the Ukraine. None of these missions attained its desired success, yet he deserves credit for ferreting out the problems in the church and establishing the bases for resolving future conflicts.

The judgment of historians about Innocent IV has been conditioned by their opinion about his struggle against Frederick II. Those who see in Frederick the forerunner of the modern lay state (Jacob Burckhardt and Hermann Kantorowicz) condemn the universalistic claims of the Pope. In general, it is still difficult for German historiographers to form a dispassionate judgment. On the part of ecclesiastics, the tendency is to emphasize Innocent IV’s missionary projects and his indisputable qualities as a canonist—his acuteness, openness, and solicitude for human dignity.