page_title: Pope Honorius III
section_title: Fifth Crusade
hierarchical_section_title: Pope Honorius III / Papacy / Fifth Crusade
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Honorius III - Detail of the apse mosaic of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls (1220) - Roma - Italy Pope Honorius III ordered the mosaic and, following the Roman Catholic tradition, is represented near Christ's feet. Pope Honorius III (1148 – 1227), born Cencio Savelli, was Pope from 1216 to 1227. [1]
context_page_description: Pope Honorius III, born Cencio Savelli, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 18 July 1216 to his death. A canon at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, he came to hold a number of important administrative positions, including that of Camerlengo. In 1197, he became tutor to the young Frederick II. Elected to the papacy in July 1216, he took the name Honorius III. As pope, he worked to promote the Fifth Crusade, which had been planned under his predecessor. Honorius repeatedly exhorted King Andrew II of Hungary and Emperor Frederick II to fulfill their vows to participate. He also gave approval to the recently formed Dominican and Franciscan religious orders.
context_section_description: The Fifth Crusade was endorsed by the Lateran Council of 1215, and Honorius started preparations for the crusade to begin in 1217. To procure the means necessary for this colossal undertaking, the Pope, and the cardinals were to contribute the tenth part of their income for three years. All other ecclesiastics were to contribute the twentieth part. Though the money thus collected was considerable, it was by no means sufficient for a general crusade as planned by Honorius III.
  Far-reaching prospects seemed to open before him when Honorius crowned Peter II of Courtenay as Latin Emperor of Constantinople in April 1217, but the new Emperor was captured on his eastward journey by the despot of Epirus, Theodore Komnenos Doukas, and died in confinement.
  In July 1216, Honorius once again called upon Andrew II of Hungary to fulfill his father's vow to lead a crusade. (Béla III willed property and money to Andrew, obliging him to lead a crusade to the Holy Land.) Like many other rulers, his former pupil, the Emperor Frederick II of Germany, had taken an oath to embark for the Holy Land in 1217. But Frederick II hung back, and Honorius III repeatedly put off the date for the beginning of the expedition. In spite of the insistence of Honorius III, Frederick II still delayed, and the Egyptian campaign failed miserably with the loss of Damietta on 8 September 1221.
  Most rulers of Europe were engaged in wars of their own and could not leave their countries for any length of time. King Andrew II of Hungary and, somewhat later, a fleet of crusaders from the region along the Lower Rhine finally departed for the Holy Land. They took Damietta and a few other places in Egypt, but a lack of unity among the Christians and rivalry between their leaders and the papal legate Pelagius resulted in failure.
  24 June 1225 was finally fixed as the date for the departure of Frederick II, and Honorius III brought about his marriage to Queen Isabella II of Jerusalem with a view to binding him closer to the plan. But the Treaty of San Germano in July 1225 permitted a further delay of two years.
  Frederick II now made serious preparations for the crusade. In the midst of it, however, Pope Honorius III died in Rome on 18 March 1227 without seeing the achievement of his hopes. It was left to his successor, Pope Gregory IX, to insist upon their accomplishment.
  Besides the liberation of the Holy Land, Honorius III felt bound to forward the repression of Cathar heresy in the south of France, the war for the faith in the Spanish peninsula, the planting of Christianity in the lands along the Baltic Sea, and the maintenance of the impossible Latin empire in Constantinople.
  Of these projects, the rooting out of heresy lay nearest to Honorius III's heart. In the south of France, he carried on Innocent III's work, confirming Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester in the possession of the lands of Raymond VI of Toulouse and succeeding, as Innocent III had not, in drawing the royal house of France into the conflict.
  The most widely important event of this period was the siege and capture of Avignon. Both Honorius III and King Louis VIII of France turned a deaf ear to Frederick II's assertion of the claims of the Empire to that town.
caption: Portrait of Honorius III: detail of the apse mosaic of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls (1220) (Rome, Italy)
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