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Pope Clement III

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Pope
Clement III
Bishop of Rome
13th century miniature of Pope Clement III from the Speculum Grandimontis
13th century miniature of Pope Clement III from the Speculum Grandimontis
Church Catholic Church
Papacy began 19 December 1187
Papacy ended 20 March 1191
Predecessor Gregory VIII
Successor Celestine III
Orders
Created cardinal March 1179
by Alexander III
Personal details
Born Paolo Scolari
1130
Rome, Papal States, Holy Roman Empire
Died 20 March 1191 (aged 60–61)[1]
Rome, Papal States
Other popes named Clement

Pope Clement III (Latin: Clemens III; 1130 – 20 March 1191), born Paolo Scolari, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 19 December 1187 to his death in 1191. He ended the conflict between the Papacy and the city of Rome, by allowing the election of magistrates, which reinstalled the Papacy back in the city after a six-year exile. Clement, faced with a deplete college of cardinals, created thirty-one cardinals over three years, the most since Adrian IV. He died 20 March 1191 and was quickly replaced by Celestine III.

Family

Paolo Scolari was born in 1130 in Rome, at the Rione of the Pigna, into a family of high social level but not noble, son of Giovanni and of his consort Maria and according to some scholars related to the mother of Pope Innocent III.[2] Pope Alexander III appointed him archpriest of the patriarchal Liberian Basilica, cardinal-deacon of Sergio e Bacco, and finally cardinal bishop of Palestrina in December 1180.

Election

Paolo was elected as the new Pope on December 19, 1187, two days after the death of Gregory VIII.[3] He was the cardinals' second choice, but their first choice, cardinal Theobald of Ostia, refused the papal throne.[4] Clement was the second Roman pope since Innocent II.[5]

Two months before being elected pope, Paolo Scolari had been rejected as a papal candidate by the cardinals due to being in poor health.[3] Even during his office as pope his health was a cause of concern. An instance of his poor health was six months after he was elected in June 1188 the cardinals thought Clement was going to die and had pope-elect Cardinal Bishop Teobald of Ostia on hand for when Clement died.[6] Though Clement was old and ill, he was still elected as pope and could have something to do with the small number of cardinals, only eight Cardinals and three of them having been known Romans, at the election of Clement.[7] The electors of Clement may have been aiming for the possibility of returning the curia to Rome, which would in fact happen during his time as pope.[8]

Papacy

Shortly after his accession at the conclusion of the papal election of December 1187, Clement succeeded in allaying the conflict which had existed for half a century between the popes and the citizens of Rome, with an agreement by which the citizens were allowed to elect their magistrates, while the nomination of the governor of the city remained in the hands of the pope. In March 1188 Clement III had agreed that the Roman Church would reimburse numerous Roman citizens[9] who have not received any beneficia since Pope Lucius III, a probable cause of the conflict between the pope and Romans.[10] On 31 May 1188 he concluded a treaty with the Romans which removed long standing difficulties, thus returning the papacy to Rome.[11] Clement wrote a letter to Archbishop of Toledo, Gonzalo Perez, where he bemoaned the power conflicts and political division among Spain's Christian population.[12] The pope emphasized in this letter that the Christian war in Spain, the Reconquista, against Muslims was comparable to the Crusades in the Holy Land and urged for effective unity and the formation of a powerful army to combat them.[12]

Clement also inherited a depleted college of cardinals, consisting of no more than twenty cardinals. He orchestrated three series of promotions (March 1188, May 1189 and October 1190) that resulted in thirty-one cardinals.[8][13] This number of cardinals had not been seen since 1159, under Hadrian IV.[14] During Clement's papacy, the majority of cardinals were Romans, possibly due to Clement III being Roman as well and wanting to fill the Church with Romans.[8]

Actions

Clement sent the Archbishop of Tyre, Josias, to persuade King Henry II of England and King Philip II of France to undertake the Third Crusade.[15]

Though the relationship between Rome and Sicily had been turbulent, before 1188 the Romans had become increasingly frustrated with Papal governence which led to two rival factions in the College of Cardinals, one faction inclined toward an alliance with the Sicily, the other side seeking reconciliation with the Holy Roman Emperor.[8]

In April 1189, Clement ended the conflict with Frederick I Barbarossa. Despite agreeing to crown Henry VI as Holy Roman Emperor, Clement III angered him by bestowing Sicily on Tancred, son of Roger III, Duke of Apulia.[16] The crisis was acute when the Pope died in the latter part of March 1191.[11]

Pope Alexander III had prohibited supplying goods and military information to Muslims. Pope Clement increased the list of banned items in a series of decretals and called for a full trade embargo with the Islamic world.[17]

Clement settled a controversy with King William I of Scotland concerning the choice of the archbishop of St Andrews, and on 13 March 1188 removed the Scottish church from the legatine jurisdiction of the Archbishop of York, thus making it independent of all save Rome.[11][18]

Death

Clement died on 10 April 1191, Celestine III who was 85, was elected the day of Clements death unanimously.[8] Celestine was not involved with either of the sides or factions that were the 'imperialists' nor the 'Sicilians'.[8]

See also

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Pope Clement III — (Paolo Scolari).

