Enlightened by fights for the investitures so much resisted by Gregory VII, Innocent III established the whole power of the Roman pontificate on juridical absolutism.
In 1198 the chair of Saint Peter was occupied by a man of a noble family from Signa, in the prime of life, who with the name of Innocent III had to fight with insuperable courage all enemies of justice and the Church, and had to give the world the most perfect model of a sovereign Pontiff, of the true king Priest Initiate, the prototype of the Vicar of Jesus Christ.