CELESTINE III  . (Giacinto Bobo), pope from 1191 to 1198, was cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Cosmedin as early as 1144, and had reached the age of eighty-five when chosen on the 3oth of March 1191 to succeed Clement III . The first pope of the house of the Orsini, his policy was marked by mildness and indecision . Henry VI. of Germany at once forced the pontiff to crown him emperor, and three or four years later took possession of the Norman kingdom of Sicily; he refused tribute and the oath of allegiance, and even appointed bishops subject to his own jurisdiction; moreover, he gave his brother in fief the estates which had belonged to the countess Matilda of Tuscany . Celestine did not dare so much as to threaten him with excommunication . It was Celestine's purpose to lay England under the interdict; but Prince John and the barons still refused to recognize the papal legate, the bishop of Ely . Richard I. had been set free before the dilatory pope put Leopold of Austria under the ban . In his last sickness Celestine wished to resign his office, but the cardinals protested . Death released him from his perplexities on the 8th of January 1198 . See " Epistolae Coelestini III . Papae," in M . Bouquet, Receuil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, tome 19 (Paris, 1738 ff.) ; J .

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Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, tome 206 (Paris, 1855), 867 ff.; further sources in Neues Archie file die dltere deutsche Geschichtskunde, 2 . 218; II . 398 f.; 12 . 411-414; P . Jaffe, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, vol. ii . (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1888), 577 if . (W . W .