Date of birth unknown; elected 19 December, 1187; d. 27 March, 1191. During the short space (1181-1198) which separated the glorious pontificates of Alexander III and Innocent III, no less than five pontiffs occupied in rapid succession the papal chair. They were all veterans trained in the school of Alexander, and needed only their earlier youthful vigour and length of reign to gain lasting renown in an age of great events. Gregory VIII, after a pontificate of two months, died on 17 December, 1187, at Pisa, whither he had gone to expedite the preparations for the recovery of Jerusalem; he was succeeded two days later by the Cardinal-Bishop of Palestrina, Paolo Scolari, a Roman by birth. The choice was particularly acceptable to the Romans; for he was the first native of their city who was elevated to the papacy since their rebellion in the days of Arnold of Brescia, and his well-known mildness and love of peace turned their thoughts towards a reconciliation, more necessary to them than to the pope. Overtures led to the conclusion of a formal treaty, by which the papal sovereignty and the municipal liberties were equally secured; and in the following February Clement made his entry into the city amid the boundless enthusiasm of a population which never seemed to have learned the art of living either with or without the pope.

Seated in the Lateran, Pope Clement turned his attention to the gigantic task of massing the forces of Christendom against the Saracens. He was the organizer of the Third Crusade; and if that imposing expedition produced insignificant results, the blame nowise attaches to him. He dispatched legates to the different courts, who laboured to restore harmony among the belligerent monarchs and princes, and to divert their energy towards the reconquest of the Holy Sepulchre. Fired by the example of the Emperor Barbarossa and of the Kings of France and England, a countless host of Christian warriors took the road which led them to Palestine and death. At the time of Clement's death, just before the capture of Acre, the prospects, notwithstanding the drowning of Barbarossa and the return of Philip Augustus, still seemed bright enough.

The death of the pope's chief vassal, William II of Sicily, precipitated another unfortunate quarrel between the Holy See and the Hohenstaufen. Henry VI, the son and successor of Barbarossa, claimed the kingdom by right of his wife Constanza, the only legitimate survivor of the House of Roger. The pope, whose independence was at an end, if the empire and the Two Sicilies were held by the same monarch, as well as the Italians who detested the rule of a foreigner, determined upon resistance, and when the Sicilians proclaimed Tancred of Lecce, a brave but illegitimate scion of the family of Roger, as king, the pope gave him the investiture. Henry advanced into Italy with a strong army to enforce his claim; an opportune death reserved the continuation of the contest to Clement's successor, Celestine III. By a wise moderation Clement succeeded in quieting the disturbances caused by contested elections in the Dioceses of Trier in Germany and St. Andrews in Scotland. He also delivered the Scottish Church from the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan of York and declared it directly subject to the Holy See. Clement canonized Otto of Bamberg, the Apostle of Pomerania (d. 1139), and Stephen of Thiers in Auvergne, founder of the Hermits of Grammont (d. 1124).

References

  1. Back to citation About the date of his death see Katrin Baaken: Zu Wahl, Weihe und Krönung Papst Cölestins III. Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters Volume 41 / 1985, pp. 203-211
  2. Back to citation Pope Clement III; Walsh 2003, p. 79; Robinson 1990, p. 32.
  3. Back to citation occurrence 3.0 Back to citation occurrence 3.1 Robinson 1990, p. 506.
  4. Back to citation McBrien 2000, p. 207-208.
  5. Back to citation Wickham 2015, p. 34.
  6. Back to citation Robinson 1990, p. 32.
  7. Back to citation Robinson 1990, p. 87.
  8. Back to citation occurrence 8.0 Back to citation occurrence 8.1 Back to citation occurrence 8.2 Back to citation occurrence 8.3 Back to citation occurrence 8.4 Back to citation occurrence 8.5 Robinson 1990, p. 88.
  9. Back to citation Wickham 2015, p. 295.
  10. Back to citation Robinson 1990, p. 5.
  11. Back to citation occurrence 11.0 Back to citation occurrence 11.1 Back to citation occurrence 11.2 Rockwell 1911.
  12. Back to citation occurrence 12.0 Back to citation occurrence 12.1 Marin-Guzmán 1992, p. 295.
  13. Back to citation Robinson 1990, p. 55.
  14. Back to citation Robinson 1990, p. 89.
  15. Back to citation Runciman 1999, p. 5-6.
  16. Back to citation Benson & Figueira 2006, p. 40.
  17. Back to citation Lower 2014, p. 605.
  18. Back to citation Blair, D. Oswald Hunter, History of the Catholic Church of Scotland, (Willian Blackwood and Sons, 1887), 329.

Bibliography

  • Benson, Robert Louis; Figueira, Robert Charles (2006). Plenitude of power: the doctrines and exercise of authority in the Middle Ages. Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
  • Lower, Michael (2014). "The Papacy and Christian Mercenaries of Thirteenth-Century North Africa". Speculum. 89 (3): 601–631. doi:10.1017/S0038713414000761. JSTOR 43577030. S2CID 154773840.
  • Marin-Guzmán, Roberto (1992). "Crusade in Al-Andalus: The Eleventh Century formation of the Reconquista as an Ideology". Islamic Studies. 31 (3 (Autumn)): 287–318.
  • McBrien, Richard P. (2000). Lives of the Popes. HarperCollins Publishers.
  • Robinson, I. S (1990). The Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139167772. ISBN 978-1-139-16777-2. OCLC 1172526387.
  • Runciman, Steven (1999). A History of the Crusades. Vol. 3: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades. Cambridge University Press.
  • Tartakoff, Paola (2015). "Testing Boundaries: Jewish Conversion and Cultural Fluidity in Medieval Europe, c. 1200-1391". Speculum. 90 (3): 728–762. doi:10.1017/S0038713415001402. JSTOR 43577434. S2CID 155265107.
  • Walsh, Michael J. (2003). The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections. Canterbury Press Norwich.
  • Wickham, Chris (2015). Medieval Rome: Stability & Crisis of a City, 900-1150. Oxford University Press.

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Further reading

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