ABSTRACT
What in the time of Innocent III would the papal curia - scriptores, cardinals, diplomats - or the pontiff himself consider worth knowing? A great deal, it is easy to suppose, about modes of address, tactful adjustments and political government - things that are matters of prudence; about the points of confession and absolution and judgements of canon law - clerical, curial concerns; about liturgy, the sustaining of pious action in sermons and the maintenance of orthodoxy - priestly concerns, as well. Running through these interests is a capacity for rhetoric, for systematization and for theology.1 Although these are now distinct domains of scholarly enquiry - history, law, theology, literature -1 must venture into all of them in an attempt to sketch some features of the intellectual skills and accomplishments of the illustrious clerisy, led by Innocent in in the early thirteenth century, as they studied and held authority well beyond central Italy.
