1 - ‘Our Lord Hugo’: Gregory IX Before the Pontificate

Summary

Abstract

Coinciding with the pontificates of Innocent III (1198–1216) and Honorius III (1216–1227), Hugo's cardinalate provided a period of diplomatic and practical experience as both advocate and papal auditor. In delivering Innocent III's mandate of submission to Markward of Anweiler in 1199, his courage was rewarded when, between 1209 and 1221, as cardinal bishop of Ostia and legate a latere with plenipotential power, further legations took him to Germany, Tuscany, and Lombardy. Whilst his dealings with Otto IV proved ultimately unsuccessful, his strong defence of the faith against heresy, his pacification of the North Italian communes and his active campaigns to preach and raise troops for the Fifth Crusade all added to his reputation. In religious matters, on hearing Jacques de Vitry's account at Perugia in 1216 of large numbers of penitential Umbrian women seeking a religious lifestyle, by 1219 Hugo had himself succeeded in gathering four convents into the Order of the Poor Ladies of the Valle Spoletana.

Keywords: Legate, Fifth Crusade, North Italian communes, heresy, penitential women

Were we to accept without qualification the brief and formulaic second and third chapters of the Vita Gregorii noni, an anonymous, official biography emanating from the Curia during the summer of 1240 whilst the pope still lived, we might be forgiven for believing that his twenty-nine years of pre-papal service to the Church had passed almost unnoticed. It should be no surprise, therefore, that two decades ago the forty-four subsequent, often polemical and overwhelmingly hagiographical chapters of the Vita which cover Gregory IX's fourteen-year pontificate were also authoritatively dismissed as ‘of scant assistance’ in the reconstruction of this papal biography. In conformity with the Liber pontificalis, the second chapter of the Vita locates his origins firmly in the Campania, recording his mother's descent from the local nobility of Anagni and his father's from the Conti di Segni whilst also noting his relationship in the third degree to Innocent III (1198–1216) through their common great-great grandfather. There follows a long list of his attributes – huge perspicacity, sound memory, profound knowledge of the liberal arts, mastery of law – a river of Ciceronian eloquence – scrupulous master of the Sacred Page, zealous in the faith, upright in virtue, righteous in justice, consoler of the wretched, sower and cultivator of religion, lover of chastity and exemplar of all sanctity – such qualities leading to Gregory's immediate promotion.