Courtney 1

DOMNUS APOSTOLICUS:
INNOCENT III AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PAPAL AUTHORITY AND
EUROPEAN MONARCHY

William L. Courtney
HIST 3330 - The Middle Ages
April 2015
 Courtney 2

Perhaps one of the most important and influential institutions of the Medieval Period is

that of the Papacy. The Middle Ages represents about a thousand years (give or take a few

hundred) of history during which Christianity saw a lot of changes. While starting out as a

minority religion of the Roman Empire, Christianity would become the dominant religion of the

Western world by the end of the medieval era. This period of time saw the transformation of the

papacy as well, as the bishop of Rome stepped in to fill the vacuum of power left in the West by

the collapse of the Western Empire. It has often been said, perhaps rightly so, that the zenith of

the papacy was reached during the pontificate of Pope Innocent III, a man so powerful and

influential that he practically reigned like a medieval king in all but name. The traditional

understanding of Innocent’s reign has been that he sought to marry temporal power with that of

his spiritual authority and that he was the closest thing to the leader of Western Christendom. In

recent decades, however, the idea that Innocent had supreme power and authority over the

European monarchs has come into question as medieval scholars have taken a second look at his

life and writings. According to the new scholarship, Innocent’s authority was primarily in

spiritual matters and that his authority in temporal matters was only effective when monarchs

were willing to go along with his judgments. Innocent, while still being a very powerful and

influential figure in medieval politics, thus comes across to us in a more grounded, human

manner instead of this divine agent that everyone obeys without question.

Before he was the most powerful of the medieval popes, Innocent III was known simply

as Lothar of Segni. Born at Gavignano, near Segni and Anagni, sometime between 1160 and

1161 AD, Lothar was the son of Trasimondo dei Conti do Segni and Claricia dei Scotti. His

father was a member of the Conti, a wealthy house of landowners, while his mother was a
 Courtney 3

member of the Romani de Scotta family, which also claimed Pope Clement III as well. 1 They

were able to provide young Lothar with a good education in schools both in Italy and in Paris.

Lothar’s studies appear to have paid off, for he was made a sub-deacon in 1187 by Pope Gregory

VIII and in 1189 Clement III made him a cardinal-deacon. After his promotion he set about

working in the curia and writing theological works such as De Miseria Humanae Conditionis

(On the misery of the human condition). 2 Around eight or nine years after becoming a cardinal-

deacon, Lothar would later be elected the Bishop of Rome after the death of Pope Celestine III at

the age of only thirty-seven. After he was elected to the papacy, Lothar (now known as Innocent

III) set about establishing his authority within Christendom, which this study will now deal with.

Attention must be given first to the topic of how Innocent understood his authority and

upon what basis that authority rested on. The pope is the bishop of Rome, a position which had a

certain amount of prestige attached to it that can be traced back to at least the second, if not the

first, century. The tradition is that St. Peter, one of the Twelve Apostles, was the first bishop of

Rome and that he was martyred there under the reign of the emperor Nero. Consequently, every

bishop of Rome after Peter was considered to be the apostle’s successor.

Innocent was fond of referring to himself as the Vicar of Christ, and he frequently based

his authority upon this papal title. Jane Sayers notes that originally, in the first few centuries of

the history of the church, the bishops of Rome had referred to themselves as the Vicar of St.

Peter. But as the power and influence of the Roman church and its bishop grew, some of the

bishops referred to themselves as not just the Vicar of St. Peter, but of Jesus Christ himself.

