URBAN
212
URBAN
thfi great Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and this was
embittered by personal enmity, for at the sack of
Milan in 1162 the emperor had caused several of the
pope's relatives to be proscribed or mutilated. It
has been noticed that the breach between Lucius III
and Frederick coincided with the arrival in Northern
Italy (August, 11S5) of Constance, the heiress of the
Kingdom of >Sicily, who was betrothed to Frederick's
son Henry. The marriage, wh'ch was celebrated at
Milan on 4 Jan., 11S6, si.x weeks after Urban's acces-
sion, "constituted for the papacy the gravest check it
had suffered for a long time. By it was ruined the
whole political edifice so laboriously raised by the
popes of the eleventh and twelfth centuries to keep in
check the power of the Emperors in Italy and to assure
the independence of the Papal States" (Chalandon,
II, 390). By this marriage was lost that Norman
support on which the papacy had so long relied in its
contest with the empire. Nor was this the only
cause of quarrel. The treaty of 1177 had left un-
settled the question of the succession to the estates of
Matilda of Tuscany, while Frederick had seized the
revenues of vacant German bishoprics and sup-
pressed nunneries for the sake of their property.
Urban maintained the refusal of Lucius III to crown Henry, and the Patriarch of Aquileia was in- duced by the emperor to perform the office, although it belonged to the pope in right of the Archbishopric of Milan which he had retained, possibly to that end, after his election. LTrban replied by excommunica- ting the patriarch and the bishops who had assisted at the ceremony. On 31 May he promoted to the cardinalate the archdeacon Folmar, and next day con- secrated him as Archbishop of Trier, contrary to a promise he had made to the emperor, for though Fol- mar had been canonically elected, Frederick had granted investiture to Rudolf, the candidate of the minority. The emperor closed the passes of the Alps against the pope's messengers to Germany, and sent Henry to ravage the Papal States. Urban had hoped for support from the German bishops, but at the Diet of Gelnhausen (April or May, 11S7), from which the papal legate, Philip von Heinsberg, Archbishop of Cologne, was excluded, Frederick won the bishops to his side and caused them to send letters to the pope urging him "to do justice to the Emperor in those things which were justly demanded of hini" (Arnold of Liibeck, III, 18). Urban replied by summoning the emperor to appear before his tribunal at Verona, and was only prevented from pronouncing excom- numication against him by the Veronese, who, as Frederick's subjects, would not permit the sentence to be promulgated in their city. Urban set out for Venice, where he would have been able to carry out his threat, but died at Ferrara, after a pontificateof ayear and eleven months. His death is ascribed by Bene- dict of Peterborough to grief at the news of the utter defeat of the crusa<irrs at the hattleof Hattin,and it is commonly stated t hat it was caused by the news of the fall of Jerusalem, l)ut William of Newburgh assures us that the report of t lie disaster of HattMi (3-4 July) did not reach the Holy See till after the election of Greg- ory VIII, so it is hardly jjrobable tliat Urban III ever heard of the surrender of the Holy City which took place on 2 October.
A curifius stor>- is told by Peter of Blois, Archdeacon of Bath, who claims to have been intimate with the pdjx' ("in scholis I'rbaai socius et discipulus fueram Maldyebyrig") and connects his death with his wrath against Baldwin, .^rchbishoii of Canterbury. At the very beginning of his pontificate Urban had granted the request made to his predecessor by Henry II of l']iii;land, and apixiintcd Baldwin ,\po.stiiIic legate in till' I'nivincc of Canterbury, but in the hitter's qu.arrel with the monks of his cathedral the i)ope had taken the part of the monks, and the archbishop had proved obdurate. Perhaps this was not the only cause of the
pope's anger; for Baldwin, moved probably by jeal-
ousy, had persuaded the king to conduct back to Nor-
mandy the legates sent to crown John as King of Ire-
land (Benedict of Peterborough, "Gesta regis Henrici
Secundi"). The pope even sent a gold crown ("cor-
onam auro contextam ") for this purpose. He exerted
himself to bring about peace between England and
France, and on 23 June, 1187, his legates by threats of
excommunication prevented a pitched battle between
the armies of the rival kings near Chateauroux, and
brought about a two years' truce. Urban's letters
show zeal for the Holy Land and a desire to promote
peace among the quarrelling Christian potentates
of Syria. Unfortunately, it cannot be ascertained
whether the interesting letter addressed to Philip of
Frjince (Jaff<5, "Regesta", 15,924) really belongs to
this pope. The number of privileges in favour of the
Knights Hospitallers is remarkable. The letters and
privileges of LTrban III are given in P. L., CCII. His
tomb, "a handsome sarcophagus resting on four
columns" (Gregorovius), may still be seen in Ferrara
cathedral.
Watterich, Pontificum Tomanorum vitir, II (Leipzig, 18621, 633 sq. : Jaff£, Regesta pontificum romanorum, II (Leipzig. 18SS). 492 sq.; Bacmgarten in English Historical Rerieu\ IX (London, 1S94), .535 sq.: Langen, Gesch. der romischen Kirche von Gregor VII. bis Innocenz III. (Bonn, 1893), 565 sq.; Cha- landox. Domination normande en Italie et en Sicile, II (Paris, 1907); MiLMAN, History of Latin Christianity, V (London, 1872), 149 sq.
Ratmund Webster.
Urban IV, Pope, 1216-64 (Jacques Pantaleon), son of a French cobbler, b. at Troyes, probably in the last years of the twelfth century; d. at Perugia, 2 Oct., 1264. He became a canon of Laon and later Arch- deacon of Liege, attracted the attention of Innocent IV at the Council of Lyons (1245), and in 1247 was sent on a mission to Germany. There his chief work was the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline in Silesia and the recon- ciliation of the Teutonic Knights with their Prussian vassals. He be- came Archdeacon of Laon two years later, and in 1251 was sent into north Germany with the commission to obtain recruits for the cause of ab.m8 or Urban IV V\ ilham of Holland, the papal candi- date for the empire. He was made Bishop of Verdun in 1253 and Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1255, at a time of great difficulty and distress for the Christians of the Holy Land. On the death of Alexander IV (25 May, 1261) he had returned to the west and was at Viterbo. After a three months' conclave, protracted by the jealousies of the eight cardinals who composed the whole Sacred College, the Patriarch of Jerusalem was elected on 29 August, 1261. Alexander IV, the feeblest and most pacific of the popes who were en- gaged in the struggle with the imperial house of Ger- many, had left two heavy tasks for his successor to accomplish; the wresting of Sicily from the Hohen- staufen and the restoratiim in Italy of the influence which the Holy See had lost through his indecision. The Latin Empire of Constantinople came to an end with the capture of the city by the Greeks a fortnight before Urban's election, and for a while he intended a crusade for its re-establishment ; but he felt that the tasks near home had the first claim on him. In 1268 Conradin, the la.st of the Hohenstaufen, died on the scaffold at Naples; it was Urban ns ac- tion in calling Charles of Anjou into the field against Manfred that brought this about. "The fact", says Ranke, "that Urban IV contrived this combination, places him among the important pdjies."
His exjierience of affaii-s and his personal character fitted him for his work. He had had an excellent education, and was active, capable, self-reliant, and
