Pope Innocent IV

Pope Innocent IV, born Sinibaldo Fieschi around 1195 in Genoa and who died on 7 December 1254, was a canon lawyer who studied at the universities of Parma and Bologna and was regarded in his own time and by posterity as one of the finest canonists of his era, a reputation that drew him into the Roman Curia under Pope Honorius the Third before Pope Gregory the Ninth made him a cardinal and governor of Ancona in 1235. Before his election as pope in 1243 he authored the Apparatus in quinque libros decretalium, an influential scholarly commentary on the papal decretals, and he is credited with developing the legal concept of persona ficta, a fictitious legal personality, which allowed monasteries, universities and other corporate bodies to act and hold rights as a single continuous legal entity separate from their individual members. He served as pope from 1243 until his death, a papacy dominated by his dispute with Holy Roman Emperor Frederick the Second.