THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
bacher, Die streitige Papstwahl des Jahres 1130, Innsbruck, 1876; W. Bernhardi, Lothar von Supplinburg, pp. 262 sqq., Leipsic, 1879; idem, Konrad 111., 2 vols., ib. 1883; J. Langen, Geschichte der romischen Kirche, iv. 315 sqq., Bonn, 1893; F. Gregorovius, Hist, of the City of Rome, iv. 420-452, 695, London, 1896; J. Jastrow and G. Winter, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Hohenstaufen, i. 330 sqq., Stuttgart, 1897; Hauok, KD, vol. iv.; Ceillier, Auteurs sacres, xiv. 256-262, 420-422, 1111-1115; Schaff, Christian Church, v. 1, pp. 94 sqq.; Neander, Christian Church, iv. 144-151; Milman, Latin Christianity, iv. 152- 157 et passim; Bower, Popes, ii. 464-475.
Innocent III. (Lando of Sezza, Landus Sitinus): Antipope to Alexander III. 1179-80. He belonged to an ancient Lombard family in Latium, and was one of the higher clergy when he was proclaimed pope by the Roman nobles, Sept. 29, 1179. The relatives of Octavian (Victor IV.), the first antipope to Alexander III., supported him, and Octavian's brother received him into a stronghold between Palombara and Rome. By means of bribery, however, he fell into the hands of Alexander, who shut him up in the cloister of La Cava. See Alexander III. Carl Mirbt.
Bibliography: Besides the literature under Alexander III., consult: JafK, Regesta, ii. 431; H. Reuter, Geschichte Alexanders III., iii. 497 sqq., Leipsic, 1864; F. Gregorovius, Hist, of the City of Rome, iv. 605, London, 1896.
Innocent III. (Lotario de' Conti): Pope 1198-
1216. He was born at Anagni c. 1160, son of Count
Trasimund of Segni. He received his
Life Before early education in Rome, and then
Elevation studied in Paris and in Bologna. On to Papacy, his return to Rome, and after receiving minor orders, he became canon of St. Peter's. As three distinguished cardinals were among his relatives, his advance was rapid. Under Gregory VIII. he obtained the post of subdeacon, and as early as 1190, by favor of Pope Clement III., his uncle, the dignity of a cardinal diaconate of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus. Under Celestine III. he was little engaged in the curia's affairs, and employed this involuntary leisure in literary composition; three books, De contemtu mundi sive de miseria humance conditionis; six books, Mysteriorum evangelicce legis ac sacramenti Eucharistioe; and the treatise De quadripartita specie nuptiarum, which reveal his culture and his profound earnestness. On Jan. 8, 1198, the very day of the death of Celestine III., Lotario, then in his thirty-seventh year, was unanimously elected Celestine's successor. At first he declined to assume the leadership of the Church; but on Feb. 21 he was ordained priest, and on the day following received episcopal consecration, and as Innocent III. occupied the see of Peter.
Innocent's first task was to restore the prestige
of the papacy in Rome and in Italy. He induced
Peter, who had been installed by
Success Henry VI. prefect of Rome, to recog-
as Pope nize the pope's supreme authority;
in Rome and he prevailed upon the senator,
and Italy. Scottus Paparoni, who, being elected by the people, had till that time been independent of St. Peter's see, to resign. Then he came forward as liberator of Italy from the foreign German rule. He conquered Spoleto, subdued Perugia, assumed a commanding position in Tuscany, settled his rectors in the patrimonium, and
soon passed in all Italy as protector of the national independence. Moreover, good fortune delivered the kingdom of Sicily into his hands. Here, after the death of Emperor Henry VI., his widow, Constance, was reigning in behalf of her minor son Frederick. Hard pressed by the two rival and conflicting parties of Italians and Germans, she now recognized the right of the Roman see to attack Sicily as its appanage, declaring herself ready to render the oath of fealty; and even to renounce all ancient prerogatives of the Norman rulers in Church affairs. When, soon after this, she died, Nov. 27, 1198, she left a will naming Innocent regent of the empire and guardian of the minor Frederick.
At the outset of Innocent's pontificate conditions
for the extension of the papal sovereign power were
most favorable in Germany. In this
Affairs in country, two pretenders were striving Germany, after the German royal and Roman imperial crown, Philip of Swabia, brother to Henry VI., and Otto IV. of the House of Guelph. The latter at once endeavored to draw the pope to his side by renouncing the most essential rights of the empire in Italy and conveying to the Roman see the exarchate of Ravenna, the Pentapolis, and the duchy of Spoleto. But, while the adherents of Otto were submissively entreating the pope to acknowledge Otto's election, the princes belonging to Philip's party exhibited a determined independence. Innocent naturally sympathized rather with the Guelph's candidacy than with that of a Hohenstaufen, although he appeared to be considering the rights of both aspirants. The pope's temporizing course was grounded in the hope that both pretenders would acquiesce in a court of arbitration composed of German princes, and that Otto would emerge from the same as victor. The court of arbitration, however, did not come about. Innocent's memorial, Deliberatio papce Innocentii super facto imperii, justified his espousal of Otto's cause. In the same spirit his legate, Cardinal Bishop Guido of Praeneste, proceeded on a mission to Germany, and in Mar., 1201, the Guelph was acknowledged by Innocent as German king and future Roman emperor. On July 3, at a convention of the party of Otto IV., all his adversaries were excommunicated by the papal legate, but not until Guido held in his hands a document issued at Neuss on June 8, 1201, which embodied an express renewal of the promise that all recoveries accruing to the Roman see should be left thenceforth intact for the same. This document became the basis of the subsequent papal claims to the Papal States (q.v.). The fortune of arms turning more and more toward Otto, Philip, in 1203, sought to enter into negotiations with Innocent; but they came to nothing because he pledged himself to concede to the Curia merely what had been taken from it by the emperors unlawfully, and refused to relinquish Central Italy, upon which the pope laid special emphasis.
Howbeit, in 1204 and 1205 a powerful reaction came about in favor of the Hohenstaufen. A number of the eminent partizans of Otto IV. went over to Philip of Swabia, who was victorious on the battlefield; Philip's confederate, the king of