U.S history
...llister, J.M.Bennet, 2002). In 1189, he returned to Rome where Pope Celestine III (r. 1191-1198) gave him the cardinal authority. Lothar, then started to be involved in the Church's affairs. Soon after he decided to put his mind to writing but none of his two books (De Contemptu Mundi and De Sacro Altaris Mysterio) proved to be success. His writing shows him to be a mediocre and safe orthodox. In 1198, he accepted the papal throne and took the name of Innocent III. Many factors helped him out in his ascension to the throne such as birth, education and connections. During his reign of the Papal throne Innocent has been seen has: " (…) a strong administrator, a major player in the political affairs of Europe, a theological innovator, a hammer of heretics, a preacher of crusades and, to sum it all up, a man who could credibly claim that he was placed between god and humans, lower than god but higher than humans" (C.Warren Hollister, J.M.Bennet, 2002). One other important fact about Innocent is his presidency over the Fourth Lateran Council that we will explore in the next paragraph. In fact, in 1215 he summoned the Fourth Lateran Council which is proven to be the most important in Western medieval Europe since it dealt with so many parts of society. This council had been preceded by the Third council of the Lateran and would be followed by the First Council of Lyons. The council was the twelfth ecumenical council and is sometimes called "the General Council of Lateran" due to the attendance by seventy-one patriarchs and metropolitans, four hundred and twelve bishops, and nine hundred abbots and priors. Innocent presented 70 decrees and those 70 s were studied. The purposes of the council were set clearly by Innocent himself: "to eradicate vices and to plant virtues, to correct faults and to reform morals, to remove heresies and to strengthen faith, to settle discords and to establish peace, to get rid of oppression and to foster liberty, to induce princes and christian people to come to the aid and succour of the holy Land... " (Fourth Lateran Council,WWW.) . These decrees dealt with several aspects of the Church such as an ethical way to behave for the members of the clergy. It also had affair with the organisation of the fifth crusade for which he demanded the total control of the papacy over the actions of the crusade. .He also stated that no king could be part of that crusade since the second and the third crusade were lead by kings and proved to be total failure. He stated that every crusader would have an indulgence, even them who only help and did not participate. The council also confirmed the elevation of Frederick II to the title of Holy Roman Emperor. The council covered many other topics but one of them caught my attention. It is the one that covers clerical gluttony and drunkenness. This canon caught my attention since I never thought that such behaviours would have been seen in the Catholic Church. Here is what the can...