Innocent III

Résumé du livre

"Professor Sayers also explores Innocent's response to the rising challenge to orthodoxy - for, by the early thirteenth century, the idea of returning to the simplicity of the early Church, embracing poverty and dispensing with priests, swept over the Mediterranean lands, encouraging lay people to explore the possibilities of an alternative Christianity. Were these movements (Humiliati, Waldenses and Cathars among them) heretical? Could the same forces be channelled within orthodox Christianity?" "Finally, she considers Innocent's response to the wider world - his attitude to the crusading movement, and his role in the disastrous crusade of 1204, when Christian fought Christian, and Constantinople, the capital of eastern Christendom, fell not to the forces of Islam but to crusaders from the West." "Eyewitness accounts and the output of the popes chancery reveal the constant strains on the pope and his government. Innocent faced many crises, but he had the personality to take advantage of opportunities and to rise to meet challenges. He was a pope with a vision of Europe - and Jane Sayers does justice to his complex and many-faceted career in this engrossing study."--Jacket.