Innocent VII
Innocent VII
(cardinal Cosmo de Migliorati, of Sulmona), who had been appointed archbishop of Ravenna and bishop of Bologna by Urban VI, was elected by the Italian prelates as the successor of Boniface IX in 1404. At this time "the great Western schism" agitated the Romish Church, the French cardinals supporting a rival pope, Benedict XIII (q.v.), who held his court at Avignon, acknowledged by a part of Europe. After the election of Innocent, a tumult broke out in Rome, excited by the Colonna and by Ladislaus, king of Naples, which obliged the pope to escape to Viterbo. Ladislaus, however, failed in his attempt upon Rome; and Innocent, having returned to his capital, excommunicated him. Innocent died Nov. 6, 1406, after having made his peace with Ladislaus. Some think that he was poisoned. He is spoken of as a man who possessed great learning and virtue, and as governed by the purest motives in all his acts; hostile to all luxury, avariciousness, and simony-evils which were one and all possessed by his rival Benedict, and by his own predecessor Boniface (comp. Reichel, See of Rome in the Middle Ages, p. 446 sq.). The charge which some lay to him that he did not keep the promise which he gave on his accession to the papal see that he would, if his rival: should be declared the proper incumbent, vacate the-papal throne, seems not well founded. It is true Benedict proposed a conference for the alleged purpose of restoring peace and union to the Church of Rome, which Innocent did not agree to, but this was done because Innocent knew that Benedict did not earnestly desire it. He wrote Oratio de Ecclesiastica Unione; Approbatio regule patrum et sororum de penitentia ordinis S. Dominici; and a letter of his is published by Ughelli, Italia Sacra, 1, 1381. See Labbe, Concilia, 11, 2082; Fleury, Hist. Ecclesiastique, 1. 20:ch. 99: Duchesne, Hist. des Popes, 2, 299; Sismondi, Histoire des Francais, 12, 211; Maimbourg, Hist. du grand Schisme d'Occident; Bruni d'Arezzo, De Rebus Italicis, and Epistolce Familiares; Herzog, Real-Encyklop. 6, 671; Mosheim, Ch. Hist. cent. 15, pt. 2, ch. 2; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, 6, 748 sq.; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Géneralé. 25, 911; Neander, Hist. of the Christ. Religion and Church, 5, 70, 247; Bower, History of the Popes, 7:91 sq. (J H.W.)
