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The Pope and the Cities: Anticlericalism and Heresy in Innocent Hi’s Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

Diana M. Webb
Diana M. Webb*
Affiliation:
King’s CollegeLondon
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Extract

At the moment of Innocent Ill’s accession, the papacy faced both problems and opportunities in Italy, many of them the result of the unexpected death of the Emperor Henry VI in 1197 and the subsequent abeyance of imperial rule. The new pope at once showed his determination to realize the projects of his predecessors and to secure the position of the Holy See by establishing a papal governmental structure in central Italy and, in due course, by obtaining the election of an obedient and faithful emperor. These policies had repercussions on city-state regimes which had for many years now shown their own determination to achieve the most extensive authority possible, both within their walls and in their surrounding territories. Their quest for autonomy was often accompanied by measures hostile to the property and jurisdiction of the Church; it was sometimes also accompanied by the more or less overt toleration of heresy, even within the ranks of a city’s rulers. Attacks on clerical immunities, however, came to the papacy’s notice more frequently than instances of outright heresy, and Innocent at least was well aware how both anticlericalism and heresy proper were fuelled by the manifest inadequacies of the clergy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 9: The Church and Sovereignty c.590-1918 , 1991 , pp. 135 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1991 

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References

1 On Innocent and Italian heresy see, in general, Thouzellier, C., Catharismeet Valdéisme à fin du XIIe et au début du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1960), pp. 143–7, 161–8Google Scholar. Maisonneuve, H., Etudes sur les origines de l’Inquisition (Paris, 1942), p. 158Google Scholar, lists many of the relevant letters. For the Italian background, Waley, D., The Papal State in the Thirteenth Century (London, 1961), pp. 1—67Google Scholar, and Dupré-Theseider, E., ‘Gli eretici nel mondo comunale italiano’, Bollettino della Società di Studi Valdesi, 114 (1965), pp. 3—23Google Scholar, reprinted in his Mondo Cittadino e Movimenti Ereticali nel Medio Evo (Bologna, 1978), pp. 233—59.

2 See, in general, Cheney, C., ‘The Letters of Pope Innocent III’, in Medieval Texts and Studies (Oxford, 1973), pp. 16—38Google Scholar, with a bibliography on the Register. H. Tillmann, Pope Innocent ID, tr. W. Sax (Amsterdam, 1980), p. 102, n. 99, points out that some letters that were registered were intended to be sent only in certain circumstances. The Register is here cited, for the first two years of the pontificate, from the new edition by Hageneder, O. and others, Die Register Innocenz’III (Graz, 1964ff)Google Scholar; for the remaining years, from the old edition in PL 214—16.

3 Kehr, P., Regata Pontificum Romanorum: Italia Pontificia, 9 vols (Berlin, 1906—62), 7, pp. 114–15.Google Scholar

4 Register, 2, pp. 38—42. The podestà in receipt of this letter is identified (p. 38, n. 27) as the Milanese Guglielmo da Pusterla, who had been podestà of Treviso previously in 1194—5 and was so again in 1218—19. In June 1213 he was podestà of Alessandria, and Innocent described him as an excommunicate and reputed heretic: PL 216, col. 859.

5 Below, p. 149.

6 Register, 1, pp. 472—4.

7 Acta SS, Junii 4, pp. 620—30.

8 Kehr, 5, p. 459; Milano, P. Hanno da, ‘Il Liber “Super Stella” del piacentino Salvo Burci contro i Catari e altre correnti erericali’, Aevum, 16 (1942), p. 281Google Scholar, n. 2. See also Thouzellier, Catharisme, pp. 108—10,164—5.

9 Register, i, pp. 6—9. The letter dates probably from January 1198.

10 PL 215, cols 998—1000. The Pope describes Piacenza as ‘haereticorum seducta fallaciis’ and now seeking to lure others into an assault on ecclesiastical liberties. Writing at about the same time to the bishops of Lombardy, he describes Piacenza’s behaviour as a pestis that could spread, but does not mention heresy; cols 995—8. He first threatened to deprive Piacenza (along with Parma) of episcopal status in April 1198: Register, 1, pp. 184—8. On the use of this tactic, Tillmann, Innocent III, p. 95.

11 PL 215, cols 13 31-4. In November 1208 Innocent was horrified to learn that the bishop had suddenly forgiven the city all that it owed to the Church: ibid., cols 1486—9.

12 On 21 April 1198 he wrote admonitory letters to all the metropolitans of southern France and their suffragans: Register, 1, pp. 135—8; on 1 April he had written to the archbishop of Auch on the subject: ibid., pp. 119—20.

