ABSTRACT
Hyacinth Bobone, Pope Celestine III, received a brief entry in the list of popes and emperors included by Cencius Camerarius in the Liber Censuum, so brief, in fact, that it was left unfinished.1 The missing information was copied from another source into the continuation of the Liber Pontificalis by Martin of Troppau.2 The entry tells us simply that Pope Celestine III was a Roman, of the family of Pietro Bobone, from the Roman district of Arenula. This brief entry, however, is perhaps the most pregnant of any summary of a twelfth-century pope; in spite of its brevity, it reveals that Celestine III was a Roman, a fact significant in itself, but a Roman from the Bobone family, a family which was unique in twelfth-century Rome, and a family which, through its orsini branch, was set to shape the development of the papacy and the City for centuries to come.3