Innocent preferred this title and used it so often that the relatively new title won official

acceptance and has become a regular title used by the popes. 3 Friedrich Kempf, a noted scholar

of the medieval papacy, has argued that Innocent’s view of his own authority rests directly on

1
Edward Peters, “Lotario dei Conti di Segni becomes Pope Innocent III: The Man and the Pope,” in Pope Innocent
III and His World ed. John C. Moore and Brenda Bolton (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1999), 9-10.
2
Ibid., 11-12.
3
Jane Sayers, Innocent III: Leader of Europe, 1198-1216 (London: Longman Pub Group, 1994), 15-16.
 Courtney 4

this idea that the bishop of Rome is the vicar or successor of Jesus Christ upon the earth. He

notes the language that Innocent employs, referring to himself as being “between God and man,

under God and over man, less than God, but greater than man, judge over all and judged by no

one (save the Lord).”4

Innocent also argues that his authority as the bishop of Rome is greater than that of the

other bishops. The bishops, being the successors of the Apostles, each shares in the responsibility

of the care of souls within the church. The bishop of Rome, however, being the successor of the

leader of the Apostles, St. Peter, has been entrusted with the care of the whole Church, and it is

for this reason that his power knows no limits in the area of positive canon law. It reaches all

believers, both to prelates and to their subordinates 5 Kempf also points out that Innocent based

his authority on the idea that the pope is the high priest of Christ, and he has inherited the same

priesthood that Christ held, the Order of Melchisedec, a royal priesthood. Innocent sees the

people of God as having two functions in the world, priesthood and kingship. These two distinct

powers are connected but it is clear that Innocent sees the priesthood as being superior. As the

moon draws its light from the sun, so too does the royal power draw its authority from the

authority of the High Priest, and that the brightness of the monarch decreases or increases to the

degree of closeness that it has with the papacy. 6

It is often assumed that with all of these claims to divine authority, that the medieval

papacy simply ruled over all Christendom, including the monarchs, but we can see that even

during the zenith of the papacy under Innocent that there were limits to the authority of the

bishop of Rome. Kempf has argued that Innocent knew fully well that his authority referred

directly to matters relating to the Church and that he only had authority in secular affairs insofar

as the secular authority was willing to go along with his ruling. 7 There are a few cases that seem

4
Friedrich Kempf, “Innocent III’s Claim to Power,” in Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World? Ed.
James M. Powell, (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 173.
5
Ibid., 174.
6
Ibid. 175.
 Courtney 5

to support Kempf’s argument. During his first year as pope, Innocent had to deal with King

Sverre Sigurdsson of Norway, who had chased nearly all of the bishops from his kingdom.

Innocent responded by placing both excommunication on Sverre and the interdiction on Norway,

but neither of these measures had any effect on the Norse king, who continued to affirm his legal

rights including the authority to appoint bishops. This standoff between the king and the pope

only ended with Sverre’s death in 1202.8

Sometimes this strategy of using the interdict to “persuade” European kings to obey the

judgment of the pope was effective, as was the case when Innocent used it against King Philip

Augustus of France when he refused to send away his mistress and acknowledge his wife,

Ingeborg of Denmark, as queen of France. John C. Moore lists these two scenarios to show that

Innocent did not have total control over the monarchy9, and provides strong support for Kempf’s

position as stated earlier.

Innocent appears to have had an especially difficult time with the kings of France and

England. According to Christopher Cheney, both king Richard I and his brother John I had

strained relationships with Innocent. Richard never seemed overly impressed with the pope’s

authority, denied a papal mandate, and showed disrespect for Innocent’s legates. 10 Richard

nonetheless sought out Innocent’s aid in his struggle against Philip Augustus who had taken over

some of his land and castles on the continent while the Lionheart had been off crusading.

Richard appealed to Innocent because as a crusader his properties were under the special

protection of the Church. Philip counter argued that Richard had not fulfilled treaty terms that he

had sworn and this breach of faith was thus an ecclesiastical offense. 11 After some negotiating,

Innocent and his legate, Archbishop Hubert of Canterbury, finally arranged a five year truce

