Innocent IV
Innocent IV
(Sinibaldo de' Fieschi, of Genoa) was elected as the Successor of Celestine IV in the year 1243. In the preceding bitter quarrels between Gregory IX and the emperor Frederick II, cardinal Sinibaldo had shown himself rather friendly towards the emperor; and the imperial courtiers, on receiving the news of his exaltation, were rejoicing at it; but the experienced Frederick checked them by remarking, "I have now lost a friendly cardinal, to find another hostile pope: no pope can be a Ghibelline." Anxious, however, to be relieved from excommunication, Frederick made advances to the new pope, and offered conditions advantageous to the Roman see; but Innocent remained inflexible, and, suddenly leaving Rome, went to Lyons, and there summoned a council in 1245, to which he invited the emperor. Thaddeus of Sessa appeared before the council to answer to the charges brought by the pope against Frederick; and, after much wrangling, Innocent excommunicated and dethroned the emperor, on the ground of perjury, sacrilege, heresy, and defiance of the Church, commanded the German princes to elect a new emperor, and reserved the disposal of the kingdom of Sicily to himself. In Italy the only consequence was that the war which already raged between the Guelphs and Ghibellines continued fiercer than before; in Germany a contemptible rival to Frederick was set up in the person of Henry, landgrave of Thuringia, who was defeated by Conrad, Frederick's son. Frederick's sudden death in Apulia, A.D. 1250, led Innocent to return to Italy, and to offer the crown of Sicily to several princes, one of whom, Richard of Cornwall, observed that the pope's offer "was much like making him a present of the moon." Conrad, the son of Frederick, who had so valiantly and so successfully defended his cause, was excommunicated; but he gave little heed to this act of Innocent's, and even went into Italy in 1252, and took possession of Apulia and Sicily. Two years after he died, and his brother Manfred, who became regent, in a like manner baffled both the intrigues and the open attacks of the court of Rome. Innocent himself died soon after, at the end of 1254, at Rome, leaving Italy and Germany in the greatest confusion in consequence of his outrageous tyranny. and his unbending hostility to the whole house of Swabia. He was succeeded by Alexander IV. He wrote Apparatus super decretales (fol., often reprinted): — De Potestate Ecclesiasticum et Jurisdictiore Inperii: — Officium in octavis festi Nativitatis B. Marie: — Interpretationes in Vetus Testamentum. Nineteen letters of his are given by Labbe, Concil. 11, 598- 632; forty-eight by Ughelli, Italisa Sacra; and five by Duchesne, Historice Francorum Scriptores, 5, 412, 861. See Labbe and Cossart. Sacrosancta Concilia, 11, 597-716; Bruys, Hist. des Papes, 3, 199; Fleury. Histor. Ecclesiasticum; Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 3, 589-592; Ph. de Mornay, Hist. de la Popaute, p. 376-404; Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae Pontificum Romanorun, 2, 99; Paolo Panza, Vita del gran Pontefice Innocenzio Quarto (Naples, 1601, 4to); Reichel, See of Rome in the Middle Ages (London, 1870,8vo), p. 264 sq.; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Géneralé, 25:906; Engl. Cyclop.; Mosheim, Ch. Hist. cent. 13:pt. 2, chap. 2; Neander, History of the Christian Religion and Church, 4, 76,183; Herzog, Real-Encyklopadie, 6:668.
