Innocent
the name of several Popes:
INNOCENT I., Pope, was a native of Albano, and succeeded Anastasius I. in 402. He endeavored to obtain terms of peace with Alaric, 407, but was unsuccessful, and during the following year Rome was taken and pillaged. He died in 417.
INNOCENT II., a Roman of noble birth, elected Pope in 1130 by a part of the cardinals, while others chose Peter of Leon, who took the name of Anacletus.
The party of the latter being the strongest at Rome, Innocent II. retired to France. This contest for the papal chair continued until the death of Anacletus in 1138. In 1139 Innocent was taken prisoner by Roger, King of Sicily, the chief supporter of the rival Pope.
He was released on recognizing Roger's title as King of Sicily. He died in 1143.
INNOCENT III. (Lothario Conti). Born in Anagni in 1161. He succeeded Celestine III. in 1198; and being endowed by nature with all the talents of a ruler, he was qualified to extend the papal power. His first care was to recover and secure such portion of the domains of the Holy See as were in the hands of usurpers. He sought to unite the Christian princes in a crusade for the recovery of Palestine, and promoted the crusade against the Albigenses. He had put France under an interdict because Philip Augustus divorced his queen, Ingeburga; and when John, King of England, refused to confirm the election of Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, Innocent laid the kingdom under a curse also and in 1212 formally deposed John and instigated the of France to attack England. John was finally obliged to submit, resigned his territories to Rome, and and received them as a papal fief from Innocent. In 1210 the Pope excommunicated the Emperor Otho IV., who owed to him his elevation. Innocent abolished the Roman Senate and the Consulate, and thus made himself absolute in his estates, which now extended from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean. Almost all Christendom was now subject to the Pope; two crusades were undertaken at his order, and his INNOCENT influence extended even to Constantinople. Innocent enforced purity of morals in the clergy and was himself irreproachable in private life. In 1215 he convoked the fourth general council of the Lateran.
He died in 1216.
INNOCENT IV. (Sinibaldi de Fieschi) was a Genoese, and became chancellor of the the Roman Church. Gregory IX. crecardinal in 1227. He succeeded Celestine IV. in 1243 at which time the court of Rome was engaged in a contest with the Emperor Frederick II. Innocent was obliged to retire to France, where he held the council of Lyons in which Frederick was excommunicated . He is said to have been the first who gave red hats to the cardinals.
He died in Naples in 1254.
INNOCENT V., a Dominican, became archbishop of Lyons, a cardinal, and succeeded Gregory X. in 1276, but died five months after his election. Some religious pieces of his have been printed. INNOCENT VI., cardinal-bishop of Ostia, succeeded Clement VI. in 1352. He was a man of great learning and liberality, and some of his letters are extant. He died in Avignon in 1362.
INNOCENT VII., born in Abruzzo in 1336, was elected Pope in 1404, but not without great opposition. He died in 1406.
INNOCENT VIII., a noble Genoese, of Greek extraction; born in 1431; obtained , in succession to Sixtus IV., in 1484.
He endeavored to organize another crusade but without success. died in 1492.
He INNOCENT IX., born in Bologna, in 1519, ascended the papal throne on the death of Gregory XIV., in 1591, but died afterward.
INNOCENT X. (J. Baptist Pamphilius), a Roman, succeeded Urban VIII. in 1644, at the age of 73. He condemned the doctrines of Jansenius, and prosecuted with great violence.
He died in 1655. born in 1611, was the son of a banker at INNOCENT XI. (Benedetto Odescalchi), Como, in the Milanese. In his youth he served as a soldier in Germany and Pothe camp to take orders, and rose through the intermediate dignities to the pontificate in 1676, on the death of Clement X. He was eminent for his probity and austerity. He resolved to put solved to put an end to the mischief which had grown out of a prescriptive claim of the foreign ambassadors at Rome to a right of asylum. This led to a long quarrel with France, as Innocent would not make any exception to his rule.
The sect of the Quietists arose at Rome under this pontificate. Innocent died in 1689.
INNSBRUCK noble Neapolitan, succeeded Alexander INNOCENT XII. (Antonio Pignatelli ), a VIII. in 1691. He abolished the extraordinary distinctions paid to the nephews of Popes, and condemned the "Maxims died in 1700. of the Saints," written by Fenelon. He Conti), a Roman, and the 8th Pope of INNOCENT XIII. (Michael Angelo his family, born in 1655, succeeded Clement XI. in 1721. He was opposed to the Jesuits and forbade new novices for the order, the suppression of which he at one time contemplated. He died in 1724.