The Deeds of Pope Innocent III
The Deeds of Pope Innocent III
Anonymous
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by James M. Powell
Copyright Date: 2004
Published by: Catholic University of America Press
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp
Pages: 331
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt284xfp
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The Deeds of Pope Innocent III
Book Description:

The Deeds of Pope Innocent III, composed before 1210 by an anonymous member of the papal curia, provides a unique window into the activities, policies, and strategies of the papacy and the curia during one of the most important periods in the history of the medieval church.

eISBN: 978-0-8132-1643-0
Subjects: History
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. iii-vii)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.1
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. viii-viii)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.2
  3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (pp. ix-x)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.3
  4. INTRODUCTION
    INTRODUCTION (pp. xi-xlvi)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.4

    Composed in the years from about 1204 to 1209, the Gesta Innocentii III, or Deeds of Innocent III, belongs to a genre of biography that has its origins in the classical period, in such works as Plutarch′s Lives, Suetonius′s Lives of the Twelve Caesars, and the Scriptores historiae Augustae.¹ But the more immediate models were the series of papal biographies collected in the Liber Pontificalis, to which were added those written by Cardinal Boso in the second half of the twelfth century.² The work as we possess it, however, is not a complete papal biography. Not only is it limited...

  5. The Deeds of Pope Innocent III: by an Anonymous Author
    • [Family, Education, Election]
      [Family, Education, Election] (pp. 3-6)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.5

      I. Pope Innocent III, the son of Transmundus, from the family of the counts of Segni, and of Clarina, the daughter of a noble Roman line, was a man of penetrating mind and tenacious memory, learned in Divine and secular literature, eloquent in both the vernacular and in Latin, skilled in chant and psalmody. He was of medium stature and proper bearing, moderate in his views on wealth, but more generous in almsgiving and in his table. He was inclined to be more careful in other matters, unless there was a real need. He was hard on rebels and the...

    • [Rome and the Papal States]
      [Rome and the Papal States] (pp. 7-17)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.6

      VIII. Immediately after his election, the Roman people began to press him urgently, beseeching and demanding that he receive them in fidelity and grant them the usual gifts. But he could not be persuaded to agree to this before his consecration. After his consecration, when they began to clamor more turbulently, he gave serious consideration to their petition. The situation of the Roman Church was very difficult, because, from he time of Benedict Carushomo, it no longer controlled the senate of the city.10 Moreover, Benedict, on becoming senator, had made his men justiciars of Marittima and Sabina, while the Emperor...

    • [The Kingdom of Sicily]
      [The Kingdom of Sicily] (pp. 17-55)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.7

      XVIII. But the more he wanted to be free of secular business, the more he was enmeshed in worldly cares.31 After the death of Roger,32 the son of Tancred, King of Sicily, whom his father had made king during his lifetime and had ordered to be crowned, and who had married the daughter of Isaac, emperor of Constantinople, the father also soon died, it was said, from an excess of sorrow, leaving three daughters and an infant son, named William. His mother ordered that he should be crowned as king. With the kingdom in such a destitute state, the Emperor...

    • [Spiritual Concerns]
      [Spiritual Concerns] (pp. 55-77)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.8

      XLI. Although we have digressed here into Innocent′s conduct of temporal affairs, we return to the beginning of his pontificate, in order to pursue his spiritual activities.67 Thus, among all the pestilences, he hated venality the most, and he pondered how he could extirpate it from the Roman Church. He immediately, therefore, made an edict that no official of his curia, save for scribes and those who sealed bulls, should exact anything. For them he established a fixed fee and ordered strictly that each individual should exercise his office free of charge, that he should receive graciously anything that anyone...

    • [The Crusade and Church Unity]
      [The Crusade and Church Unity] (pp. 77-228)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.9

      LX. After he had heard of the promotion of the Lord Innocent, Alexius, the Emperor of Constantinople, sent honorable messengers to him with precious gifts, asking him to visit his empire in the person of his legates. The Pope sent Albert the Subdeacon and Albertinus the notary to advise the emperor through them of his intention to aid the Holy Land, to whose cries the emperor among all Christian princes should respond because of the abundance of his wealth and his proximity. He should also lead the Greek church back to the obedience of the Apostolic See, its mother, from...

