The Papal-Britain relationship during the period of Pope Innocentius III. (1198-1216)

Religion-state relations are one of the most important issues in the history of medieval Europe. Although Christianity, which was initially seen as a reform movement of Judaism when it emerged in the territory of the Roman Empire, faced oppression and persecution policies for many years due to its conflicting views with the state religion of the Roman Empire, it spread to a wide area in the territory of the Roman Empire in the period after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and was accepted as the official state religion with Emperor Theodosius the Great. The Church, which was an institution under imperial oppression until the IVth century AD, filled the vacuum of authority that emerged in medieval Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and became politically institutionalized. According to Catholic belief, the Church, which was founded by Jesus Christ himself and accepted as the "Kingdom of God on Earth", has the Pope at the head of its hierarchical structure. This power of the popes, who based their political power on divine authority, increased with the Church's land ownership and reached its peak when emperors based their legitimacy on religion and ascended to the throne wearing crowns from the hands of the popes. The main aim of the institutionalized Papacy from then on was to spread the Christian religion among the Barbarian tribes and make Europe the center of Christianity. An important stop of these missionary activities that started with Pope Gregorius I was England. The missionaries sent by Pope Gregorius I (590-604) had a great influence on the spread of the Christian religion among the pagan Celtic society in England, which was a distant province of the Roman Empire, and the Anglo-Saxons in the following period. At this point, St. Augustine's mission activities resulted in the establishment of the Church of Canterbury and the Church under the influence of the Papacy began to institutionalize in England. The Church founded by St. Augustine in Canterbury served as a branch of the Papal Institution in England during this period and in the following period. During the reign of Pope Innocentius III, the subject of this thesis, the Roman Church's relations with the Church of Canterbury were quite lively. With the death of Hubert Walter, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the appointment disputes between the Papal States and the Kingdom of England brought Pope Innocentius III and King John against each other. At this point, the fact that the Papacy saw the Church of Canterbury as an autonomous structure and intervened in the appointment process first put the Kingdom of England into the process of interference and later resulted in the excommunication of King John. While this struggle for dominance between England and the Papacy turned the lands of England into the fief of the Papacy with the effect of the political conditions of the period, the Papal Institution, which used its religious authority to ensure dominance in European lands, turned the Papal Institution into an overlord in the political structure of the period.