Honorius III

(Cencio Savelli) — Pope, a native of Rome, was cardinal of St. John and St. Paul, and succeeded pope Innocent III in 1216. He showed a very accommodating spirit in his relations with the temporal powers. Thus, when Frederick II permitted his son Henry, already king of Sicily, to be elected king of Germany, in April 1220, he even consented to officiate at the coronation (November, 1220). But it is generally believed that the object of the pope in consenting so readily to the desires of Frederick II was to gain him for the great crusade against the Mussulmans in the East, which he contemplated. This good understanding between the pope and the emperor was interrupted when the latter, instead of proceeding directly to Palestine, tarried in Apulia and Sicily, and attempted to regain those countries. Honorius sent his chaplain, Alatrinus, to the imperial diet at Cremona in 1226, and the emperor was obliged to renounce his plan of aggrandizement. Honorius even went so far as to threaten him (1225) with excommunication if he did not start for the Holy Land by August 1227, and he would probably have executed his threat had not death interfered. This conciliatory spirit Honorius failed to manifest towards count Raymond VII of Toulouse. He excited Louis VIII of France to make war against Raymond; but neither Honorius nor Louis lived to see the end of the conflict. He was also frequently at variance with the nobles and people of Rome, by whom he was a number of times driven from the city. His pontificate was therefore not a very quiet one. He died March 12,1227. Officially Honorius confirmed the organization of the Dominicans in 1216, and of the Franciscans in 1223. He was the first pope who granted indulgences at the canonization of saints. He was considered a learned man in his day, and is supposed to have been the author of the Conjurationes adversus principem tenebrarum (Rome, 1629, 8vo). — Herzog, Real- Encyklopadie, vol. 5; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Géneralé, 25, 90; Bower, Hist. of the Popes, 6, 216-221; Neander, Ch. History, 4, 41, 177, 270, 341; Milman, Lat. Christianity, 5 (see Index); Hefele, Conciliengesch. 3, 811 sq.; Ebrard, Dogmengesch. 2, 180; Schröckh, Kirchengesch. 26, 328; 25, 145 sq., 329 sq.; 29, 632; Fuhrmann, Handwörterb. der Kirchengesch. 2, 341; Cave, Hist. lit. script. eccl. 2, 287; Wetzer u. Welte, Kirchen-Lex. 5, 319; Aschbach, Kirchen-Lex. 3, 324; Raumer, Geschichte d. Hohenstaufen, 3, 307 sq. (J. H. W.)