Pope Urban II
Pope|English name=Urban II|image=
|
Urban II, 12th century, from Roman de Godfroi de Bouillon |
|birth_name=Otho of Lagery|term_start=March,
1088|term_end=
July 29,
1099|predecessor=
Victor III|successor=
Paschal II|birth_date=
1042|birthplace=
Lagery,
France|dead=dead|death_date=
July 29,
1099|deathplace=
Rome,
Italy|other=Urban}}
Pope Urban II (
1042 –
July 29,
1099), born
Otho of Lagery (alternatively:
Otto or
Odo), was a
Pope from
1088 to
July 29,
1099. He is most known for starting the
First Crusade (1096–99) and setting up the modern day
Roman Curia, in the manner of a royal court, to help run the Church.
He was born into nobility in
France at Lagery (near
Châtillon-sur-Marne) and was church-educated. He was
archdeacon of
Reims when, under the influence of St.
Bruno his teacher, he resigned and entered the
cloister at
Cluny where he rose to be
prior. In
1078,
Pope Gregory VII (1073–85) summoned him to Italy and made him
cardinal-bishop of
Ostia.
He was one of the most prominent and active supporters of the Gregorian reforms, especially as
legate in Germany in
1084, and was among the few whom Gregory VII nominated as possible successors to be Pope. Desiderius, abbot of
Monte Cassino, who became
Pope Victor III (1086–87) was chosen Pope initially, but after his short reign Odo was elected Pope Urban II by acclamation (March 1088) at a small meeting of cardinals and other prelates held in
Terracina. He took up the policies of Pope Gregory VII, and while pursuing them with determination, showed greater flexibility, and diplomatic finesse. At the outset he had to reckon with the presence of the powerful
antipope Clement III (1080, 1084–1100) in Rome; but a series of well-attended synods held in Rome,
Amalfi,
Benevento, and
Troia supported him in renewed declarations against
simony,
lay investiture, and
clerical marriages, and a continued opposition to
Emperor Henry IV (1056–1105).
In accordance with this last policy, the marriage of the countess
Matilda of Tuscany with
Guelph of Bavaria was promoted,
Prince Conrad was helped in his rebellion against his father and crowned
King of the Romans at
Milan in
1093, and the Empress (
Adelaide or Praxedes) encouraged in her charges against her husband. In a protracted struggle also with
Philip I of France (1060–1108), whom he had
excommunicated for his adulterous marriage to
Bertrade de Montfort, Urban II finally proved victorious.
Urban II had much correspondence with Archbishop
Anselm of Canterbury, to whom he extended an order to come urgently to Rome just after the Archbishop's first flight from England, and earlier gave his approval to Anselm's work
De Incarnatione Verbi (The Incarnation of the Word).
Urban II's crusading movement took its first public shape at the
Council of Piacenza, where in March
1095 Urban II received an ambassador from the
Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus (1081–1118), asking for help against the
Muslims. A great council met, attended by numerous Italian, Burgundian, and French bishops in such vast numbers it had to be held in the open air outside the city. At the
Council of Clermont held in November of the same year, Urban II's sermon proved the most effective single speech in European history, as he summoned the French people to wrest the
Holy Land from the hands of the Turks. France, the Pope said, was already overcrowded and the holy lands of
Canaan were overflowing with milk and honey. He asked the Frenchmen to turn their swords in favour of God's service, and the assembly replied
Dieu le veut!, "God wills it!"
Urban II died on July 29,1099, fourteen days after the fall of
Jerusalem to the Crusaders, but before news of the event had reached Italy; his successor was
Pope Paschal II (1099–1118).
Far more subtle than the Crusades, but far more successful over the long run, was Urban II's program of bringing
Campagna and
Sicily firmly into the Catholic sphere, after generations of control from the
Byzantine Empire and the
hegemony of
Arab emirs in Sicily. His agent in the Sicilian
borderlands was the
Norman ruler
Roger I (1091–1101). In
1098, after a meeting at the
Siege of Capua, Urban II bestowed on Roger I extraordinary prerogatives, some of the very same rights that were being withheld from temporal sovereigns elsewhere in Europe. Roger I was to be free to appoint bishops ("lay investiture"), free to collect Church revenues and forward them to the papacy (always a lucrative middle position), and free to sit in judgment on ecclesiastical questions. Roger I was to be virtually a legate of the Pope within Sicily. In re-Christianizing Sicily, seats of new
dioceses needed to be established, and the boundaries of
sees established, with a church hierarchy re-established after centuries of Muslim domination. Roger I's
Lombard consort
Adelaide brought settlers from the valley of the
Po to colonize eastern Sicily. Roger I as secular ruler seemed a safe proposition, as he was merely a
vassal of his kinsman the
Count of Apulia, himself a vassal of Rome, so as a well-tested military commander it seemed safe to give him these extraordinary powers, which were later to come to terminal confrontations between Roger I's
Hohenstaufen heirs and the 13th century Papacy.
