Pope Urban II
Urban II preached the First Crusade at Clermont in November 1095 and produced a movement far larger than he had asked for. Born Odo of Châtillon around 1035 to a noble family in Champagne, he was archdeacon of Reims, then a monk and prior at Cluny — the reforming monastery that shaped a generation of churchmen — and was made a cardinal by Gregory VII. He was elected in 1088 into a position that was barely a position. An imperial antipope held Rome, the Gregorian reform had produced open war with the German emperor over who appointed bishops, and Urban spent years unable to enter his own city. He rebuilt the papacy's authority by travelling: councils in France and Italy, legates, patient alliance-building with the Normans in the south and with rulers who had quarrels with the emperor. The appeal from the Byzantine emperor Alexios I for mercenary help against the Seljuks arrived in 1095, and Urban converted it into something else entirely at the Council of Clermont — an armed pilgrimage to recover Jerusalem, with remission of penance for those who went. Five accounts of the sermon survive and none was written at the time. What came back was tens of thousands of people including non-combatants, and a wave of massacres of Jewish communities in the Rhineland on the way. Jerusalem was taken on 15 July 1099 and its population slaughtered. Urban died on 29 July, two weeks later, and the news had not yet reached Rome. He also completed the work that the crusade is usually credited with: the papacy emerged from his pontificate able to summon the armies of Europe, which is a capacity no pope had possessed before and one his successors used repeatedly. He was beatified in 1881.
- Lived: 1035 CE – 1099 CE
- Nationality: Italian
- Roles: religious_leader
