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Pope Gregory IX
Papacy began	19 March 1227
Papacy ended	22 August 1241
Predecessor	Honorius III
Successor	Celestine IV
Orders
Created cardinal	December 1198 by Innocent III
Personal details
Birth name	Ugolino di Conti
Born	between 1145 and 1170 Anagni, Papal States
Died	(1241-08-22)22 August 1241 (aged 70–96) Rome, Papal States
Previous post	Cardinal-Deacon of Sant’Eustachio (1198–1206) Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia e Velletri (1206–1227)
Coat of arms
Other popes named Gregory

Papal styles of Pope Gregory IX
Reference style	His Holiness
Spoken style	Your Holiness
Religious style	Holy Father
Posthumous style	None

Pope Gregory IX (Latin: Gregorius IX; born Ugolino di Conti; c. 1145 or before 1170 – 22 August 1241) was Pope from 19 March 1227 to his death in 1241.
He is known for issuing the Decretales and instituting the Papal Inquisition in response to the failures of the episcopal inquisitions established during the time of Pope Lucius III through his papal bull Ad abolendam issued in 1184.

The successor of Pope Honorius III, he fully inherited the traditions of Pope Gregory VII and of his cousin Pope Innocent III and zealously continued their policy of Papal supremacy.

Early life

Ugolino (Hugh) was born in Anagni. The date of his birth varies in sources between c. 1145^[1] and 1170.^[2] He received his education at the Universities of Paris and Bologna.

He was created Cardinal-Deacon of the church of Sant'Eustachio by his cousin^[3] Innocent III in December 1198. In 1206 he was promoted to the rank of Cardinal Bishop of Ostia e Velletri. He became Dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals in 1218 or 1219. Upon the special request of Saint Francis, in 1220, Pope Honorius III appointed him Cardinal Protector of the order of the Franciscans.

As Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, he cultivated a wide range of acquaintances, among them the Queen of England, Isabella of Angoulême.^[4]

Papacy

Gregory IX was elevated to the papacy in the papal election of 1227.^[1] He took the name "Gregory" because he formally assumed the papal office at the monastery of Saint Gregory ad Septem Solia.^[5]

Gregory's Bull Parens scientiarum of 1231, after the University of Paris strike of 1229, resolved differences between the unruly university scholars of Paris and the local authorities. His solution was in the manner of a true follower of Innocent III: he issued what in retrospect has been viewed as the magna carta of the University, assuming direct control by extending papal patronage: his Bull allowed future suspension of lectures over a flexible range of provocations, from "monstrous injury or offense" to squabbles over "the right to assess the rents of lodgings".

In 1233 Gregory IX established the Papal Inquisition to regularize the persecution of heresy.^[6]
The Papal Inquisition was intended as replacing the often chaotic and violent episcopal inquisitions which had been established by Lucius III in 1184.
Gregory's aim was to bring order and legality to the process of dealing with heresy, since there had been tendencies by mobs of townspeople to burn alleged heretics without much of a trial.
In 1231 Pope Gregory IX appointed a number of Papal Inquisitors (Inquisitores haereticae pravitatis), mostly Dominicans and Franciscans, for the various regions of France, Italy and parts of Germany.
The aim was to introduce due process and objective investigation into the beliefs of those accused
to the often erratic and unjust persecution of heresy on the part of local ecclesiastical and secular jurisdictions.^[7]

Gregory was a remarkably skillful and learned lawyer. He caused to be prepared Nova Compilatio decretalium, which was promulgated in numerous copies in 1234 (first printed at Mainz in 1473). This New Compilation of Decretals was the culmination of a long process of systematising the mass of pronouncements that had accumulated since the Early Middle Ages, a process that had been under way since the first half of the 12th century and had come to fruition in the Decretum, compiled and edited by the papally commissioned legist Gratian and published in 1140. The supplement completed the work, which provided the foundation for papal legal theory.

In the 1234 Decretals, he invested the doctrine of perpetua servitus iudaeorum – perpetual servitude of the Jews – with the force of canonical law. According to this, the followers of the Talmud would have to remain in a condition of political servitude until Judgment Day. The doctrine then found its way into the doctrine of servitus camerae imperialis, or servitude immediately subject to the Emperor's authority, promulgated by Frederick II. The Jews were thus suppressed from having direct influence over the political process and the life of Christian states into the 19th century with the rise of liberalism.^[8]

In 1239, under the influence of Nicholas Donin, a Jewish convert to Christianity, Gregory ordered that all copies of the Jewish Talmud be confiscated. Following a public disputation between Christians and Jewish theologians, this culminated in a mass burning of some 12,000 handwritten Talmudic manuscripts on 12 June 1242, in Paris.

