Pope Bl. Innocent V

(PETRUS A TARENTASIA)

Born in Tarentaise, towards 1225; elected at Arezzo, 21 January, 1276; died at Rome, 22 June, 1276. Tarentaise on the upper Isère in south-eastern France was certainly his native province, and the town of Champagny was in all probability his birthplace. At the age of sixteen he joined the Dominican Order. After completing his education, at the University of Paris, where he graduated as master in sacred theology in 1259, he won distinction as a professor in that institution, and is known as “the most famous doctor”, “Doctor famosissimus”. For some time provincial of his order in France, he became Archbishop of Lyons in 1272 and Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia in 1273. He played a prominent part at the Second Œcumenical Council of Lyons (1274), in which he delivered two discourses to the assembled fathers and also pronounced the funeral oration on St. Bonaventure. Elected as successor to Gregory X, whose intimate adviser he was, he assumed the name of Innocent V and was the first Dominican pope. His policy was peaceable. He sought to reconcile Guelphs and Ghibellines in Italy, restored peace between Pisa and Lucca, and mediated between Rudolph of Hapsburg and Charles of Anjou. He likewise endeavoured to consolidate the union of the Greeks with Rome concluded at the Council of Lyons. He is the author of several works dealing with philosophy, theology and canon law, some of which are still unpublished. The principal among them is his “Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard” (Toulouse, 1652). Four philosophical treatises: “De unitate formæ”, “De materia cœli”, “De æternitate mundi”, “De intellectu et voluntate”, are also due to his pen. A commentary on the Pauline Epistles frequently published under the name of Nicholas of Gorran (Cologne, 1478) is claimed for him by some critics.

Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, II (Paris, 1892), 457; Ciaconius-Oldoinus, Vitæ et res gestæ Pontif. Rom., II (Rome, 1677), 203-206; Mothon, Vie du bienheureux Innocent V (Rome, 1896); Bourgeois, Le Bienheureux Innocent V (Paris, 1899); Turinaz, Un pape savoisien (Nancy, 1901); Schulz in the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, V (New York, 1909), 504.

N.A. WEBER