ABSTRACT
Pope Innocent III has been regularly recognized by historians of medieval Christendom and the medieval church as a pivotal figure. In Colin Morris's recent volume on the western church from 1050 to 1250 in the Oxford History of the Christian Church, only one chapter is devoted to a single pontiff, not surprisingly Innocent III. Yet more striking is Morris's decision to introduce the entire volume with a citation from Pope Innocent HI: 'Christ left to Peter not only the whole church, but the whole world to govern.' For Morris, Innocent III provides the leitmotif for an important phase of ecclesiastical and indeed western history.1 A similar sense of the significance of Innocent III can be found in other recent overviews of the medieval papacy, the medieval church and medieval society and forms the basis, in large measure, of the present conference.
