Pope Innocent III
Innocent III made the papacy the arbiter of European politics and did it in eighteen years. He was elected in 1198 at thirty-seven, the youngest pope in centuries, a nobleman trained in theology at Paris and in law at Bologna, and he arrived with a fully worked out theory of the office: the pope stands between God and man, less than God and more than man, and holds the fullness of power. The practical claim was that he could intervene in any secular matter that touched sin, which is any matter at all. He used it. He excommunicated Philip Augustus of France until he took back the wife he had repudiated; he put England under interdict for six years over the appointment of an archbishop, until John surrendered the kingdom and received it back as a papal fief; and he arbitrated a disputed German imperial election and then deposed the man he had crowned. He called the Fourth Crusade in 1198, lost control of it entirely when it sacked Zara and then Constantinople, denounced both, and accepted the Latin empire that resulted. He also authorised the Albigensian crusade against the Cathars of southern France in 1209, which killed tens of thousands and destroyed the Occitan nobility. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 was the largest church assembly of the Middle Ages: transubstantiation defined, annual confession required, clerical standards tightened, and Jews and Muslims ordered to wear distinguishing dress. He approved Francis of Assisi's rule. He died in 1216. The papacy he built was at its height and had nowhere to go but down. Boniface VIII made the same claims in 1302 in more absolute language, was seized by French troops at Anagni the following year, and the popes moved to Avignon under French influence within a decade.
- Lived: 1160 CE – 1216 CE
- Nationality: Italian
- Roles: religious_leader, leader
