1.
Pope Innocent IV
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Pope Innocent IV, born Sinibaldo Fieschi, was Pope of the Catholic Church from 25 June 1243 to his death in 1254. Born in Genoa in an year, Sinibaldo was the son of Beatrice Grillo and Ugo Fieschi. The Fieschi were a merchant family of Liguria. Sinibaldo received his education at the universities of Parma and Bologna and, for a time and it is pointed out by Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani, however, that there is no documentary evidence of such a professorship. From 1216-1227 he was Canon of the Cathedral of Parma and he was considered one of the best canonists of his time, and was called to serve Pope Honorius III in the Roman Curia as Auditor causarum, from 11 November 1226 to 30 May 1227. He was then promoted to the office of Vice-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church, though he retained the office, Vice-Chancellor Sinibaldo Fieschi was created Cardinal Priest of San Lorenzo in Lucina on 18 September 1227 by Pope Gregory IX. He later served as governor of the March of Ancona. It is widely repeated, from the 17th century on, that he became bishop of Albenga in 1235, Innocents immediate predecessor was Pope Celestine IV, elected 25 October 1241, whose reign lasted a mere fifteen days. The two prelates remained incarcerated and missed the conclave that immediately elected Celestine, the conclave that reconvened after his death fell into camps supporting contradictory policies about how to treat with the emperor. After a year and a half of debate and coercion. Cardinal de Fieschi very reluctantly accepted election as Pope 25 June 1243, as Cardinal de Fieschi, Sinibaldo had been on friendly terms with Frederick, even after his excommunication. The Emperor also greatly admired the cardinals wisdom, having enjoyed discussions with him from time to time, following the election the witty Frederick remarked that he had lost the friendship of a cardinal but made up for it by gaining the enmity of a pope. Negotiations leading to this objective began shortly afterwards, but proved abortive, the Emperors machinations caused a good deal of anti-papal feeling to rise in Italy, particularly in the Papal States, and imperial agents encouraged plots against papal rule. Realizing how untenable his position in Rome was growing, Innocent IV secretly and hurriedly withdrew, traveling in disguise, Innocent made his way to Sutri and Civitavecchia, to Genoa, his birthplace, where he arrived on 7 July. From there, on 5 October, he fled to France, making his way to Lyon, where he arrived on November 29,1244, Innocent was happily greeted by the magistrates of the city. The bishops met for three sessions,28 June,5 July, and 17 July 1245. Their principal business was to subjugate the Emperor Frederick II, Gregory IX, had issued letters on 9 June 1239, ordering all the bishops of France to confiscate all Talmuds in the possession of the Jews. Agents were to raid each synagogue on the first Saturday of Lent of 1240, the Bishop of Paris was ordered to see to it that copies of the Popes mandate reached all the bishops of France, England, Aragon, Navarre, Castile and León, and Portugal
2.
Pope Urban IV
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Pope Urban IV, born Jacques Pantaléon, was Pope from 29 August 1261 to his death in 1264. He was not a cardinal, only a few popes since his time have not been Cardinals, including Gregory X, Urban V, Urban IV was the son of a cobbler of Troyes, France. He studied theology and common law in Paris and was appointed a canon of Laon, at the First Council of Lyon he attracted the attention of Pope Innocent IV, who sent him on two missions in Germany. One of the missions was to negotiate the Treaty of Christburg between the pagan Prussians and the Teutonic Knights and he became Bishop of Verdun in 1253. In 1255, Pope Alexander IV made him Patriarch of Jerusalem and he had returned from Jerusalem, which was in dire straits, and was at Viterbo seeking help for the oppressed Christians in the East when Alexander IV died. After a three-month vacancy, Pantaléon was chosen by the eight cardinals of the Sacred College to succeed him in an election that concluded on 29 August 1261. He chose the name of Urban IV. Urban IV endeavoured without success to stir up a crusade to restore the Latin Empire, Urbain initiated construction of the Basilica of St. Urbain, Troyes, in 1262. The festival of Corpus Christi was instituted by Urban IV on August 11,1264, Urban asked Thomas Aquinas, the Dominican theologian, to write the texts for the Mass and Office of the feast. This included such famous hymns as the Pange lingua, Tantum ergo, frederick IIs heir Manfred was immersed in these struggles. Urban IVs military captain was the condottiere Azzo dEste, nominally at the head of a league of cities that included Mantua. Charles was Count of Provence by right of his wife, maintaining a base for projecting what would be an expensive Italian war. For two years Urban IV negotiated with Manfred regarding whether Manfred would aid the Latins in regaining Constantinople in return for confirmation of the Hohenstaufen rights in the realm. Before the arrival in Italy of his candidate Charles, Urban IV died at Perugia on 2 October 1264 and his successor was Pope Clement IV, who immediately took up the papal side of the arrangement. Tannhäuser, a prominent German Minnesänger and poet, was a contemporary of Pope Urban IV—the pope died in 1264, and the Minnesänger died shortly after 1265. Two centuries later, the became a major character in a legend which grew up about the Minnesänger. The legendary account makes Tannhäuser a knight and poet who found the Venusberg, the home of Venus. After leaving the Venusberg, Tannhäuser is filled with remorse and travels to Rome to ask Pope Urban IV if it is possible to be absolved of his sins, Urban replies that forgiveness is as impossible as it would be for his papal staff to send forth green leaves
3.
Pope Gregory IX
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Pope Gregory IX Latin, Gregorius IX, was Pope from 19 March 1227 to his death in 1241. The successor of Pope Honorius III, he inherited the traditions of Pope Gregory VII and of his cousin Pope Innocent III. The date of his birth varies in sources between c.1145 and 1170 and he received his education at the Universities of Paris and Bologna. He was created Cardinal-Deacon of the church of SantEustachio by his cousin Innocent III in December 1198, in 1206 he was promoted to the rank of Cardinal Bishop of Ostia e Velletri. He became Dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals in 1218 or 1219, upon the special request of Saint Francis, in 1220, Pope Honorius III appointed him Cardinal Protector of the order of the Franciscans. As Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, he cultivated a wide range of acquaintances, among them the Queen of England, Gregory IX was elevated to the papacy in the papal election of 1227. He took the name Gregory because he assumed the papal office at the monastery of Saint Gregory ad Septem Solia. Gregorys Bull Parens scientiarum of 1231, after the University of Paris strike of 1229 and this pope, being a remarkably skillful and learned lawyer, caused to be prepared Nova Compilatio decretalium, which was promulgated in numerous copies in 1234. The supplement completed the work, which provided the foundation for papal legal theory, in the 1234 Decretals, he invested the doctrine of perpetua servitus iudaeorum – perpetual servitude of the Jews – with the force of canonical law. According to this, the followers of the Talmud would have to remain in a condition of political servitude until Judgment Day, the doctrine then found its way into the doctrine of servitus camerae imperialis, or servitude immediately subject to the Emperors authority, promulgated by Frederick II. The Jews were thus suppressed from having influence over the political process. In 1239, under the influence of Nicholas Donin, a Jewish convert to Christianity, following a public disputation between Christians and Jewish theologians, this culminated in a mass burning of some 12,000 handwritten Talmudic manuscripts on 12 June 1242, in Paris. Gregory was a supporter of the mendicant orders which he saw an excellent means for counteracting by voluntary poverty the love of luxury and he was a friend of Saint Dominic as well as Clare of Assisi. On 17 January 1235, he approved the Order of Our Lady of Mercy for the redemption of captives. He appointed ten cardinals and canonized Saints Elisabeth of Hungary, Dominic de Guzmán, Anthony of Padua and he transformed a chapel to Our Lady in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. Gregory IX endorsed the Northern Crusades and attempts to bring Orthodox Slavic peoples in Eastern Europe under Papacys fold, at the coronation of Frederick II in Rome,22 November 1220, the emperor made a vow to embark for the Holy Land in August 1221. Gregory IX began his pontificate by suspending the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, Frederick II appealed to the sovereigns of Europe complaining of his treatment. The suspension was followed by excommunication and threats of deposition, as deeper rifts appeared, Frederick II went to the Holy Land and in fact managed to take possession of Jerusalem
4.
