John Doran

Hyacinth Bobone (c. 1105-1198) was one of the great figures of twelfth-century Europe. Active in the Roman Curia from the 1120s, a student in Paris, and associated with both Peter Abelard and Arnold of Brescia, he was made cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Cosmedin in 1144 and served there during forty-seven years before being elected as pope in 1191. Meer

The pontificate of Innocent II (1130-1143) has long been recognized as a watershed in the history of the papacy, marking the transition from the age of reform to the so-called papal monarchy, when an earlier generation of idealistic reformers gave way to hard-headed pragmatists intent on securing worldly power for the Church. Meer