Innocent V

Pierre de Tarentaise, who reigned as Pope Innocent V, was born in the Tarentaise region of Savoy in the early thirteenth century. Later tradition and most modern reference works identify his birthplace as Champagny, near Moûtiers, in what was then the County of Savoy within the Kingdom of Arles. He entered the Dominican Order while still a young man and was sent to the University of Paris, the principal center of theological study in Latin Christendom. There he incepted as a master of theology and lectured on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. His teaching and writings on scholastic theology gave him a high reputation among contemporaries, who later styled him Doctor famosissimus. In the middle decades of the thirteenth century he served as prior provincial of the Dominicans in France, overseeing the order's houses in a region of intense intellectual and pastoral activity.

In 1272 Pope Gregory X named him Archbishop of Lyons, one of the most important sees in the Western Church and the traditional primatial church of the Gauls. The following year the same pope created him Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia, the senior suburbicarian see. As archbishop and cardinal he took a leading part in the Second Council of Lyons, which met in 1274. That council attempted to restore communion with the Byzantine Church under Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos and also legislated for a new crusade and for reform of conclave procedures in the College of Cardinals. Pierre de Tarentaise's combination of Dominican learning, French provincial experience, and closeness to Gregory X made him a natural candidate when that pope died at Arezzo in January 1276.

The cardinals elected him pope on 21 January 1276, and he took the name Innocent V. He was the first friar of the Order of Preachers to become Bishop of Rome. His pontificate lasted only from January until June of that year. He sought to continue Gregory X's policies: preserving the union with the Greeks negotiated at Lyons, encouraging a crusade, and reducing factional violence in Italy. He attempted to mediate between Charles I of Anjou, king of Sicily, and the supporters of Rudolf of Habsburg, whom Gregory had recognized as king of the Romans. Innocent V also worked to restore papal authority in the Papal States and to restrain Angevin influence in central Italy. Surviving letters show him corresponding on the implementation of the Lyons union and on peace among the Italian communes and magnates.

Innocent V died in Rome on 22 June 1276 after a reign of five months. He was buried in the basilica of Saint John Lateran. The tomb did not survive later rebuildings of the church. Although he was never canonized, Pope Leo XIII confirmed his cult in 1898, and the Catholic Church commemorates him as Blessed Innocent V on 22 June. His brief papacy is remembered chiefly for his Dominican identity, his role at Lyons, and his effort to carry forward the diplomatic and reforming program of Gregory X in a period of intense conflict between Angevin, imperial, and communal powers in Italy.