Giotto. Dream of Pope Gregory IX with St Francis of Assisi

Gregory was a supporter of the mendicant orders which he saw an excellent means for counteracting by voluntary poverty the love of luxury and splendour which was possessing many ecclesiastics. He was a friend of Saint Dominic as well as Clare of Assisi. On 17 January 1235, he approved the Order of Our Lady of Mercy for the redemption of captives. He appointed ten cardinals^[9] and canonized Saints Elisabeth of Hungary, Dominic, Anthony of Padua, and Francis of Assisi, of whom he had been a personal friend and early patron. He transformed a chapel to Our Lady in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome.

Gregory IX endorsed the Northern Crusades and attempts to bring Orthodox Slavic peoples in Eastern Europe (particularly Pskov Republic and the Novgorod Republic) under Papacy's fold.^[10] In 1232, Gregory IX requested the Livonian Brothers of the Sword to send troops to protect Finland, whose semi-Pagan people were fighting against the Novgorod Republic in the Finnish-Novgorodian wars;^[11] however, there is no known information if any ever arrived to assist.

Struggle with Frederick II

Edicts of Gregory IX with glosses of Bernardo di Bottone. An example of books burned by the Germans.^[12]

At the coronation of Frederick II in Rome, 22 November 1220, the emperor made a vow to embark for the Holy Land in August 1221.
Gregory IX began his pontificate by suspending the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, for dilatoriness in carrying out the promised Sixth Crusade. Frederick II appealed to the sovereigns of Europe complaining of his treatment. The suspension was followed by excommunication and threats of deposition, as deeper rifts appeared. Frederick II went to the Holy Land and in fact managed to take possession of Jerusalem. Gregory IX distrusted the emperor, since Rainald, the imperial Governor of Spoleto, had invaded the Pontifical States during the emperor's absence.^[1] In June 1229, Frederick II returned from the Holy Land, routed the papal army which Gregory IX had sent to invade Sicily, and made new overtures of peace to the pope.

Gregory IX and Frederick came to a truce, but when Frederick defeated the Lombard League in 1239, the possibility that he might dominate all of Italy, surrounding the Papal States, became a very real threat. A new outbreak of hostilities led to a fresh excommunication of the emperor in 1239 and to a prolonged war. Gregory denounced Frederick II as a heretic and summoned a council at Rome to give point to his anathema. Frederick responded by trying to capture or sink as many ships carrying prelates to the synod as he could. Eberhard II von Truchsees, Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, in 1241 at the Council of Regensburg declared that Gregory IX was "that man of perdition, whom they call Antichrist, who in his extravagant boasting says, 'I am God, I cannot err'."^[13] He argued that the Pope was the "little horn" of Daniel 7:8:^[14]

Bas-relief of Gregory IX in the US House of Representatives

A little horn has grown up with eyes and mouth speaking great things, which is reducing three of these kingdoms—i.e. Sicily, Italy, and Germany—to subserviency, is persecuting the people of Christ and the saints of God with intolerable opposition, is confounding things human and divine, and is attempting things unutterable, execrable.^[15]

The struggle was only terminated by the death of Gregory IX on 22 August 1241. He died before events could reach their climax; it was his successor Pope Innocent IV who declared a crusade in 1245 that would finish the Hohenstaufen threat.

See also

• Regulæ Juris


• Vox in Rama


• Cardinals created by Gregory IX

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Pope Gregory IX

• 
  Catholic Encyclopedia: Pope Gregory IX

Further studies

• Pietro Balan, Storia di Gregorio IX e suoi tempi 3 volumes (Modena 1873).


• Joseph Felten, Papst Gregor IX. (Freiburg i.B. 1886).


• Guido Levi, Registri dei Cardinali Ugolino d' Ostia e Ottaviano degli Ubaldini (Roma 1890).


• Iben Fonnesberg‐Schmidt, The Popes and the Baltic Crusades 1147–1254 (Leiden, Brill. 2007) (The Northern World, 26).