Pope Gregory VIII

Alberto di Morra reigned as pope for fifty-seven days in the autumn of 1187, one of the shortest pontificates on record and one of the most consequential. He was born at Benevento to a noble family and became a monk early. He joined the Premonstratensian order and taught canon law at Bologna, a career that made him a lawyer and a diplomat before it made him a churchman of any prominence. Adrian IV made him a cardinal in 1156. As a legate of Alexander III he travelled widely, teaching canon law across Europe and going to Portugal to crown Afonso I. He served for years as Apostolic Chancellor, the papacy's senior administrator, and it was from that office that he was elected in October 1187. News had just reached Rome of the catastrophe at Hattin, where Saladin had destroyed the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and gone on to take the city itself. Within weeks Gregory issued the bull Audita tremendi. It read the loss as a judgement on the sins of Christendom, called for penance and fasting as much as for arms, and summoned the expedition that became the Third Crusade — the one that would draw in Frederick Barbarossa, Philip Augustus and Richard I. He ordered a seven-year truce among Christian rulers so that the campaign could proceed. He also set about mending the long breach between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, a reconciliation his predecessors had not managed. He died at Pisa in December 1187 while travelling to raise support for the crusade. The campaign he had called was left to be fought by others.

• Lived: 1100 CE – 1187 CE
• Nationality: Italian
• Roles: pope, religious_leader