Pope Innocent

The papal name Innocent (Latin Innocentius) has been borne by thirteen bishops of Rome, from Innocent I at the beginning of the fifth century to Innocent XIII in the early eighteenth century. Identified only as Pope Innocent, without a regnal number, the subject cannot be assigned a single verified birth year, death year, birthplace, or burial. Collapsing those thirteen men into one biography would substitute conjecture for evidence. The name itself means innocent or harmless and was first used by a Roman cleric elected in 401. Later bearers belonged to different Italian (and in one case French) families and to widely separated historical settings, from late antiquity through the Counter-Reformation and the early Enlightenment.

The only pope of this name universally venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church is Innocent I, who held the see from 401 until his death in 417. The Liber Pontificalis describes him as a native of Albano in the Roman Campagna and, more doubtfully, as the son of his predecessor Anastasius I; the filial claim is not independently confirmed and should not be treated as established fact. His pontificate coincided with the Visigothic sack of Rome under Alaric in 410, which he did not witness in the city because he was then at Ravenna seeking imperial support. Surviving letters show him asserting Roman disciplinary and doctrinal authority in Gaul, Spain, and Illyricum, intervening in the aftermath of the exile of John Chrysostom, and taking a firm line against Pelagianism after African and imperial condemnations of Pelagius and Caelestius. He is entered in the Roman Martyrology on 28 July. Burial is associated with the cemetery of Pontianus on the Via Portuensis at Rome; later translations of relics are reported but not all equally well documented. No comprehensive list of patronages is securely attached to him in standard martyrological sources.

In political and institutional history the name is most often associated with Innocent III (Lotario dei Conti di Segni), pope from 1198 to 1216, whose reign is widely regarded as the high point of medieval papal monarchy. He convoked the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, promoted crusading (including the Fourth Crusade, which diverted to Constantinople, and the Albigensian Crusade in Languedoc), and intervened heavily in the succession politics of the Empire, France, and England. He was not canonized. Other historically prominent Innocents include Innocent IV (Sinibaldo Fieschi), who conflicted with Emperor Frederick II; Innocent V (Pierre of Tarentaise), a Dominican and the first pope from that order, who reigned only months in 1276 and was later beatified; Innocent VIII, whose 1484 bull Summis desiderantes affectibus is linked to the intensification of witchcraft prosecutions; Innocent X (Giovanni Battista Pamphilj), who denounced the Peace of Westphalia; Blessed Innocent XI (Benedetto Odescalchi), pope from 1676 to 1689, an opponent of Louis XIV’s gallican claims, beatified by Pius XII in 1956; and Innocent XII and Innocent XIII in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Their birthplaces, death dates, and tombs (the Vatican grottoes, Perugia, and various Roman churches among them) are those of distinct individuals and cannot be reported as a single set of facts.

Because the designation is ambiguous, fields that require one verified year, city, feast, canonization, or patronage are left blank rather than filled by guesswork or by substituting an accession year for a birth year. Where a hagiographical notice is wanted, Catholic tradition points first to Saint Innocent I and the July commemoration. Where the subject of political history is meant, Innocent III is the usual referent. Neither identification is entailed by the name alone, and the remaining popes Innocent belong to other centuries and cannot be merged with either figure without error.