152 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1198-1216.
§ 36. Innocent's Training and Election.
THE brilliant pontificate of Innocent III., 1198-1216, lasted as long as the combined and uneventful reigns of his five predecessors: Lucius III., 1181-1185; Urban III., 1185-1187; Gregory VIII. less than two months, 1187; Clement III., 1187-1191; Ccelestin III., 1191-1198. It marks the golden age of the mediaeval papacy and one of the most important eras in the history of the Catholic Church. No other mortal has before or since wielded such extensive power. As the spiritual sovereign of Latin Christendom, he had no rival. At the same time he was the acknowledged arbiter of the political destinies of Europe from Constantinople to Scot land. He successfully carried into execution the highest theory of the papal theocracy and anticipated the Vatican dogmas of papal absolutism and infallibility. To the papal title "vicar of Christ," Innocent added for the first time the title "vicar of God." He set aside the decisions of bishops and provincial councils, and lifted up and cast down kings. He summoned and guided one of the most important of the councils of the Western Church, the Fourth Lateran, 1215, whose acts established the Inquisition and fixed trans ubstantiation as a dogma. He set on foot the Fourth Crusade, and died making preparation for another. On the other hand he set Christian against Christian, and by under taking to extirpate religious dissent by force drenched parts of Europe in Christian blood.
Lothario, Innocent's baptismal name, was born about 1160 at Anagni, a favorite summer resort of the popes. He was the son of Count Trasmondo of the house of the Conti de Segni, one of the ruling families of the Latium.1 It fur nished nine popes, of whom Innocent XIII. was the last.
1 Like Hildebrand, Innocent may have combined Germanic with Italian blood. Upon the basis of such family names among the Conti as Lothaire and Richard, Gregorovius finds evidence of Lombard origin.
§ 36. INNOCENT'S TRAINING AND ELECTION. 153
He studied theology and canon law at Paris and Bologna, and became proficient in scholastic learning. Through the influence of three uncles, who were cardinals, he was rapidly promoted, and in 1190, at the age of twenty-nine, was appointed cardinal-deacon by one of them, Pope Clement III. Though the youngest member of the curia, he was at once assigned a place of responsibility.
During the pontificate of Coelestin III., a member of the house of the Orsini which was unfriendly to the Conti, Lothario withdrew into retirement and devoted himself to literature. The chief fruit of this seclusion is the work enti tled The Contempt of the World or the Misery of the Mortal Estate.1 It might well have been followed, as the author says in the prologue, by a second treatise on the dignity of man's estate. To this time belongs also a work on the sacrifice of the mass.2 After his elevation to the papal throne, Innocent composed an Exposition of the Seven Penitential Psalms. While pope he preached often both in Rome and on his journeys. His sermons abound in mystical and allegorical figures. Of his letters more than five hundred are preserved.
The Contempt of the World is an ascetic plaint over the sinfulness and woes of this present life. It proceeds upon the basis of Augustine's theory of total depravity. The misery of man is described from the helplessness of infancy to the decrepitude of age and the sufferings of the future estate. Pessimistic passages are quoted from Jeremiah, Ecclesiastes, and Job, and also from Horace, Ovid, and Juvenal. Three master passions are constantly tormenting man, — avarice, lust, and ambition, — to which are added the innumerable ailments of the body and troubles of the soul. The author deplores the fate of masters and servants, of the
1 The de contemptu mundi sive de miseria conditionis humance was first printed at Ulm, 1448, then at Lyons, 1473, Niirnberg, 1477, etc. See Migne's ed. 217, 701-746.
2 Mysterium evangelicce legis et sacramentum eucharistice or de missarum mysteriis.