Pope Innocent III

Pope Innocent III (Latin: Innocentius III; born Lotario de' Conti di Segni; 22 February 1161 – 16 July 1216) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Papal States from 8 January 1198 until his death in 1216.

Pope Innocent was one of the most powerful and influential of the medieval popes. He exerted a wide influence over the Christian states of Europe, claiming supremacy over all of Europe's kings. He was central in supporting the Catholic Church's reforms of ecclesiastical affairs through his decretals and the Fourth Lateran Council. This resulted in a considerable refinement of Western canon law. He is furthermore notable for using interdict and other censures to compel princes to obey his decisions, although these measures were not uniformly successful.

Innocent greatly extended the scope of the Crusades, directing crusades against Muslim Iberia and the Holy Land as well as the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars in southern France. He organized the Fourth Crusade of 1202–1204, which ended in the sack of Constantinople. Although the attack on Constantinople went against his explicit orders, and the Crusaders were subsequently excommunicated, Innocent reluctantly accepted this result, seeing it as the will of God to reunite the Latin and Eastern Orthodox Churches. In the event, the sack of Constantinople and the subsequent period of Frankokratia heightened the hostility between the Latin and Greek churches; the Byzantine Empire was restored in 1261, albeit in a much weaker state.

Lotario de' Conti was born in Gavignano, near Anagni, southeast of Rome. His father, Trasimondo de' Conti di Segni (de comitibus Signiae), Count belonging to the notables of the city of Segni, was from the family of the counts of Segni, who eventually produced nine cardinals and four popes, including Gregory IX, Alexander IV, and Innocent XIII. Lotario's mother, Clarissa Scotti (Romani de Scotti), was according to some scholars related to Pope Clement III.

Lotario received his early education in Rome, probably at the Camaldolese Benedictine abbey of Sant'Andrea al Celio under Peter Ismael. He studied theology in Paris under the theologians Peter of Poitiers, Melior of Pisa, and Peter of Corbeil, and (possibly) jurisprudence in Bologna, according to the Gesta (between 1187 and 1189). As pope, Lotario was to play a major role in the shaping of canon law through conciliar canons and decretal letters.

Shortly after the death of Alexander III (30 August 1181), Lotario returned to Rome and held various ecclesiastical offices during the short reigns of Lucius III, Urban III, Gregory VIII, and Clement III, being ordained a Subdeacon by Gregory VIII and reaching the rank of Cardinal-Priest under Clement III in 1191.

As a cardinal, Lotario wrote De Miseria Condicionis Humane "On the Misery of the Human Condition". The work was very popular for centuries, surviving in more than 700 manuscripts. Although he never returned to the complementary work he intended to write, On the Dignity of Human Nature, Bartolomeo Facio (1400–1457) took up the task writing De excellentia ac praestantia hominis.

Celestine III died on 8 January 1198. Before his death he had urged the College of Cardinals to elect Giovanni di San Paolo as his successor, but Lotario de' Conti was elected pope in the ruins of the ancient Septizodium, near the Circus Maximus in Rome after only two ballots on the very day on which Celestine III died. He was only thirty-seven years old at the time. He took the name Innocent III, maybe as a reference to his predecessor Innocent II (1130–1143), who had succeeded in asserting the papacy's authority over the emperor (in contrast with Celestine III's recent policy).