Innocent XI

Italian pope (1676-1689)

  • Born: May 16, 1611
  • Birthplace: Como, Duchy of Milan (now in Italy)
  • Died: August 12, 1689
  • Place of death: Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)

Innocent XI was noted for his austere, exemplary life and his zeal for reforming church administration and rooting out nepotism. He repeatedly clashed with France, Europe’s strongest power, and attempted to frustrate the Gallican and expansionist designs of King Louis XIV. Ultimately, he took part in the grand coalition against the French monarch in 1688.

Early Life

The Odescalchi family was of comfortable, upper-middle-class background, and Benedetto’s (Innocent XI’s) father owned a bank in Genoa, to which Innocent was apprenticed in 1626. Having been educated by the Jesuits, he and his younger brother, Guilio Maria (who would enter the Benedictine order) were religiously inclined. Rather than go into the family business, Innocent studied jurisprudence at Rome and Naples, receiving his doctorate in law in 1639.

Innocent soon drew the attention of Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644), who appointed him protonotary, then president of the Apostolic Chamber, commissary of the Marco di Roma, governor of Macarata, and papal legate to the duchy of Ferrara. Pope Innocent X (1644-1655) named him cardinal-dean of Saint Cosmas and Damien Church in 1645, cardinal-priest in 1647, and bishop of Novara in 1650. During the six years that he pastored at Novara, he gained considerable fame as an energetic and compassionate bishop who was particularly concerned with fostering works of charity and relief for the impoverished. He resigned in 1656 for reasons of health, and from that time on he stayed mainly in and around Rome itself, undertaking various special tasks and projects for Popes Alexander VII (1655-1667), Clement IX (1667-1669), and Clement X (1670-1676).

Life’s Work

Innocent XI, as Cardinal Odescalchi, had become so respected that, after Pope Clement IX died of a stroke on December 9, 1669, he was considered by the conclave as the leading candidate to succeed Clement on the papal throne. However, King Louis XIV of France held a virtual veto on the eventual choice and, believing that Odescalchi might prove to be too independent-minded and therefore potentially difficult to deal with, blocked the cardinal’s candidacy. After weeks of political maneuvering and negotiations, a seventy-nine-year-old cardinal, Emilio Altieri, was elected and crowned as Clement X.

During the pontificate of Clement X, Odescalchi played a prominent, but behind the scenes, role. Most notably, he fostered a united effort by Christian European powers against the revitalized Ottoman Turks, who were steadily advancing into Austrian lands and threatening Vienna. Clement X died on July 22, 1676, but it was not until September 21 that the College of Cardinals, after another contentious round of meetings, elected Odescalchi. This time, Louis XIV did not firmly oppose the decision, and the cardinals agreed to endorse reforms that Odescalchi had demanded as a precondition of acceptance. His coronation took place on October 4, and he assumed the name of Innocent XI, after Pope Innocent X, who had conferred him with the rank of cardinal.

With singular determination, the new pontiff embarked upon a program of reform, which reduced the papal budget and vastly increased the level of administrative efficiency in the Papal States. Within his domain, he outlawed gambling and closed down all gaming houses. Also, he tried to eliminate nepotism and appointments that were based on favoritism by setting a good example. However, he never succeeded in completely eradicating these practices among the cardinals and the Vatican bureaucracy.

With his strict code of morality and his restraint and self-denial, he was suspected by many of harboring Jansenist sympathies. He seemed to have tendencies in that direction, and he certainly never criticized Jansenism as energetically as he proscribed Laxism and quietism, two other breakaway tendencies operating within the Church. Laxism, which would have relaxed many moral and ethical guidelines on the faithful within the Church and was favored by some of the Jesuits, was repudiated in 1679. Miguel de Molinos, the foremost advocate of quietism (which favored a philosophy of inaction and acceptance), was convicted of heresy in 1687 and sentenced to perform life penance.

Just as he had done when he was Cardinal Odescalchi, Pope Innocent adamantly opposed the spread of Islamic rule into Central Europe and made every effort to secure assistance for the beleaguered Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I against the Ottomans. The crucial campaign occurred in 1683, when Turkish armies advanced to the gates of Vienna and laid siege to the Austrian capital. The Christian alliance that Innocent was instrumental in fashioning between Leopold, Venice, and John III Sobieski , king of Poland, ultimately turned back the Ottoman threat. In Innocent’s estimation, no thanks were to be given to King Louis XIV, who had rebuffed the pope’s pleas for assistance and even had spurned an offer to establish a Christian state at Constantinople, to be governed by his son. Innocent never quite got over this and, henceforth, was always suspicious of the king and his motives.

