Pope Innocent III Quotes

So much must I live for others, that almost I am a stranger to myself.

Crucifiers of Christ ought to be held in continual subjection.

Anyone who attempts to construe a personal view of God which conflicts with church dogma must be burned without pity.

We believe that the Greeks have been punished through [the Crusades] by the just judgement of God: these Greeks who have striven to rend the Seamless Robe of Jesus Christ ... Those who would not join Noah in his ark perished justly in the deluge; and these have justly suffered famine and hunger who would not receive as their shepherd the blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles.

God forbid that all children, of whom daily so great a multitude die, would perish, but that also for these, the merciful God, who wishes no one to perish, has procured some remedy unto salvation ...

The mysteries of the faith are not to [be] explained rashly to anyone. Usually in fact, they cannot be understood by everyone but only by those who are qualified to understand them with informed intelligence. The depth of the divine Scriptures is such that not only the illiterate and uninitiated have difficulty understanding them, but also the educated and the gifted.

Not to oppose erroneous doctrine is to approve of it, and not to defend at all true doctrine is to suppress it.

Kill them all, for God knows His own.

The Jews' guilt of the crucifixion of Jesus consigned them to perpetual servitude, and, like Cain, they are to be wanderers and fugitives. The Jews will not dare to raise their necks, bowed under the yoke of perpetual slavery, against the reverence of the Christian faith.

This [Magna Carta] has been forced from the King. It constitutes an insult to the Holy See, a serious weakening of the royal power, a disgrace to the English nation, a danger to all Christendom, since this civil war obstructs the crusade. Therefore?we condemn the charter and forbid the King to keep it, or the barons and their supporters to make him do so, on pain of excommunication.

The universal Church of the faithful is one outside of which none is saved.