Innocentius

was bishop of Rome from the commencement of A. D. 402 until his death on the 12th of March, A. D. 417. He took an active part in the proceedings with regard to Chrysostom, whom he steadily supported while the patriarch was alive, and whose memory he vindicated from insult after death. Against the Novatians he displayed the most determined hostility, and one of his last acts was the condemnation of Pelagius, a sentence which, as appears evident from his epistles, ought to be regarded rather as a concession to the urgent representations of the Carthaginian Synod than as the result of full and heartfelt conviction. In consequence of the widely-diffused reputation enjoyed by Innocentius for learning and prudence, he was constantly consulted upon various points of doctrine and discipline by ecclesiastics at a distance; and the correspondence in which he thus became engaged with every part of the Christian world was conducted with so much skill, and the replies were couched so judiciously, in a tone of mingled advice, instruction, and authoritative dictation, that the practice of submitting questions of doubt or difficulty to the head of the Roman see became from this time forward general; and to this epoch we may refer the foundation of those claims to universal spiritual domination so boldly asserted, and, to a certain extent, so successfully maintained by Leo and his successors. Works

The extant works of this prelate consist entirely of epistles, thirty-four in number, which are almost exclusively of an official character, being addressed to dignitaries, civil and spiritual, and to religious communities, upon topics connected with the regulation and welfare of the church. Of these, twenty-one are preserved in the collection of Dionysius Exiguus; four are found among the letters of St. Augustin, two were first edited by Holstenius from a Vatican MS., the remaining seven were derived from various sources. Editions

The Editio Princeps, containing twenty-one epistles, under the title Decreta Innocentii Papae LVII., appeared in the Collectio Canonum Dionysii Exigui, fol. Mogunt. 1525; the first complete edition, comprising the whole thirty-four epistles, forms the first volume of the Epistolae Pontificiae, published by cardinal Anton. Caraffa, fol. Rom. 1591; the best edition is that contained in the Epistolae Pontificum Romanorum of Constant, fol. Paris, 1721, vol. i. pp. 739-931, reprinted in the Bibl. Patrum of Galland, vol. viii. pp. 545-612, whose Prolegomena, c. xviii., may be consulted with advantage. Lost and Spurious Epistles

In addition to the above thirty-four, Coustant notices a considerable number which have been lost, investigating at the same time their dates and the subjects of which they treated; he also points out some which are spurious, one, Ad Aurelium Episcopum Carthaginiensem, fabricated by Isidorus Mercator, two Ad Arcadium Imperatorem, and two from Arcadius, Ad Innocentium. [W.R]

a Roman jurist, who lived in the reign of Constantine the Great, and under his sons Constantius and Constans. Although jurisprudence as a science was now upon the wane, jurists were privileged by the emperors as late as the reign of Constantius; and, by virtue of such privilege, their writings and opinions were invested with a kind of legislative force. The jurist-made law of the Romans came into existence under the form of authoritative exposition or interpretation, and was more directly binding than what Bentham calls English judge-made law. It was nearly analogous to a parliamentary declaration of the existing law, inasmuch as the jurist, in the exercise of his vocation, was made the representative of the emperor, the supreme power. Eunapius (in Vit. Chrysanthii, p. 186, ed. Commelin) says that Innocentius was privileged as a jurist by the emperors under whom he lived. He is not mentioned in the Digest, which contains extracts from no jurist of later date than his.

In the collection of Agrimensores, there is a treatsise, headed " Ex libro xii. Innocentii de literis et notis juris exponendis," or " Innocentius, V. P. auctor." The treatise does not profess to be the original work of a jurist, and is manifestly a compilation of much more recent date than the reign of Constantine : nor does it at all resemble the remains of legal stenography that we possess under the name of Valerius Probus and other writers of the same class. It relates to the casae which were named after the letters of the alphabet, and the case appears to have been fundi, or portions of land; but the mode in which letters were connected with the fundi, so as to designate their qualities and peculiarities of position, has not been satisfactorily explained; and the treatise De Casis Literarum is still perhaps the most enigmatical part of the writings on ancient land-surveying.

Rigaltius, in his first note on the treatise, " De Casis Literarum," says that an Innocentius, agrimensor, is mentioned in the 19th book of Ammianus Marcellinus, and quotes a passage, whence it would seem that, on some occasion, Innocentius gave instructions which enabled a party of troops sailing up a river to steer by observing certain marks upon the banks. The reference is incorrect, and the passage cited by Rigaltius has not been found by subsequent inquirers. (Auctores Rei Agrariae, ed. Goes. p. 167, n. p. 220-232.) [J.T.G]