The Deeds of Pope Innocent III by an Anonymous Author (review)

There survives no authorial manuscript of the Gesta (Deeds) of Pope Innocent III. There are editions from the seventeenth century onwards, of which Migne's (Patrologia Latina, vol. 214, cols. xvii-ccxxviii) based on Baluze and a seventeenth-century manuscript in the Biblioteca Vallicelliana, has probably been the most consulted. The predecessor of Vallicelliana, and the key surviving manuscript, is a fourteenth-century copy now in the Vatican Library (Vat. Lat. 12111) which was in the papal library at Avignon in 1396. There are further copies of the Gesta, none so complete, in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (MSS 5150-2).

Among papal biographies, the Gesta stands out for its intimate detail and the reliability of its evidence wherever it is possible to check. Although the text—at least as we now have it—ends abruptly in 1208, and so has nothing to say about many important events of the pontificate such as the growth of the new religious movements, church reform, and the Lateran Council, it is a major source for our understanding of the recovery of the papal state, the government of the Regno, the unrest in the city of Rome, and papal policy toward the Eastern churches culminating in the Fourth Crusade.

In 1981 a doctoral student at Bryn Mawr, David R. Gress-Wright, completed a thesis on the Gesta—Text, Introduction, and Commentary. This text has been difficult of access outside the United States, and it was sadly never published. It is a great misfortune for the scholarly world, too, that having explored the text in detail and noted interpolations, etc., Gress-Wright did not provide a translation.

A matter of intense interest is the authorship. It is clear that whoever wrote it was extremely close to the pope and had access to the papal registers. Three suggestions of authors from within the pope's circle have been put forward: (1) Peter Collivaccinus of Benevento, the compiler of the canonical collection, Compilatio tertia, cardinal deacon of S. Maria in Aquiro from 1212 and later bishop of Porto; (2) Octavian, a relative of Innocent, papal chamberlain, and cardinal deacon of SS. Sergio and Bacco from 1206, and (3) John cardinal deacon of S. Maria in Cosmedin, another relative, and papal chancellor.

James Powell's translation reads smoothly. He has given the translation useful headings: Family, Education, Election; the Kingdom of Sicily; The Papal State; Crusade and Church Unity, and so on. He has provided references for most of the scriptural allusions/quotations and added several appendices, one the disappointing and miserably brief biography of Innocent in the Liber Pontificalis by Martin of Troppau (which emphasizes beyond any doubt the quality of the Gesta). There is also an appendix on Terracina by Brenda Bolton, whose translation of caps.cxxxiii-cxliii (except cxxxiv and cxxxv) has been used. Without a parallel and well-edited text it is difficult to be aware of any interpolations or possible misreadings. Fagiolus obviously puzzled Migne (see col. cxc n. 88). "Bean tower" seems very odd; perhaps, in the context, wooden tower is intended (from fagus, beech, not the Italian fagiolini!). Some further identification of places would have been helpful, and references, perhaps to Krautheimer's magisterial Rome: Profile of a City, for some of the Roman churches. At a time when few students can read Latin, this translation is to be welcomed, and, who knows, perhaps it will one day arouse enough interest for someone to undertake a translation integrated with the parallel Latin text when errors of transcription and the complexities of the punctuation might be sorted out.