IMC 2016: Sessions

On 16 July 1216, only seven and a half months after bringing the Fourth Lateran Council to a seemingly triumphant conclusion, Innocent III died in Perugia. At the age of fifty-three and then not yet halfway through an arduous preaching campaign on his way to encourage the maritime cities of Pisa and Genoa to participate in the Fifth Crusade, his health deteriorated dramatically and unexpectedly in the course of his journey. In the light of the two proposed sessions on his successor, Honorius III (1216–27), this session seeks to examine Innocent's various projects, both finished and unfinished in the period before his death.
a) Innocent finally completed his Commentarium in septem psalmos poenitentiales on 9 April 1216, the Vigil of Easter, and from this work he obtained both spiritual renewal and quiet reflection.
b) While the registers of years (17–19), the last of Innocent's pontificate are missing, following the research undertaken by Pitra, Denifle, Hampe, and Haidacher, the late medieval sources, which cannot replace the missing volumes, nevertheless allow us to reconstruct the subject, the addressees, and sometimes the content of papal letters, regardless of the fact that the great majority of them will continue to remain unknown.
c) Innocent's two visits to Perugia, in 1198 and 1216, his consecrations of the altars of San Lorenzo and San Ercolano, the manner of his death, and the nature of his first tomb in the duomo at Perugia raise certain problems about the consecrations of altars, church dedications, and the spoliation of papal bodies.