Pope Blessed Urban II (ca.1035 – 29 July 1099), born
Otho de Lagery (alternatively:
Otto,
Odo or
Eudes), was
Pope from 12 March 1088 until his death. He is most known for starting the
First Crusade (1095–99) and setting up the modern day
Roman Curia, in the manner of a royal court, to help run the Church.
Pope Gregory VII named him
cardinal-bishop of Ostia ca. 1080. 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, Otho 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,
Investiture Controversy, and
clerical marriages, and a continued opposition to
Emperor Henry IV (1050–1106).
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).
Crusades
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 Alexios I Komnenos (1081–118) asking for help against Muslim Turks, who had taken over most of formerly Byzantine Anatolia. 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 incredibly effective, as he summoned the attending nobility and the people to wrestle the
Holy Land and the eastern churches generally from the
Seljuk Turks.
There exists no exact transcription of Urban II's speech. The five extant versions of the speech were written down quite a bit later, and they differ widely from one another. All versions of the speech except that by Fulcher of Chartres were probably influenced by the chronicle account of the First Crusade called the Gesta Francorum (dated c. 1102), whose author also gives a version of the speech. Fulcher of Chartres was present at the Council, but his version of Urban's speech was written 1100-1106; Robert the Monk may have been present, but his version dates about 1106. The two remaining versions are even later, and written by authors who did not attend the speech. The five versions of Urban's speech reflect much more clearly what later authors thought Urban II should have said about the First Crusade, than what Urban II himself actually did say to launch the First Crusade. In contrast, there are four extant letters written by Pope Urban II himself about crusading, to the Flemish (dated December 1095); to the Bolognese (dated September 1096); to Vallembrosa (dated October 1096); to Catalonian counts (dated either 1089 or 1096-1099). It is Urban II's own letters, rather than the paraphrased versions of his speech, that reveal his actual thinking about crusading. Nevertheless, the versions of the speech have had a great influence on popular conceptions and misconceptions about the Crusades, so it is worth comparing the five composed speeches to Urban's actual words. First, some selections from the speeches: Fulcher of Chartres has Urban say:
The chronicler
Robert the Monk has put into the mouth of Urban II:
[...] this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder one another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual wounds. Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves. [...] God has conferred upon you above all nations great glory in arms. Accordingly undertake this journey for the remission of your sins, with the assurance of the imperishable glory of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Robert further claims:
When Pope Urban had said these [...] things in his urbane discourse, he so influenced to one purpose the desires of all who were present, that they cried out 'It is the will of God! It is the will of God!'. When the venerable Roman pontiff heard that, [he] said: Most beloved brethren, today is manifest in you what the Lord says in the Gospel, 'Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them.' Unless the Lord God had been present in your spirits, all of you would not have uttered the same cry. For, although the cry issued from numerous mouths, yet the origin of the cry was one. Therefore I say to you that God, who implanted this in your breasts, has drawn it forth from you. Let this then be your war-cry in combats, because this word is given to you by God. When an armed attack is made upon the enemy, let this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God: It is the will of God! It is the will of God!
Within
Fulcher of Chartres account of pope Urban’s speech, there was a promise of remission of sins for who ever took part in the crusade.
All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested. O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ! With what reproaches will the Lord overwhelm us if you do not aid those who, with us, profess the Christian religion! Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war which should have been begun long ago. Let those who for a long time, have been robbers, now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay now obtain the eternal reward. Let those who have been wearing themselves out in both body and soul now work for a double honor. Behold! on this side will be the sorrowful and poor, on that, the rich; on this side, the enemies of the Lord, on that, his friends. Let those who go not put off the journey, but rent their lands and collect money for their expenses; and as soon as winter is over and spring comes, let them eagerly set out on the way with God as their guide.
It is disputed whether the famous slogan
"God wills it" or "It is the will of God" (
deus vult in Latin,
Dieu le veut in French) in fact was established as a rallying cry during the council. While Robert the Monk says so, it is also possible that the slogan was created as a catchy
propaganda motto afterwards.
Urban II's own letter to the Flemish confirms that he granted "remission of all their sins" to those undertaking a "military enterprise" to "liberate the eastern churches." One notable contrast with the speeches of Robert the Monk, Guibert of Nogent and Baldric of Dol is the lesser emphasis on Jerusalem itself, which Urban only once mentions as his own focus of concern: in the letter to the Flemish he writes "they (the Turks) have seized the Holy City of Christ, embellished by his passion and resurrection, and blasphemy to say---have sold her and her churches into abominable slavery." In the letters to Bologna and Vallembrosa he refers to the crusaders' desire to set out for Jerusalem rather than to his own desire that Jerusalem be freed from Muslim rule. Urban II refers to liberating the church as a whole or the eastern churches generally rather than to reconquering Jerusalem itself. The phrases used are "churches of God in the eastern region" and "the eastern churches" (to the Flemish), "liberation of the Church" (to Bologna), "liberating Christianity [Lat. Christianitatis]" (to Vallembrosa), and "the Asian church" (to Catalonian counts). Coincidentally or not, Fulcher of Chartres' version of Urban's speech makes no explicit reference to Jerusalem. Rather it more generally refers to aiding the crusaders' Christian "brothers of the eastern shore," and to their loss of Asia Minor to the Turks..
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).
Urban II and Sicily
Far more subtle than the Crusades, but far more successful over the long run, was Urban II's program of bringing
Campania and
Sicily firmly into the Catholic sphere, after generations of control from the
Byzantine Empire and the
Aghlabid and
Fatimid 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 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.
Beatification
Pope Urban was
beatified in 1881 with his
feast day on
July 29.
See also
