Pope Innocent II

Gregorio Papareschi reigned as Innocent II from 1130 to 1143, and spent eight of those years proving he was pope at all. Two elections were held on the same day in February 1130 by rival groups of cardinals, producing Innocent and Anacletus II. Anacletus held Rome and the papal finances; Innocent had to leave Italy altogether. What decided it was not law but advocacy. Bernard of Clairvaux took up Innocent's cause and carried France, England, Germany and the new religious orders with him, largely by force of personality and reputation. Lothair III of Germany supported him in exchange for being crowned emperor, which Innocent did in 1133. The schism ended only with Anacletus's death in 1138. Innocent then called the Second Lateran Council in 1139, which annulled his rival's acts, declared clerical marriages invalid rather than merely unlawful, and condemned tournaments and the crossbow when used against Christians. He was less successful against the Normans of southern Italy: he led an army against Roger II of Sicily in 1139, was captured, and had to recognise Roger's kingdom as the price of his release. He also condemned the teachings of Peter Abelard at Bernard's urging in 1141, and quarrelled with Louis VII of France over an episcopal appointment. He was buried in Santa Maria in Trastevere, the church he rebuilt, in a sarcophagus said to have been taken from the tomb of the emperor Hadrian. The schism he survived was the last of the great papal schisms until Avignon, and the manner of its resolution - by persuasion across Europe rather than by control of Rome - marked a real shift in where papal authority came from.

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