Innocent IV

Italian pope (1243-1254)

• Born: c. 1180
• Birthplace: Genoa (now in Italy)
• Died: December 7, 1254
• Place of death: Naples (now in Italy)

Throughout his pontificate, Innocent IV defended the temporal and spiritual authority of the Papacy and upheld its supremacy over secular rulers.

Early Life

Sinibaldo Fieschi, who would later take the name Innocent IV, was the sixth son of ten children of Hugo, count of Lavagna, in northern Italy. The family was well connected in political and ecclesiastical circles, especially in Genoa, where Sinibaldo was born. During the bitter and recurring struggles between the Holy Roman Emperors and the pope, the Fieschi were generally regarded as being proimperial an ironic situation in the light of Sinibaldo’s later actions as pope.

Fieschi was an exceptionally intelligent and gifted young man who showed particular aptitude for the law, especially church or canon law. He studied at Parma under his uncle, a bishop, and then at Bologna, where he became a master of canon law. He served as the canon at the cathedral in Genoa and then at Parma before being named bishop of Albenga in 1225.

During the papacy of Honorius III (1216-1227), Fieschi was summoned to Rome to serve the pope. The next pontiff, Gregory IX (1227-1241), appointed Fieschi as his vice chancellor and elevated him to the position of cardinal priest of Saint Lawrence in Lucina.

Fieschi’s activities as jurist and diplomat were recognized by Gregory, himself a strong and able administrator. From 1235 through 1240, Fieschi was governor of the March of Ancona, part of the secular territory under the rule of the Papacy. There he demonstrated his tough, realistic approach to government and politics, a foreshadowing of his later actions as pope.

During this time, Gregory IX and the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II of Sicily (r. 1220-1250), were engaged in a deadly contest for supreme power, Frederick pointing to the precedent of the ancient empire, the pope claiming supreme authority through apostolic succession. On the death of Gregory in 1241, Frederick seized a number of cardinals, hoping to force them into electing a pope favorable to him. Their choice, Celestine IV, ruled for only seventeen days in 1241, and there followed an interregnum of almost two years. Finally, enough cardinals escaped from Frederick’s control to hold a new election; their choice was Sinibaldo Fieschi, who was elected on June 25, 1243.

The new pope took the name Innocent IV, which was a telling choice because the last pope to use that name, Innocent III, had brought the power of the Papacy to its greatest height, both spiritually and temporally. His successor was determined to do the same; this meant inevitable conflict with Frederick II.

The surviving portraits of Innocent IV show a clean-shaven, rather full-faced man with dark, intelligent eyes and a determined set to his mouth. Among his contemporaries, he was noted for his intelligence, learning, and tenacity. He was attuned to the practical and administrative, rather than the spiritual or mystical, but was still a friend and protector of Saint Francis of Assisi. His overriding concern was to maintain the supreme position of the Church.

Life’s Work

Frederick and Gregory had long been engaged in open hostilities, and the emperor hoped that Innocent would be more favorably disposed to his cause. Very soon after Innocent came to the papal throne, however, he made it clear that he would continue Gregory’s policies of maintaining the supremacy of the Church.

The relationship between Innocent and Frederick quickly deteriorated, and within months of the election, they were virtually at war. Repeated attempts at negotiation broke down, and in 1244, Frederick advanced on Rome hoping to take the pope hostage. Innocent slipped out of the city on June 28, 1244, and fled to Genoa with a number of his cardinals. In December, they moved to Lyon, technically a part of the empire, but actually ruled by its archbishop and protected by the French, who were officially neutral but favored the cause of the pope. Innocent thus became the first pope to receive official asylum outside Italy. He would not return to Italy until after the death of Frederick; for ten years, he remained in Lyon, making it the center of the Church’s administration and the headquarters for his battle against the emperor.

Innocent summoned a general council of the Church. The First Council of Lyon met from June 26 through July 12, 1245, and had a number of items on its official agenda: conversion of the Mongols, reunification of the Latin and Greek churches, and a new crusade to the Holy Land. These paled beside the dominant issue: the Church’s struggle with Frederick. The emperor was accused of perjury, breach of the peace, sacrilege, and heresy. Although ably defended by the noted jurist Thaddeus of Suessa, Frederick was found guilty on all charges, excommunicated from the Church, and deposed from his throne. Innocent proclaimed a crusade against Frederick, and began raising money and support throughout Europe.

The rest of Innocent’s pontificate was one long war with Frederick. The reaction from the emperor to his excommunication was muted (he had faced this action on several occasions before), but his deposition caused an all-out assault on the position of the Church: Within his domains, he plundered churches and monasteries, dispersed monks, and abolished the clergy’s exemptions from taxes and their authority over the laity. He sent messages to other rulers, urging them to join him in making a complete break between church and state, and so securing supreme power for the secular monarchs.

Frederick II was a remarkable man. Known to his contemporaries as Stupor Mundi (the wonder of the world), his kingdom in Sicily was one of the most advanced of its time, with a court that delighted in arts and learning. In addition to wearing the imperial crown, he was king of Jerusalem, having secured peace through negotiations with the sultan of Egypt. His burning ambition was to establish the empire and its ruler as the supreme power in Europe, unbeholden in any way to the pope.

Supporters of the imperial cause were known as Ghibellines, a name taken from the territory of Waiblingen in Franconia, which had long been territory of Frederick’s family, the Hohenstaufens. Their opponents, who favored the pope, were known as Guelphs. It was at this time that these two names first became widely used, especially in Italy, where the two factions tore the countryside apart in internecine struggles.

