again extinguished on earth”). Immanuel responds per
le rime (with matching rhymes) in Io, che trassi le lag-
rime del fondo (“I who draw up tears from the depths”).
Bisbidis, in a kinetic, onomatopoeic style, depicts life at
the court of Cangrande della Scala of Verona.
See also Dante Alighieris
Further Reading
Editions
Jarden, D., ed. The Cantos of Immanuel of Rome, 2 vols. Jerusa-
lem, 1957. (In Hebrew.)
Marti, Mario. Poeti giocosi del tempo di Dante. Milan: Rizzoli,
1956, pp. 315–327.
Massèra, Aldo Francesco, ed. Sonetti burleschi e realistici dei
primi due secoli. Bari: Laterza, 1920. (Rev. Luigi Russo,
- See Vol. l, pp. 145–147.)
Vitale, Maurizio, ed. Rimatori comico-realistici. Turin: UTET,
1956, pp. 539–560. (Reprint, 1976.)
Studies
Bruni, Francesco. “Bene comune, spirito di parte, indifferentismo
nella cultura toscana medievale e in Immanuel Romano.”
In Studi di italianistica in onore di Giovanni Cecchetti, ed.
Paolo Cherchi and Michelangelo Picone. Ravenna: Longo,
1988, pp. 39–55.
Mandelbaum, Allen. “A Millennium of Hebrew Poetry in Italy.”
In Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy, ed.
Vivian B. Mann. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989, pp. 191–207. (Exhibition catalog, Jewish Museum,
New York.)
Rinaldi, Giovanni, and Fabrizio Beggiato. “Immanuele Giudeo.”
In Enciclopedia dantesca, 6 vols. Rome: Istituto della Enci-
clopedia Italiana, 1970–1978.
Joan H. Levin
INNOCENT III, POPE
(1160 or 1161–16 July 1216)
Innocent III (Lothario dei Conti di Segni, Lothar of
Segni) is often described as the most powerful of the
medieval popes; he was certainly one of the most
ambitious of all the Roman popes in his assertion of
papal authority. He was born into the noble house of
the counts of Segni; his parents were Count Trasimund
and Clarissa, the daughter of a powerful Roman family.
From an early age, the boy was destined for a clerical
career. He began his formal education at Rome, where
he studied under Abbot Peter Ismael in the monastery
of Saint Andrew in Celio. He continued his studies in
the liberal arts and theology at Paris, where he was a
pupil of Peter of Corbeil and perhaps also of Peter the
Chanter. Later, for a time, he was a student at Bologna,
although it is unclear what he studied there. Innocent
has often been called a lawyer-pope. There is little in
his known writing to support this description; but if he
was trained in law, as tradition has it, he almost certainly
received that training at Bologna, perhaps from the great
decretalist Huguccio (Uguccione da Pisa), whom he
treated with deference even after becoming pope.
Innocent (then Lothario) completed his formal educa-
tion when he was in his mid-twenties and soon thereafter
appeared at Rome, where he became a member of the
papal curia. He was ordained a subdeacon by Pope
Gregory VIII in 1187; and in 1190, at about age thirty,
he was named cardinal deacon of Saints Sergius and
Bacchus by Pope Clement III.
During his years in the curia he wrote three treatises
on moral questions. The best-known of these is On the
Misery of the Human Condition (De miseria humanae
conditionis), an extended refl ection on the sinfulness
of humankind, our utter unworthiness of salvation,
and our dependence on the undeserved mercy that God
bestows on us. This became a medieval best-seller; it
was by far the most widely read of Innocent’s writings
and survives in some 600 manuscripts. In addition,
before his pontifi cate he completed two other spiritual
treatises: On the Mysteries of the Mass and On the Four
Kinds of Marriage.
Pope Celestine III died on 8 January 1198; before
that day was over Cardinal Lothario dei Segni had been
elected to succeed him. At his coronation six weeks later
the new pope took the name Innocent III. During the
weeks between his election and his coronation, he had
been busy reorganizing the curia and dealing with the
political opportunities that the death of Emperor Henry
VI had created in the papal states.
During the nineteen years of his pontifi cate Innocent
III was to remain deeply involved in political affairs in
Europe and throughout the Mediterranean world. His
active pursuit of political goals was consistent with his
exalted view of the papacy as the supreme representa-
tive of divine authority in the world and of himself as
God’s principal agent in human affairs. The pope, he
declared, was God’s chief minister, “set between God
and man, lower than God but higher than man, who
judges all and is judged by no one.” Innocent believed
that as pope he had not merely a right but an obligation
to intervene wherever God’s interests were violated or
God’s plans, as the pope saw them, were in danger of
being thwarted.
It was entirely consistent with these beliefs that In-
nocent should pursue active political goals in every part
of the world he knew. As the guardian of Frederick of
Hohenstaufen, the son and putative successor of Henry
VI, Innocent intervened repeatedly and actively in the
political maelstrom that swept through the empire in
the early thirteenth century. When the German electors
failed to agree on the successor to Henry VI, Innocent at
fi rst supported the Guelf candidate, Otto IV; then, when
Otto failed to observe the commitments he had made
about the management of the empire’s Italian territories,
Innocent switched allegiance and actively promoted theINNOCENT III, POPE