    • [Peter of Aragon in Rome]
      [Peter of Aragon in Rome] (pp. 228-231)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.10

      CXX. In the seventh year of the pontificate of the Lord Pope, Innocent III, in the month of November, Peter, king of Aragon, approached the Apostolic See so that he might receive a military girdle and a royal diadem from the same Lord Pope. Moreover, he came by sea with five galleys and landed on the island between Porto and Ostia, bringing with him the Archbishop of Arles, the Provost of Maguélone, with whom were present the elect of Nimes and certain other noble and prudent clerics. He also brought nobles with him: Sancius, his uncle, Hugo of Baucé, Roscellinus...

    • [The Papal States]
      [The Papal States] (pp. 231-234)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.11

      CXXIII. In the tenth year, after the celebration of the feast of the Ascension, the Lord Pope left the city and went to Viterbo. He was received by the Viterbans with great joy, glory, and honor. He began to examine the situation for eliminating the filth of the Patarenes,226 with which the city of Viterbo was very much infected, so that the Roman church might not be reproached by many that it permitted heretical depravity in its sight and also in its patrimony, and it did not have the freedom of responding about this matter to others who say, ″Physician,...

    • [Papal Concerns with the Churches]
      [Papal Concerns with the Churches] (pp. 235-241)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.12

      CXXVI. But when he found the monastery of St. Martin de Monte in an extreme situation, so that hardly three monks remained there, with its possessions entirely lost or mortgaged at heavy interest, the Pontiff, intending mercifully to reform it, paid a thousand pounds to redeem its possessions and wrote to the Abbot and convent of Pontigny, which is one of the first four special monasteries of the Cistercian Order, that they should receive the church of St. Martin as a special daughter and send an abbot and a community of monks and conversi to it, that they might reform...

    • [Rome, Again!]
      [Rome, Again!] (pp. 241-257)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.13

      CXXXIII.234 Just as the strength of gold is proved in the furnace of persecution [Prv 27:21], God, wishing to prove the patience of his bishop in the midst of adversity, exposed him as it were as a target to arrows, causing him to be tested with many temptations by his citizens but, as we read in the Psalm: ″The arrows of the children are their wounds and their tongues against them are made weak.″235 When he had received the Roman people into vassalage, certain men who, from the discord which they were accustomed to create between the pope and the...

    • [Works of Piety: The Gift List]
      [Works of Piety: The Gift List] (pp. 257-268)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.14

      CXLIII. In the meantime, Innocent, trusting in the Lord, was pressing on with works of piety. For when a great famine prevailed with such rumors that a rublum241 of grain sold from twenty to thirty solidi, he was then staying in Anagni; he returned to the city right away and began to pay out liberally the necessary alms for needy people. Moreover, he ordered them to be distributed so that those who were afraid to beg in public might receive money in secret, from which they might be supported a whole week, but those who were begging publicly would receive...

  6. APPENDIX I. MARTIN OF TROPAU′S LIFE OF INNOCENT III
    APPENDIX I. MARTIN OF TROPAU′S LIFE OF INNOCENT III (pp. 269-270)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.15
  7. APPENDIX II. SIGNIFICANT EMENDATIONS TO THE EDITION OF THE GESTA INNOCENTII III BY DAVID GRESS-WRIGHT
    APPENDIX II. SIGNIFICANT EMENDATIONS TO THE EDITION OF THE GESTA INNOCENTII III BY DAVID GRESS-WRIGHT (pp. 271-272)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.16
  8. APPENDIX III. TERRACINA
    APPENDIX III. TERRACINA (pp. 273-274)
    Brenda Bolton
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.17
  9. BIBLIOGRAPHY
    BIBLIOGRAPHY (pp. 275-280)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.18
  10. INDEX
    INDEX (pp. 281-286)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.19
  11. Back Matter
    Back Matter (pp. 287-287)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt284xfp.20
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