Frederick’s position of separation of church and state is often regarded as the more modern or advanced theory, one that looked forward to the Renaissance and modern times. Innocent’s quest for papal authority, on the other hand, is considered by many to be a throwback to the ideas of the Middle Ages. Actually, these views are possible only in hindsight. At the time, both Frederick and Innocent made compelling cases for their views.

After the Council of Lyon had deposed Frederick, Innocent maneuvered for the election of a new emperor. First, Henry Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia, was selected, and following his death in 1247, William of Holland was chosen. This election helped weaken Frederick’s power in the north, especially in conjunction with the tacit support of Louis IX of France, later canonized as Saint Louis.

The main struggle was conducted in the south, in Italy, with Frederick campaigning on the peninsula and Innocent directing events from Lyon. In 1248, Frederick suffered a serious defeat when the city of Parma revolted from his rule and was seized by the Guelphs. That undermined Frederick’s position in northern Italy and forced him to spend the next two years repairing his fortunes. Innocent continued to favor rival kings and pretenders and even encouraged disloyal nobles in an attempt to poison the emperor. Just as Frederick had begun to regain his position, he suddenly died on December 13, 1250. Innocent returned to Italy.

His victory, however, was not yet complete. Conrad IV , Frederick’s son, assumed the crown of Sicily and aspired to the imperial throne. Sicily had once been a fief of the Papacy, and Innocent wished to restore that situation. He offered the crown to a number of people, including Charles of Anjou in France, England’s Richard of Cornwall, and the English king Henry III. Henry accepted for his young son, Edmund, but on the death of Conrad in 1254, Frederick’s illegitimate son Manfred took the crown and promised to recognize the pope as his overlord.

The peace was short-lived, for Manfred soon renounced his allegiance. Innocent wearily but determinedly began to prepare for yet another phase in this incessant struggle. He became ill, however, and he died on December 7, 1254, in Naples. He was buried in the cathedral in that city; on his tomb were carved the words, “He destroyed the serpent Frederick, Christ’s enemy.”

Significance

Many of the contemporaries of Innocent IV, as well as later historians, have seen him only as a pope intent on securing and enlarging the secular power of the Papacy. Engaged in a ten-year struggle with Frederick, Innocent may have lowered the prestige and moral authority of the Church through his political manipulations, his demands for funds, and his unyielding tactics. In this view, Innocent IV was less a spiritual leader than a political one, and his concerns were with secular power and its preservation.

On the other hand, it must be noted that Innocent’s actions were based on motives that were primarily theological and canonical. In his view, and as articulated by the Council of Lyon, the pope wielded an authority transcending that of secular monarchs, precisely because the pope’s authority was spiritual: The vicar of Christ took precedence over the vicar of Caesar. As a practical matter, Innocent preferred that the pope rule as a sovereign in his own right, but he always insisted that the pope held ultimate authority over all secular monarchs.

Thus, the pope had the authority to depose kings and emperors. When Frederick was found guilty of exceptionally serious offenses, Innocent “translated” or removed the empire from him. Frederick, a firm believer in the divine right of kings, naturally rejected this and the pope’s claims. There could never be the possibility of peace between the two great contenders.

Because of the preoccupation with political and military struggles during his pontificate, Innocent’s other achievements have sometimes been ignored. Actually, he proved to be quite notable in several areas, and is regarded by church historians as important for a number of reasons other than his lengthy confrontation with Frederick.

Innocent made several serious efforts to reunify the Church, and some writers believe that had he not died at a critical moment in the talks, a breakthrough could well have been accomplished. Regardless of whether this is true, at least he made the most determined attempt at reunion during this entire period. More audacious and less successful were his efforts to have missionaries convert Kublai Khan and his Mongols to Christianity. Although this aim may seem a fantasy today, it should be remembered that much of the eastern part of Europe had only recently been opened to Christianity, and there was reason to believe that the process of conversion might well continue.

It was in education and within the administration of the Church that Innocent made his most lasting impact. He was a learned man himself, and encouraged learning in others. During his exile in Lyon, he established schools for theology, canon law, and civil law. He founded a university at Piacenza, approved the establishment of another in Valencia, and granted to it and to the university at Toulouse the same rights as those enjoyed by the long-established University of Paris.

Innocent appointed outstanding and able men to the Papal Curia and provided strong and capable government for the Church. One of his first but longest-lasting actions as pope took place in 1245, when he gave the cardinals the distinctive red hats that they wear today.

Finally, Innocent IV is remembered as an outstanding canon lawyer and scholar. He published three collections of his own judicial works as pope, and his most famous production is a commentary on the decretals (letters that contain a papal ruling, usually on a matter of canonical law) of his predecessor, Gregory IX.

An intelligent, practical man, Innocent defended the rights and authority of the Papacy through ten years of desperate struggle, and left the Church strong and vigorous on his death.

Bibliography

Abulafia, David. Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor. 1988. Reprint. London: Pimlico, 1992. A biography of Frederick II. Contains illustrations, maps, bibliography, and index.

Figueira, Robert C. “Innocent IV.” In The Great Popes Through History: An Encyclopedia, edited by Frank J. Coppa. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. An examination of the role of Pope Innocent IV in history. Bibiography and index.

Maxwell-Stuart, P. G. Chronicle of the Popes: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Papacy from Saint Peter to the Present. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. A look at the Papacy, one pope at a time. Covers Innocent IV. Contains illustrations, maps, and index.

Morris, Colin. The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. A history of the Church in the Middle Ages, including during Innocent IV’s papacy.

Robinson, I. S. The Papacy, 1073-1198: Continuity and Innovation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. An examination of the Papacy during the Middle Ages, including the relations between church and state. Index.

Ullmann, Walter. A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. 1972. Reprint. New York: Routledge, 2003. This history of the popes focuses on the Middle Ages, including Innocent IV. Bibliography and index.