Papal States
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The Papal States, officially the State of the Church, were territories in the Italian Peninsula under the sovereign direct rule of the pope, from the 8th century until 1870. They were among the states of Italy from roughly the 8th century until the Italian Peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. At their zenith, they covered most of the modern Italian regions of Lazio, Marche, Umbria and Romagna and these holdings were considered to be a manifestation of the temporal power of the pope, as opposed to his ecclesiastical primacy. By 1861, much of the Papal States territory had been conquered by the Kingdom of Italy, only Lazio, including Rome, remained under the Popes temporal control. In 1870, the pope lost Lazio and Rome and had no physical territory at all, Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini ended the crisis between unified Italy and the Vatican by signing the Lateran Treaty, granting the Vatican City State sovereignty. The Papal States were also known as the Papal State, the territories were also referred to variously as the State of the Church, the Pontifical States, the Ecclesiastical States, or the Roman States. For its first 300 years the Catholic Church was persecuted and unrecognized and this system began to change during the reign of the emperor Constantine I, who made Christianity legal within the Roman Empire, and restoring to it any properties that had been confiscated. The Lateran Palace was the first significant new donation to the Church, other donations followed, primarily in mainland Italy but also in the provinces of the Roman Empire. But the Church held all of these lands as a private landowner, the seeds of the Papal States as a sovereign political entity were planted in the 6th century. Beginning In 535, the Byzantine Empire, under emperor Justinian I, launched a reconquest of Italy that took decades and devastated Italys political, just as these wars wound down, the Lombards entered the peninsula from the north and conquered much of the countryside. While the popes remained Byzantine subjects, in practice the Duchy of Rome, nevertheless, the pope and the exarch still worked together to control the rising power of the Lombards in Italy. As Byzantine power weakened, though, the took a ever larger role in defending Rome from the Lombards. In practice, the papal efforts served to focus Lombard aggrandizement on the exarch, a climactic moment in the founding of the Papal States was the agreement over boundaries embodied in the Lombard king Liutprands Donation of Sutri to Pope Gregory II. When the Exarchate of Ravenna finally fell to the Lombards in 751, the popes renewed earlier attempts to secure the support of the Franks. In 751, Pope Zachary had Pepin the Younger crowned king in place of the powerless Merovingian figurehead king Childeric III, zacharys successor, Pope Stephen II, later granted Pepin the title Patrician of the Romans. Pepin led a Frankish army into Italy in 754 and 756, Pepin defeated the Lombards – taking control of northern Italy – and made a gift of the properties formerly constituting the Exarchate of Ravenna to the pope. The cooperation between the papacy and the Carolingian dynasty climaxed in 800, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor, the precise nature of the relationship between the popes and emperors – and between the Papal States and the Empire – is disputed. Events in the 9th century postponed the conflict, the Holy Roman Empire in its Frankish form collapsed as it was subdivided among Charlemagnes grandchildren
5.
Holy Roman Empire
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The Holy Roman Empire was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806. On 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne as Emperor, reviving the title in Western Europe, more than three centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The title was revived in 962 when Otto I was crowned emperor, fashioning himself as the successor of Charlemagne, some historians refer to the coronation of Charlemagne as the origin of the empire, while others prefer the coronation of Otto I as its beginning. Scholars generally concur, however, in relating an evolution of the institutions and principles constituting the empire, the office of Holy Roman Emperor was traditionally elective, although frequently controlled by dynasties. Emperor Francis II dissolved the empire on 6 August 1806, after the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon, before 1157, the realm was merely referred to as the Roman Empire. In a decree following the 1512 Diet of Cologne, the name was changed to Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, by the end of the 18th century, the term Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation had fallen out of official use. As Roman power in Gaul declined during the 5th century, local Germanic tribes assumed control, by the middle of the 8th century, however, the Merovingians had been reduced to figureheads, and the Carolingians, led by Charles Martel, had become the de facto rulers. In 751, Martel’s son Pepin became King of the Franks, the Carolingians would maintain a close alliance with the Papacy. In 768 Pepin’s son Charlemagne became King of the Franks and began an expansion of the realm. He eventually incorporated the territories of present-day France, Germany, northern Italy, on Christmas Day of 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, restoring the title in the west for the first time in over three centuries. After the death of Charles the Fat in 888, however, the Carolingian Empire broke apart, according to Regino of Prüm, the parts of the realm spewed forth kinglets, and each part elected a kinglet from its own bowels. After the death of Charles the Fat, those crowned emperor by the pope controlled only territories in Italy, the last such emperor was Berengar I of Italy, who died in 924. Around 900, autonomous stem duchies reemerged in East Francia, on his deathbed, Conrad yielded the crown to his main rival, Henry the Fowler of Saxony, who was elected king at the Diet of Fritzlar in 919. Henry reached a truce with the raiding Magyars, and in 933 he won a first victory against them in the Battle of Riade, Henry died in 936, but his descendants, the Liudolfing dynasty, would continue to rule the Eastern kingdom for roughly a century. Upon Henry the Fowlers death, Otto, his son and designated successor, was elected King in Aachen in 936 and he overcame a series of revolts from an elder brother and from several dukes. After that, the managed to control the appointment of dukes. In 951, Otto came to the aid of Adelaide, the queen of Italy, defeating her enemies, marrying her. In 955, Otto won a victory over the Magyars in the Battle of Lechfeld
6.