13 In June the Pope expressed to the archdeacon of Milan his approval of the Verona decree against the appointment of heretics to communal office, authorizing the imposition of interdict if civic officials refused to observe it, ibid., p. 421; as indeed the Trevisans did: see n. 4 above.

14 In April 1204 Innocent ordered the clergy of Rimini to observe sentences of excommunication passed by the bishop, by refusing burial and the sacraments ‘propter immanitatem hujus sceleris, quod enam leges civiles fortius persequuntur’: PL 215, cols 319—20. In the 1180s Lucius III had complained about non-observance of anti-heretical legislation and the rights of the church at Rimini: Kehr, 4, pp. 163,175.

15 Cf. Thouzellier, Calharisme, pp. 215—26. In 1209 the Pope ruled that a citizen of Como whose wife had become a Cathar did not have grounds for divorce unless consanguinity could be proved in the normal way: PL 216, col. 29; in 1210 he referred to a recent problem of heresy at Bergamo: see p. 148 below.

16 See pp. 150—1 below.

17 Register, 2, pp. 3—5. Cf. Thouzellier, Calharisme, pp. 45—7. The wording (including the incipit) had been foreshadowed in a letter to the bishop of Syracuse in January 1199 which concerned the heresy of relapsed converts from Islam: Register, 1, pp. 743—4. Thouzellier, pp. 155—7, observes that the version of the bull later directed to Narbonne omitted the important provision for disinheriting Catholic heirs, and that the third, Bosnian, version was ‘plus restreinte encore’.

18 Waley, Papal State, pp. 84,25. Also important for policies in the papal state is M. Maccarone, Studi su Innocenzo III = Italia Sacra, 17 (Padua, 1972) esp. pp. 19-—61.

19 Register, 2, pp. 377—9; Waley, Papal State, pp. 38—9, 44.

20 PL 215, cols 654—7.

21 Nacalini, V., ed., S. Pietro Parenzo: la leggenda scritta dal maestro Giovanni canonico di Orvieto = Lateranum, ns, 2, pt 2 (Rome, 1936)Google Scholar. There is an old edition of the Vita in ActaSS, Maii 5, pp. 86—90.

22 Maccarone, Studi, pp. 33, 35.

23 PL 215, cols 673—4.

24 Ibid., cols 1126—8; Waley, Papal State, pp. 52—3.

25 PL 215, col. 1234. Innocent here recalls that Celestine III had conferred the honour of a cathedral on Viterbo, but in March 1200 he had himself threatened to take it away (Potthast, no. 982).

26 PL 214, cols clxi-clxii.

27 Register, 1, pp. 40—1; Waley, Papal State, p. 35.

28 Register, 1, p. 127.

29 PL 215, cols 365—6.

30 Esser, K., ‘Franziskus von Assisi und die Katharer seiner Zeit’, AFH, 31 (1958), pp. 225–64.Google Scholar

31 PL 215, cols 365—6. Cf.Davidsohn, R., Geschichte von Florenz, 4 vols (Berlin, 1896—1927), 1, pp. 642–4.Google Scholar

32 The prior of San Frediano was conveying messages between the curia and the papal legates in Tuscany at die beginning of March 1198: Register, 1, pp. 26,49.

33 ActaSS, Maii 1, pp. 15—86; Davidsohn, Florenz, pp. 647—9. Innocent’s letter urging Alberto, despite his great usefulness in all the Pope’s vital affairs in Lombardy, to accept the election is in PL 215, cols 540—1.

34 PL 215, col. 505. The authorization was repeated in January 1206; ibid., cols 746—7.

35 Ibid., cols 813—14. The Pope had the previous day written in very similar terms to tlie consuls and people of Prato, praising them for expelling and legislating against heretics: col. 815.

36 Ibid., cols 1042—3. Faenza had in 1204 entered into a commercial treaty with Florence: Davidsohn, Florenz, pp. 646—7.

37 In December 1205 the Pope was writing to Bishop Giovanni about the restoration of the fiefs of Florentine nobles who had been loyal to the Church during the Victorine schism; PL 215, cols 742—3.

