ABSTRACT
In two chapters at the end of the Gesta Innocentii, the pope's anonymous biographer records a long and impressive list of offerings given by Innocent III to enhance the worship and decoration of numerous churches, monasteries and institutions in Rome and throughout the Patrimony of St Peter.1 Not since the Catalogue of Donations of 807,2 made by Leo III (795-816) to all the ecclesiastical institutions of Rome and to some outside the city walls, had any one pope's donations been compiled in such careful detail. The list followed the fundamental and ancient custom of the Liber Pontificalis, by which formulaic entries of papal generosity and benefactions had been recorded from the earliest period. With Innocent's biographer, the practice of listing, with its long and respectable history under popes from the seventh to the ninth centuries, was once again important. Delogu has shown that, for the period 687-868, ample gift lists were used in the Liber Pontificalis to give a quantitative evaluation of each pope's achievements in the maintenance and embellishment of the city of Rome.3 During the Carolin-
lGesta Innocentii PP III., PL 214:xviii-ccxxviii, esp. chapters CXLV, cols cciii-ccxi and CXLIX, cols ccxxvi-ccxxviii.
