Innocent I.
, pope from 402 to 417, was the son of Pope
Anastasius I. It was during his papacy that the siege of Rome
by Alaric (408) took place, when, according to a doubtful anecdote
of Zosimus, the ravages of plague and famine were so frightful,
and help seemed so far off, that papal permission was granted
to sacrifice and pray to the heathen deities; the pope was,
however, absent from Rome on a mission to Honorius at Ravenna
at the time of the sack in 410. He lost no opportunity of maintaining
and extending the authority of the Roman see as the
ultimate resort for the settlement of all disputes; and his still
extant communications to Victricius of Rouen, Exuperius of
Toulouse, Alexander of Antioch and others, as well as his action
on the appeal made to him by Chrysostom against Theophilus
of Alexandria, show that opportunities of the kind were numerous
and varied. He took a decided view on the Pelagian controversy,
confirming the decisions of the synod of the province of proconsular
Africa held in Carthage in 416, which had been sent to
him. He wrote in the same year in a similar sense to the fathers
of the Numidian synod of Mileve who, Augustine being one of
their number, had addressed him. Among his letters are one to
Jerome and another to John, bishop of Jerusalem, regarding
annoyances to which the first named had been subjected by the
Pelagians at Bethlehem. He died on the 12th of March 417,
and in the Roman Church is commemorated as a confessor along
with Saints Nazarius, Celsus and Victor, martyrs, on the 28th
of July. His successor was Zosimus.