However, what really poisoned Vatican-French relations throughout Innocent’s pontificate was the issue of the regale, that is, the right of the king of France to draw upon the income from dioceses and monastic houses during times when the leadership had fallen vacant and until such time as a new bishop, abbot, abbess, or other person might be appointed to take charge. Under the terms of the Concordat of Bologna of 1516, the French monarchy also claimed the prerogative to nominate candidates to fill these positions, subject to final approval from the pope. In order for the government to derive maximum benefit, the tendency was to move very slowly through the nomination process. The regale originally applied only to northern France, but in 1673, Louis extended it into the southern provinces, requiring that all bishops swear an oath acknowledging the legality of this initiative. When two Languedocian bishops protested, Innocent condemned the king’s policy.

In 1682, Louis convened a French Catholic Council, which drew up the Declaration of Gallican Liberties. The declaration denied the pope’s infallibility, asserted the independence of the French Church, and subjected all papal decisions to review by each individual bishop. Innocent invalidated the declaration and threatened Louis and his ministers with excommunication. The controversy remained at a standoff as long as Innocent XI was alive, but Louis was the eventual winner: Years later, he secured what he wanted from Pope Innocent XII.

Another serious rift occurred in 1687, when the pope tried to do away with the right of foreign ambassadors to extend asylum to persons of their choice. (Asylum was extended often to criminals who were willing to bribe their way to safety.) To the deep annoyance of Innocent XI, France alone refused to comply with his request.

Some scholars believe that one of the reasons that Louis XIV launched a ferocious persecution of Huguenots from 1681 to 1685 was to demonstrate how Catholic he was, that by showing he could eradicate Protestantism in France, he could get into the pope’s good graces. If so, it backfired on Louis because Innocent, appalled by atrocity reports coming out of France, denounced the persecution and joined in the effort of the Calvinist stadtholder William III of the Netherlands to forge an anti-French coalition of European powers, which became known as the League of Augsburg (1686). In 1688, Innocent pointedly rejected Louis’s nominee for the important post of archbishop of Cologne in favor of Emperor Leopold’s nominee, and he would not support the Catholic king James II in his struggle over the English throne against William III: Innocent considered James to be too closely tied to Louis. The following year, the War of the League of Augsburg (1689-1697), or War of the Grand Alliance, broke out, pitting almost every European power against France.

Significance

Pope Innocent XI earned admiration for his integrity and strength in maintaining his convictions, and he also earned admiration from powerful enemies for his unyielding stance and refusal to compromise. Attempts to canonize him as a saint from 1714 to 1744 met with failure because of French opposition, and it was not until 1956 that he was beatified and the Feast Day of August 12 set aside in his memory.

Innocent did much to restore and enhance the prestige of, and respect for, the Papacy, and the victories over the Turks to which he contributed in no small measure changed the course of history in Central and Eastern Europe.

Bibliography

La Due, William J. The Chair of St. Peter: A History of the Papacy. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1999. La Due considers Innocent to be a crypto-Jansenist and stresses the importance of his efforts to rescue Vienna.

Lossky, Andrew. Louis XIV and the French Monarchy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994. This work explains the complex relationship between the French monarchy and the Vatican, setting forward the basis for Gallican claims and chronicling the bitter, yet restrained struggle of bluff and counterbluff between Louis XIV and Innocent XI in a comprehensible manner.

McBrien, Richard P. Lives of the Popes: The Pontiff from St. Peter to John Paul II. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. Contains a chronology of the events surrounding the development of the Papacy and biographies of each individual pope. Rates Innocent XI as the most significant pope of the seventeenth century.

Maxwell-Stuart, P. G. Chronicles of the Popes. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997. A well-illustrated volume that emphasizes Innocent’s piety in a materialistic age and the consequences of his quarrels with Louis XIV.

Wright, A. D. The Early Modern Papacy: From the Council of Trent to the French Revolution, 1564-1789. Harlow, England: Longmans, 2000. A detailed period study that sets Innocent aside as one of the strongest-willed pontiffs of his era.