The new Pope had been Lothaire of Segni, a member of the noble Roman house of Conti, who had studied law and theology at Paris and Bologna, and had at an early age won for himself a many-sided reputation as a jurist, a politician, and as a writer.  The favor of his uncle, Clement III, had made him cardinal before he was thirty, but under Celestine III he kept in the background, disliked by the Pope, and himself suspicious of the timid and temporizing old man.  But on Celestine’s death on January 8, 1198, Lothaire, though still only thirty-seven years of age, was at once hailed as his most fitting successor, as the strong man who could win for the Church all the advantages that she might hope to gain from the death of Henry VI.  Nor did Innocent’s pontificate belie the promise of his early career.

Innocent III possessed a majestic and noble appearance, an unblemished private character, popular manners, a disposition prone to sudden fits of anger and melancholy, and a fierce and indomitable will.  He brought to his exalted position the clearly formulated theories of the canonists as to the nature of the papal power, as well as the overweening ambition, the high courage, the keen intelligence and the perseverance and energy necessary to turn the theories of the schools into matters of every-day importance.

His enunciations of the papal doctrine put claims that Hildebrand himself had hardly ventured to advance, in the clearest and most definite light.  The Pope was no mere successor of Peter, the vicegerent of man.  “The Roman pontiff,” he wrote, “is the vicar, not of man, but of God himself.”  “The Lord gave Peter the rule not only of the Universal Church, but also the rule of the whole world.”  “The Lord Jesus Christ has set up one ruler over all things as his universal vicar, and as all things in heaven, earth, and hell bow the knee to Christ, so should all obey Christ’s vicar, that there be one flock and one shepherd.”  “No king can reign rightly unless he devoutly serve Christ’s vicar.”  “Princes have power in earth, priests have also power in heaven.  Princes reign over the body, priests over the soul.  As much as the soul is worthier than the body, so much worthier is the priesthood than the monarchy.”  “The Sacerdotium is the sun, the Regnum the moon.  Kings rule over their respective kingdoms, but Peter rules over the whole earth.  The Sacerdotium came by divine creation, the Regnum by man’s cunning.”

In these unrestricted claims to rule over church and state alike we seem to be back again in the anarchy of the eleventh century.  And it was not against the feeble feudal princes of the days of Hildebrand that Innocent III had to contend, but against strong national kings, like Philip of France and John of England.  It is significant of the change of the times, that Innocent sees his chief antagonist, not so much in the empire as in the limited localized power of the national kings.  When Richard of England had yielded before Henry VI, the national state gave way before the universal authority of the lord of the world.  But Innocent claimed that he alone was lord of the world.  The empire was but a German or Italian kingdom, ruling over its limited sphere.  Only in the papacy was the old Roman tradition of universal monarchy rightly upheld.