Die Register Innocenz’ III., 6. Band

The sixth volume of the edition of Pope Innocent III’s registers, published as the fourth in the series of the complete edition, contains 244 letters written in 1203 and 1204, ten of which were addressed to the Pope with the others issued in his name; in some cases only summaries were registered. Subject matter ranges from theological doctrine, peace negotiations between England and France, efforts to direct the fourth crusade or to annect the Bulgarian, Serbian and Bosnian churches to Rome to legal decisions concerning usury, or to privileges and confirmations of episcopal or monastic rights and possessions. Amongst them there are detailed and extensive legal decisions like those between the Spanish sees of Huesca and Lérida or the Portugese see and the monastery of Coimbra as well as letters concerning the matrimonial matter of the French king. Furthermore the pope’s legal advice and mandates in matrimonial concerns, which were mostly later included in decretal collections, provide remarkable insights to the history of everyday life and of ecclesiastical legal practice. The same applies to the details of the punishment inflicted on the murderers of Bishop Konrad of Würzburg. Apart from the improved text, which corrects the misprints and misleading emendations of older editions, such as the widely used Migne PL 215, the main value of this new edition lies in the dating of previously undated letters, based on the reasonable assumption of continuous registration and on thorough analysis of textual coherence, as well as in the historical commentary. Of special interest are the identification of quotations from theological sources, canon and Roman law, the bible and classical authors. The volume was prepared in cooperation with the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung in Vienna and the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome.