A Count's Son Trained in Paris
Lotario dei Conti di Segni was born in 1160 or 1161 at Gavignano, near Anagni in the hills southeast of Rome. His father, Trasimondo, was a count of Segni, and his mother came from a noble Roman family; the Conti would give the Roman church several popes, among them his kinsman Gregory IX. He was schooled in Rome and then studied theology at Paris, the greatest school of the age, and probably law at Bologna, the center of the study of canon law.
About 1190 Pope Clement III, said to be his uncle, made him a cardinal deacon. Under the next pope, a member of a rival family, Lotario had little influence and turned to writing. His treatise On the Misery of the Human Condition, a grim meditation on the frailty and corruption of human life, survives in hundreds of manuscripts. He also wrote on the mass, explaining its ceremonies and its meaning as a sacrifice.
Celestine III died on 8 January 1198, and the cardinals elected Lotario the same day. He was thirty-seven, young for the office, and not yet a priest. He was ordained and consecrated in February and took the name Innocent III.
Loading the rest of this biography