ABSTRACT
As we cross the threshold of the thirteenth century the dream of world dominion,which had died with an Emperor, springs to life again in the policy of a Pope’ (Fisher 1936: 259). The words are those of H. A. L. Fisher, two generations ago, in his History of Europe. It was perhaps always an over-confident judgement on Innocent III; and the sixty years since it was pronounced have, at the very least, blunted its sharp outlines. Students of the period are now warned of ‘a veritable quagmire of radically different interpretations by modern historians of Innocent’s pontificate’ (1198-1216) (Canning 1996: 121). In fairness to Fisher it should be pointed out that he went on to dismiss as ‘false to history’ the notion that Innocent’s government of the Church was ‘a theocracy tyrannically worked and slavishly accepted’. Yet if his reign must still be seen as crucial in the history of the Papacy, this is surely because, by consolidating and codifying the system that had developed since the mid-eleventh century, he set a coping-stone upon an edifice which is still, almost eight centuries later, by no means wholly dismantled. However circumscribed its practical scope may be, the principle of absolute monarchy remains central in the theory of the Papacy:
The Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ . . . and as pastor of the entire Church, has full, supreme and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered.
