Pope Urban II

3 Key excerpts on "Pope Urban II"

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  eBook - ePub

  Godfrey of Bouillon

  Duke of Lower Lotharingia, Ruler of Latin Jerusalem, c.1060-1100

  • Simon John(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  3  The coming of the First Crusade, 1095–1096

  Pope Urban II’s call for the First Crusade

  The origins of the First Crusade have been much discussed in modern scholarship. It is therefore necessary only to sketch a few details here. In March 1095, at the council of Piacenza, an embassy from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios Komnenos (1081–1118) reached Pope Urban II and reported on the situation in the Near East.1 These messengers informed those present at Piacenza that the powers of Asia Minor, Palestine, and Egypt were divided and weakened. They beseeched the pope to send military assistance there to help recover some of the Byzantine territory which had been lost in the late eleventh century.2 The Byzantine assessment of the Near East was accurate. In the mid-1090s, the Shi’ites of Fatimid Egypt were firmly divided from the predominantly Sunni powers of Palestine, which in theory was part of the Abbasid Caliphate centred upon Baghdad. Moreover, the political map of Palestine itself was extremely fragmented. Asia Minor had slipped out of Baghdad’s ambit into the hands of local rulers.3

  The Byzantine appeal seems to have prompted Urban to instigate a plan he had already been formulating. In August 1095, he crossed the Alps and embarked on a year-long tour of southern and central France (as a result of a dispute with King Philip I of France (1059–1108), he only travelled as far north as Le Mans). He was the first reigning pope to visit France for half a century. During his time there, he visited a number of towns, consecrated churches, and held several reforming councils. He also passed legislation aimed at extending the Peace of God to the areas he visited.4 On the penultimate day of the council he held at Clermont (18–28 November 1095), Urban called for an armed expedition to go to the East to free the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the other holy places from Muslim hands, and bring aid to the Christians who lived there. The pope apparently framed the enterprise as a pilgrimage to the Holy City, and instructed participants to distinguish themselves by adopting the sign of the cross. He told participants to depart on the feast of the Assumption (15 August) 1096, so that their journey east would coincide with the gathering of the harvest at the end of summer.5

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  All About Popes (Christian Religious Leaders)

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • University Publications

    (Publisher)

  The first seven Ecumenical Councils had been attended by both Western and Eastern prelates, but growing doctrinal, theological, linguistic, political, and ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ geographic differences finally resulted in mutually denunciations and excommunications. Pope Urban II (1088–1099) speech at the Council of Clermont in 1095 became the rallying cry of the First Crusade. Unlike the previous millennium, the process for papal selection became somewhat fixed during this period. Pope Nicholas II promulgated In Nomine Domini in 1059, which limited suffrage in papal elections to the College of Cardinals. The rules and procedures of papal elections evolved during this period, laying the groundwork for the modern papal conclave. The driving force behind these reforms was Cardinal Hildebrand, who later became Gregory VII. The papal palace in Viterbo ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Orvieto The Wandering Popes (1257–1309) The pope is the bishop of Rome, but it is nowhere written that he has to stay there (in fact, only 200 years prior, cardinals would have been required to reside in Rome). Political instability in thirteenth-century Italy forced the papal court to move to several different locations. Frequent destinations include Viterbo, Orvieto, and Perugia. The popes brought the Roman Curia with them, and the College of Cardinals met in the city where the last pope had died to hold papal elections. Host cities enjoyed boosts their prestige and certain economic advantages, but the municipal authorities risked being subsumed into the administration of the Papal States if they allowed the pope to overstay his welcome. According to Eamon Duffy, aristocratic factions within the city of Rome once again made it an insecure base for a stable papal government.

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  The First Crusade and Idea of Crusading

  • Jonathan Riley-Smith(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1 Pope Urban's message Urban spent the year from August 1095 to September 1096 in France. He had returned to his homeland primarily to oversee the reform of its Church, but he had also come with the intention of preaching the crusade and soon after his arrival he seems to have conferred about this with Adhemar of Monteil, the bishop of Le Puy who was to be his personal representative in the army, and with Raymond of St Gilles, the count of Toulouse. On 27 November 1095 he proclaimed the crusade to a large but mainly clerical gathering at Clermont. He then journeyed through central, western and southern France, skirting the areas under the direct control of the king, whom it would be difficult to meet while his appeal against a sentence of excommunication imposed on him for adultery was under consider-ation. There is evidence that he preached the crusade at Limoges at Christmas, at Angers and Le Mans in February 1096 and at a council held at Mimes in July, but he must have preached elsewhere as well. Possibly at Le Mans in February, certainly at Tours in March, he presided over ceremonies during which knights took the cross. By the time he left France the enterprise was already under way. 1 The crusade was his personal response to an appeal which had reached him from the Greeks eight months before. In March 1095 he had been presiding over a council at Piacenza, when there had arrived an embassy from Constantinople to ask for aid against the Turks. Urban replied by encouraging 'many to promise, by taking an oath, to aid the emperor most faithfully as far as they were able against the pagans. 2 The close connection between the events at Piacenza and Clermont was noticed by a contemporary, 3 but it would be wrong to suppose that a spontaneous reaction at Piacenza started a chain of thought in Urban's mind that ended with Cler-mont.

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