Person1161 – 1216

Innocent III

Also called: Pope Innocent III, Lotario dei Conti di Segni

Pope from 1198 to 1216 who, likening the pope to the sun and the emperor to the moon, humbled Europe’s monarchs and brought papal power to its peak

Born Lotario dei Conti di Segni to a noble family near Rome, he studied theology in Paris and canon law in Bologna. As pope he enlarged and consolidated the Papal States and approved Francis of Assisi’s order of poverty. Yet the Fourth Crusade he called, against his wishes, sacked the Christian city of Constantinople. He died at Perugia the year after the Fourth Lateran Council.

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1198 – 1216Innocent III and the Height of Papal Powerleader
Innocent III, pope from 1198, likened the pope to the sun and the emperor to the moon and brought papal power to its height by humbling the kings of England and France and the Holy Roman Emperor.

Themes this person appears in

Late Medieval Europe and the Renaissance1077 – 1517
From Canossa to the eve of the Reformation — papal power at its height and in decline, towns and parliaments, royal power growing through the Hundred Years’ War and the Black Death, and the Renaissance and printing