Viterbo
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See also Viterbo, Texas and Viterbo University. For the municipality in Colombia, see Viterbo, Caldas Viterbo listen is an ancient city and comune in the Lazio region of central Italy and it conquered and absorbed the neighboring town of Ferento in its early history. It is approximately 80 kilometres north of GRA on the Via Cassia, the historic center of the city is surrounded by medieval walls, still intact, built during the 11th and 12th centuries. Entrance to the center of the city is through ancient gates. Apart from agriculture, the resources of Viterbos area are pottery, marble. The town is home to the Italian gold reserves, an important Academy of Fine Arts, the University of Tuscia, and it is located in a wide thermal area, attracting many tourists from the whole of central Italy. The first report of the new city dates to the eighth century CE and it was fortified in 773 by the Lombard King Desiderius in his vain attempt to conquer Rome. In 1164, Frederick Barbarossa made Viterbo the seat of his antipope Paschal III, three years later he gave it the title of city and used its militias against Rome. In 1172, Viterbo started its expansion, destroying the old city of Ferento, in this age it was a rich and prosperous comune, one of the most important of Central Italy, with a population of almost 60,000. In 1207, Pope Innocent III held a council in the cathedral, in 1210, however, Viterbo managed to defeat Emperor Otto IV and was again at war against Rome. In the thirteenth century it was ruled alternately by the tyrants of the Gatti, Frederick II drew Viterbo to the Ghibelline side in 1240, but when the citizens expelled his turbulent German troops in 1243 he returned and besieged the city, but in vain. From that point Viterbo was always a loyal Guelph city, between 1257 and 1261 it was the seat of Pope Alexander IV, who also died there. His successor Urban IV was elected in Viterbo, in 1266–1268, Clement IV chose Viterbo as the base of his ruthless fight against the Hohenstaufen. Here, from the loggia of the palace, he excommunicated the army of Conradin of Swabia which was passing on the Via Cassia. Other popes elected in Viterbo were Gregory X and John XXI, Nicholas III and they were subsequently excommunicated, and the popes avoided Viterbo for 86 years. Without the popes, the city fell into the hands of the Di Vicos, in the fourteenth century, Giovanni di Vico had created a seignory extending to Civitavecchia, Tarquinia, Bolsena, Orvieto, Todi, Narni and Amelia. His dominion was crushed by Cardinal Gil de Albornoz in 1354, sent by the Avignonese popes to recover the Papal States, but Pope Boniface IXs troops drove him away in 1396 and established a firm papal suzerainty over the city. The last Di Vico to hold power in Viterbo was Giacomo, thenceforth Viterbo became a city of secondary importance, following the vicissitudes of the Papal States
7.
Sant'Eustachio
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SantEustachio is a Roman Catholic titular church and minor basilica in Rome, named for the martyr Saint Eustace. It is located on Via di SantEustachio in the rione SantEustachio, a block west of the Pantheon and via della Rotonda, and a block east of SantIvo alla Sapienza, the church was founded in the 8th century, or possibly even earlier. The church was recorded as a diaconia at the end of the pontificate of Pope Gregory II and it is mentioned in some documents dating from the 10th and 11th centuries, where this church is called in platana referring to the tree planted in the garden of the martyr Eustace. The emperor Constantine I had previously built an oratory on this same spot and this church was called ad Pantheon in regione nona e iuxta templum Agrippae. At the end of the 12th century during the pontificate of Pope Celestine III, in the 16th century, it was a favoured praying-place for St Philip Neri. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was almost completely rebuilt, the church was designed in the Roman Baroque style. The new high altar, in bronze and polychrome marble, was added by Nicola Salvi in 1739, the choir and the sacristy were designed by Canevari and built by Giovanni Moscati. The church was elevated to basilica status in 1918. The facade was built under the direction of Cesare Corvara with the collaboration of other architects and it consists of two sections, with the upper section standing back. The lower part is marked with four pilasters and two columns, all with Ionic capitals with in the middle of each capital a small head of a deer, the spirals of the volutes are connected by a small laurel wreath. On the right side of the facade a plaque was placed in memory of the flood of the Tiber River in 1495, the top section is divided by four pilasters with on each side a large volute. In the middle is a window with an arcuated cornice. On top is a pediment with in its middle a circular window surrounded with palm branches. On top of the pediment stands a head with a cross between the antlers (done by the sculptor Paolo Morelli, in reference to the legend of Saint Eustace. An iron gate, made by Gian Battista Contini, closes off the porch, the square Romanesque campanile is situated on the back of the church at its left side. Construction was started in 1196 under the pontificate of Pope Celestine III, the top part can be dated back to the end of the 12th century, while the base is somewhat older and can be dated at ca. The interior has an architectural plan and consists of a single nave. Its construction was carried out in mature Baroque style under the supervision of the architects Cesare Corvara, the nave is marked on each side by three pilasters resting on a broad base
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Pope Alexander IV". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "
