Pope Celestine III (1191–1198): Diplomat and Pastor (review)

This well-produced volume brings the career of Hyacinth Bobone into the light, featuring his distinguished career as papal diplomat as well as his role as Pope Celestine III—developing policies he inherited and passing them on enhanced to his successor. The work of able scholars, the book is enriched with abundant bibliography in the footnotes, illustrations, maps, and a thorough index. Anyone interested in twelfth-century Europe will find it valuable.

Anne Duggan surveys Hyacinth's seventy-year career in the service of the papacy, giving an especially detailed analysis of the politics of Italy during the reign of Emperor Henry VI, with Hyacinth making the best of a difficult situation. John Doran examines Hyacinth's life through an extended analysis of politics in Rome and its immediate environs throughout the twelfth century. He portrays Hyacinth as an effective and wise defender of papal interests, a considerate provider for Rome and its people, and a model for the policies of Pope Innocent III.

Damian Smith presents Hyacinth's work as a papal agent in Spain, with a lucid explanation of the complicated ecclesiastical and political competition created by the Christian reconquest. Although Hyacinth achieved little diplomatic success in Spain, Smith suggests that "the energetic, highly respected, purposeful Hyacinth" (p. 109) deserves some credit for the victory at Las Navas de Tolosa years later.

Pascal Montaubin shows that throughout Hyacinth's career, he had many close connections to France, notably his support for Peter Abelard and Gilbert de la Porrée, and his friendship with King Louis VII. Peter Edbury makes clear that because Celestine was unable to overcome the dominance of Henry VI, the competing forces in the Levant, and the intractable ambitions of the Spanish princes, he had little influence on crusades in either end of the Mediterranean.

Barbara Bombi asks how the Livonian mission became a crusade, noting that the distinction between military crusade and peaceful mission became blurred in Germany during the 1190s, as preachers sought support for both the Holy Land and Livonia. Torben Nielsen examines Celestine's involvement in the complicated political doings in the Scandinavian world, including King Philip II's rejection of Ingeborg. He concludes that Celestine was as well informed and as effective as Innocent III was in dealing with the area. Ana Marinković describes Celestine's intervention in ecclesiastical matters in Dalmatia, but notes that he did not deal with heresy there.

Anne Duggan rightly argues that anyone as active in curial affairs as Hyacinth was would inevitably gain some knowledge of canon law. Her analysis of Celestine's decretals supports her argument. Her valuable appendix provides the text of those decretals, in both Latin and English, indicating therein how the texts were truncated as they passed into the Liber Extra.

Claudia Bolgia offers a very scholarly, if very speculative, discussion of artistic works authorized by Celestine to preserve and protect relics, anticipating policies of Innocent III and Lateran Council IV. Marie Therese Champagne points out that, despite the apparently friendly relations between Celestine and the Jews of Rome, he made no effort to restrain the growing animosity toward Jews in France and elsewhere.

Regarding marriage, Constance Rousseau provides many examples to show that Celestine was a prudent and humane judge, but one determined to defend the sacramental and indissoluble character of marriage—even against the king of France. Regarding canonization, the late Michael Goodich provides many examples to show that as legate and as pope, Celestine played a substantial role in developing papal procedures for canonization.

Finally, Brenda Bolton argues persuasively that Celestine pursued the recovery of the papal patrimonium "as urgently and consistently as events permitted throughout … his pontificate," especially through cultivating strategically placed allies and through "visual propaganda" (p. 325).