Pope Urban II
1042? - July 29, 1099
The first pope to call for crusades
by Rit Nosotro( )
Sometime around the year 1042, a baby was born who would later trigger the first Crusade with a compelling speech at Clermont that roused both rich and poor to leave their homes and travel east to the Holy Land. This child was called Otho of Lagery and was born into a noble French family in the north of France. Otho was educated by the church, which may account for his lifelong association with the church. Otho later became the archdeacon at Reims and then the prior at Cluny. While he was at Cluny, Pope Gregory VII sent for him to come to Rome and become the Cardinal Bishop at Ostia. Otho became an advisor to Gregory, and Gregory greatly influenced Otho.
At this time, the papacy was engaged in a struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, who took Otho as prisoner as he was on his back to Rome after a few years of representing Gregory in Germany and France. Henry soon released Otho, but the animosity between the papacy and the emperor continued for the rest of Otho’s life. The antipope Guibert of Ravenna, or Clement III, was another of Gregory’s enemies. He and his followers held that he was the rightful pope instead of Gregory. He was Otho’s lifelong enemy as well and was allied with Emperor Henry IV, who had set him up as the antipope and whom he had eventually officially crowned as emperor in Rome.
In 1085, Pope Gregory VII died. Among his suggestions for a successor were Otho and Desiderius, the abbot of Monte Cassino. Desiderius was elected as Victor III; he had been very opposed to becoming pope and had fervently resisted, but the papacy was literally forced upon him. However, he died in the same year, and in 1088 Otho was unanimously elected as the next pope under the name Urban II.
From the very beginning, Urban was committed to carrying on the reforms of Gregory, opposing simony and incontinence within the clergy. He told all who had been loyal to Gregory that “all that he rejected, I reject, what he condemned I condemn, what he loved I embrace, what he considered as Catholic, I confirm and approve".[1] However, the new pope was not in for an easy time.
When Urban was elected, he was not even able to enter Rome because Henry IV and the antipope Clement III occupied the city. He did have allies, the Normans, but they were busy fighting a civil war at the time and could not come to help him. The next year, with the help of the Normans, he finally entered Rome, but he could only hold a small part of the city, for the rest was still occupied by Henry and Clement. Urban excommunicated both of them and after three days of battles defeated them.
However, that was not the end of the trouble. A short time later upon hearing that Henry had succeeded in breaking an alliance between two of Urban’s supporters, the people of Rome invited the antipope Clement back. Finally, six years after Urban had been elected, he managed to secure Rome again and sit on his throne for the first time, though he was now greatly in debt.
It was around this time that Alexius I Comnenus, the Byzantine Emperor, sent an ambassador to ask Urban for help in fighting the Seljuk Turks, who were a threat to his empire. Urban responded enthusiastically; in November, 1095, he called a council in Clermont, southern France. There was an enormous crowd, so large that the council had to be held outside. The pope gave a rousing speech, begging the nobles and knights to help their Eastern brothers fight against the Turks and to recover the Holy Land for Christendom.
As a reward to those who accepted his call and went to fight, Urban promised exemption from doing penance. He also declared their families and belongings at home to be under the protection of the church, and the Council promised to excommunicate anyone who harmed the Crusaders. Furthermore, Urban promised that those Crusaders who died would be granted full remission of sins.
The Council at Clermont was not called solely for the purpose of declaring the First Crusade. Gregorian reforms were the order of the day; the Council passed orders removing the power of clergy who committed simony or were married. There were also orders passed against lay investiture and the practice of allowing lay people to own churches. Thus, the Council marked a change back to Gregorian principles.
After eleven years in office, Pope Urban II died on July 29, 1099. Two weeks before he died, the Crusaders captured Jerusalem from the Turks, but Urban did not live long enough to hear the news. The First Crusade would give rise to several more Crusades over the next two centuries. Urban’s good intentions in trying to help Alexius I Comnenus ultimately helped cause one of the most deplorable periods in history, a time that is still a source of hurt and tension between Muslims and Christians.