7
Ibid., 173.
8
John C. Moore, Pope Innocent III (1160/61-1216): To Root Up and To Plant (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2009), 51-52.
9
Ibid., 58-63.
10
C R. Cheney, Pope Innocent III and England (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1976), 14-15.
11
Ibid., 278-279.
 Courtney 6

between the two kings. This is an example of an instance in which European monarchs wanted

the pope’s intervention and went along with his judgments. Things did not always go smoothly,

however, because later when Philip wants to go to war against John I and Innocent attempts to

hand down a judgment against him, Philip rejects it on the ground that this was a dispute over a

fief and that feudal law was of no concern to the pope. Innocent defends his interference by

saying that the pope has the right and duty to judge in matters of sin, but he concedes to Philip

that in matters of feudal law Philip would be a more competent judge. Kempf argues that this

concession undercut Innocent’s authority because the question of whether or not it was a sin

depended on feudal law. 12

A similar concession is made when Innocent later writes to Philip that he admits to

misjudging the character of Otto IV, whom he had previously supported to be Holy Roman

Emperor, after Otto became obstinate and tyrannical towards the church. Innocent admits that

Philip had been right all along about Otto’s character. Sayers uses this to argue that Innocent was

not above admitting his faults or acknowledging the rights of monarchs when they were in the

right.13

Brenda Bolton, an expert on Innocent, argues that Innocent understood his role as the

Vicar of Christ primarily in pastoral terms, viewing his relationship with monarchs to that of a

father figure to his Christian sons. During John and Philip’s dispute, Innocent had to place the

interdict on England in an attempt to bring his wayward son to his senses. After much cajoling,

Innocent appears to have been successful in persuading John to repent of his sins and to make

restitution to the Church by pledging to build a monastery, donating money, and turning over the

kingdoms of England and Ireland to the pope as fiefs. 14 Innocent acts like he is a physician who

is helping to heal John’s sinful ways, and that though the medicine may be bitter at first, it is

12
Kempf, “Innocent’s Claim to Power,” in Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World?, 175.
13
Sayers, Innocent III: Leader of Europe, 92.
14
Brenda Bolton, Innocent III: Studies On Papal Authority and Pastoral Care (Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum,
1995), 124-128.
 Courtney 7

ultimately for his own good. The English king’s sudden turnaround thus placed King Philip in a

difficult position, as it was one thing to attack the kingdom of a “heretic” or an excommunicated

sinner but it was entirely different to attack a papal vassal. In what Bolton and others have

categorized as a stroke of diplomatic brilliance, Innocent was now able to get both of his “sons”

to start acting a little more cooperative in his goal of establishing a new crusade for the Holy

Land.15 It is in this scenario that we can see Innocent’s diplomatic skills coming into play, as he

is now using his papal authority to move these kings around like figures on a chessboard in order

to gain the results that he desires as opposed to simply commanding them to obey him as is so

commonly argued about the pope.

Looking at these examples and the scholars who have written on them, we can see that

Innocent’s position as the pope was a more complex and nuanced position than was previously

assumed. While claiming divine authority over the entire Church, including European Christian

monarchs who were part of that Church, Innocent nonetheless appears to have realized and

acknowledged the limitations that he had when dealing with these fickle kings. Instead of simply

claiming divine authority and expecting everyone to follow his whims without question,

Innocent had to be a good diplomat and negotiator, and he had to know when he could appeal to

the spiritual side of his subjects in order to bring them around to his way of thinking. And while

he may not have possessed ultimate power on the earth, it can still be argued that he was one of

the most (if not the most) powerful and influential of the popes and whose actions helped to

establish the Papal States and ensured that the Roman Catholic Church would maintain its power

and influence within the Western world for centuries to come.

15
Ibid., 126.
 Courtney 8

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bolton, Brenda. Collected Studies Series. Vol. CS490, Innocent III: Studies On Papal Authority
and Pastoral Care. Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain: Variorum, 1995.

Cheney, C R. Päpste Und Papsttum. Vol. 9, Pope Innocent III and England. Stuttgart:
Hiersemann, 1976.

Moore, John C. Pope Innocent III (1160/61-1216): to Root up and to Plant. Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.

Moore, John C., and Brenda Bolton, eds. Pope Innocent III and His World. Brookfield, Vt.:
Ashgate, 1999.

Powell, James M., ed. Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World? 2nd ed. Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1994.

Sayers, Jane E. Innocent III: Leader of Europe, 1198-1216. The Medieval World. London:
Longman, 1994.