38 Waley, Papal Slate, p. 40.

39 PL 215, cols 819—20.

40 Ibid., cols 1212—15.

41 Register, I, pp. 569—70.

42 Maisonneuve, Les Origines, p. 154, comments, of Innocent’s efforts to subject temporal rulers to the dictates of canon law, ‘Ce n’était pas toujours pour combattre l’hérésie; c’était le plus souvent pour défendre les immunités ecclésiastiques.’ The threat of deprivation of episcopal status was used against Piacenza and Parma in 1198 (n. 10 above); Treviso (Register, 2, pp. 37-42); Novara (PL 214, col. 877); Modena (PL 215, col. 325); Piacenza again in 1206 (ibid., cols 996, 999); Milan (PL 216, cols 713—14); and Alessandria (col. 715). In the Papal State, it was used against Viterbo (n. 25 above) and Narni (PL 215, col. 1459).

43 RS, 21, pt 2, p. 39. They had however mostly been converted by a Eucharistie miracle his nostris temporibus.

44 MGH.L, 4, pt 2, pp. 43—4 (25 March 1210). In early 1210 Otto had just achieved reconciliation between the Este and the Salinguerra, rivals for control of Ferrara and its region, and was hoping to use them both as his agents in areas claimed by the papacy. By June 1211, however. Azzo d’Este had opted for the Pope and was seeking permission to build a castle at Ferrara, ‘per quod ipsam melius defendere valeat et ad fidektatem Romanae ecclesiae conservare’: PL 216. col. 440; Waley, Papai State, pp. 59—61.

45 Register, 2, pp. 88—9. Huguccio also received one of die Pope’s most theological letters, in 1209, in which Innocent discusses the nature of the fluids that issued from Christ’s side on the Cross, and refers to the errors of the Arians and Manichaeans on the nature of Christ: PL 216, cols 16—18. It is not clear what the occasion for the letter was.

46 For Cremona’s history in this period, see O. Holder-Egger’s introduction to Sicard’s chronicle in Annales et chronica Italica aevi Sunna, MGH.SS (in folio), 31, pp. 22—59.

47 Böhmer, J., Acta Imperti Selecta (Innsbruck, 1870), p. 617. no. 906.Google Scholar

48 Register, 1, pp. 761—4. Cf.Vauchez, A., La Sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du moyen âge (Rome, 1981), esp. pp. 412–14.Google Scholar

49 For Sicard’s translation in 1196 of SS. Archelaus and Himerius, and his role in the canonization of Homobonus, see MGH.SS, 31, pp. 174—5, 176. For his lost life of Homobonus, Brocchieri, E., ‘Sicardo di Cremona e la sua opera letteraria’, Annali della Biblioteca Governativa e Libreria Civica di Cremona, 11 (1958), pp. 103–4.Google Scholar

50 PL, 215, cols 323—5.

51 Register, 2, p. 20. For the disputed interpretation of die phrase ‘molendina Patarinorum’ in a document of 1192 relating to Modena, see Paolini, L., ‘Domus e Zona degli Eretici: l’esempio di Bologna’, Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia, 35 (1981), p. 377, n. 23.Google Scholar

52 Register, 2, pp. 446—8.

53 PL. 215, col. 892.

54 Kehr, 7, pp. 228, 291.

55 Register, 2, pp. 424—6.

56 Potthast, no. 1198.

57 PL 214, cols 986—7.

58 PL 215, cols 780—1.

59 Ibid., cols 201—4.

60 PL 216, col. 230.

61 PL 215, cols 1582—3. On the perils, and the efficacy, of the weapon of interdict, see Tillmann, Innocent III, pp. 95, 102, n. 103, 248. Hugues de Noyer, Bishop of Auxerre and a vigorous persecutor of heretics, was contemporaneously reflecting that ‘per huiusmodi interdicta frequência in immensum vitia succrescebant et pullulare haereses timebantur’; RHGL, 18, p. 727.

62 PL 214, cols 922—6.

63 PL 215, cols 1146—8.

64 Register, 2, pp. 337—8.

65 PL 216, cols 72—3,723, 726—8, 804—6,948—50.

66 Ibid., col. 635.

67 Cleve, T. van, The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenslaufen (Oxford, 1972), p. 82.Google Scholar

68 Alfonso’s letter was copied into the Register; PL 216, cols 699—703. The Pope replied on 26 October, ibid., cols 703—4.

69 Ibid., cols 710—14. Tillmann, Innocent III, p. 259, n. 146, thinks it possible that the letter was ‘for conditional delivery’.

70 Böhmer, pp. 631—3, no. 922.

71 Ibid., pp. 636—7, no. 926; p. 638, no. 928. For Innocent’s displeasure with Alessandria over the heretic podestà Guglielmo da Pusterla, cf. above p. 136, n. 4.

72 Bóhmer, pp. 640—1, no. 932.

73 PL 216, col. 932

74 Cf. the remarks of Tillmann, Innocent III, p. 248.