ANST - FW: Musing on July 16th -- I'm Innocent, I Tell You!

[j'lynn yeates]

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- -----Original Message-----
From: Ellsworth Weaver [mailto:astroweaver at yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2000 13:12
To: 2thpix at surfari.net
Subject: Musing on July 16th -- I'm Innocent, I Tell You!


Dear Folk,

On this day July 16, 1216 one of the greatest medieval popes went to
find out if what he had been preaching was righteous or just plain
mean. Lotario de’ Conti, son of a count, nephew of a pope, was
Innocent
III.

Lotario was born around the year 1160 in Anagni, Italy. Well, it was
not quite Italy in those days; there were many feuding and occupied
city-states. His dad, Trasimund, was count of Segni. Lotario was a
nerd: studied everything he could, hung out in Rome, Paris and
Bologna.
He became a lawyer specializing in church law. His uncle, Pope
Clement
III, made Lotario a cardinal. That meant he was able to elect popes
and
was in line to become one. After Uncle Clement there came Celestine
III
and then in Feb 22, 1198,  Lotario was made pontiff himself. Pontiff
means bridge builder. Interesting.

Innocent III supported kicking the Germans out of Italy. The Holy
Roman
Empire was none of the three at the time. The Germans and Swabs were
battling for control of it. Otto IV, when he finally won the crown,
continued the repression of the Church.  Fredrick II (son of the late
emperor Henry VI), who defeated Otto IV, had been Innocent’s ward so
you would think that Freddie would be delighted in returning the
favor
of guarding the Church. Freddie turned out to be a tad forgetful or
maybe Innocent wasn’t as innocent as his name. We will probably
follow
up on his story in a different musing.

Innocent was pope during the reigns of Philip of France, Richard the
Lionheart and King John Lackland of England. When John needed to get
his country out of excommunication (a dire strait for a Roman
Catholic
country) and a baronial rebellion, he made England a fief of the
Vatican. Pedro II of Aragon did likewise. Think on that: Innocent III
was sovereign lord not just over the Vatican, the whole of the Roman
Catholic Church, the kingdoms of Aragon, and England. Not too shabby!
He became the Judge Judy of his time and had many tough cases brought
before him. Innocent even declared the Magna Carta null and void
because it was extorted from his vassal by the threat of violence.

Remember when we mused on the Cathari and the Albigensian crusade?
Yup,
it was Innocent who declared the need for it. He encouraged Dominic
de
Guzman to kill all those heretical folk. He recognized Dominic’s
warrior friars as an order. To ensure everyone was on the same page
of
the Daily Missal, so to speak, he made a rule at the Fourth Lateran
Council that all Catholics had to receive communion at least once a
year, preferably on Easter. To give him his due, Innocent also
recognized the spiritual craziness of Francis of Assisi as Divinely
inspired.

Innocent III also had that divine crusading spirit against the
Moslems.
There was heathen to whack! He believed that the Church should be in
charge of crusades not worldly kings. He ruled a husband did not even
have to get his wife’s permission to go on crusade. He sent the call
to
barons and knights, telling all the Christian kings to kiss and make
up
for just a second so that their people might be released to follow
the
pope’s summons. Richard and Philip did declare a five year truce.
Unfortunately Richard took that crossbow bolt which "elected" Prince
John who promptly restarted the war.

The rest of the fourth crusade did not do much better. The Venetians,
who were supposed to be simply ferrying the troops, played politics
right heavily. Well, there was a significant lack of turn out for the
crusade. Money promised the Venetians just did not show. The
crusaders
who were camped on the Lido, a small island outside of town, were
running up enormous bills. As a relief, the Venetians struck a
bargain:
if the crusaders did a little contract job or two for them, the debt
could be postponed until real looting and pillaging down in the Holy
Land began. Seemed like a small request. The crusaders wound up
attacking the Catholic city of Zara (under the king of Hungary,
himself
a dedicated crusader) and then sacking the Greek Orthodox city of
Constantinople. In both cases Pope Innocent told them not to do it,
but
business is business. You know? Those battles await telling another
day, I fear. Innocent excommunicated the crusaders. Knowing that
those
Moslems for the most part would remained unwhacked, King Aimery of
Jerusalem signed a six year peace treaty with Saladin.

It was while trying to get another crusade going that Innocent III
died
at Perugia on July 16, 1216.

What have we learned from all of this? If you kill lots of folks, it
helps if you call yourself Innocent? The folks who build the weapons
and transports of war often are the ones who wind up directing it? In
this world the smart and talented rise to the top but it helps to
have
an uncle in the business? No battle plan ever survives first contact
with the enemy? I think I like: it is bad luck to tell husbands to
disregard the wished of their wives.

As always, please forward these scribblings to whomever you like. Do
keep my name and sig. intact. Remember what happened to the folk in
Zara.

As innocent as any pope,
J. Ellsworth Weaver

SCA — Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS –  Polyphemus Theognis
TRV – Sebastian Yeats



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