 Reigned
1261-64 (Jacques Pantaléon), son of a French cobbler,
born at Troyes, probably in the last years of the
twelfth century; died at Perugia, 2 Oct., 1264. He
became a canon of Laon and later Archdeacon of Liège,
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
reconciliation of the Teutonic Knights with their
Prussian vassals. He became Archdeacon of Laon two years
later, and in 1251 was sent into north Germany with the
commission to obtain recruits for the cause of William
of Holland, the papal candidate 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
engaged in the struggle with the imperial house of
Germany, had left two heavy tasks for his successor to
accomplish: the wresting of Sicily from the Hohenstaufen
and the restoration 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 last
of the Hohenstaufen, died on the scaffold at Naples; it
was Urban IV's action 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 popes."
His experience of affairs and his personal character
fitted him for his work. He had had an excellent
education and was active, capable, self-reliant, and
always ready for any work that presented itself. His
life was a full one, yet business had not banished
piety. "The Pope does what he will", reports a Sienese
ambassador, "there has been no Pope since Alexander III
so energetic in word and deed . . .There is no obstacle
to his will . . .he does everything by himself without
taking advice" (Pflug-Harttung, "Iter Italicum", 675).
Had his reign been longer, he would have been one of the
most striking figures in the history of the papacy.
Urban's great antagonist was Manfred, son of Frederick
II, and usurper of the Sicilian crown. Manfred's chief
gift was tact; as an administrator he had his father's
highly centralized system to rely on, but as a warrior
he was lacking in decision and boldness. After the
battle of Montaperti, he became the hero of half Italy,
the centre of the Ghibelline party and of all opposition
to the papacy. He was anxious for peace and recognition
from the pope, and Urban was able to keep him in play
until the long drawn-out negotiations with Charles of
Anjou were nearly complete. Within less than a year of
his election the pope created fourteen new cardinals. Of
these six were relatives or dependents of the eight who
had elected him, but seven were Frenchmen, including his
own nephew and three who had been St. Louis's
counsellors. Thus Urban was sure of a majority in the
Sacred College, but he brought into being a French party
which was a principal factor in ecclesiastical policy
for the rest of the thirteenth century and in the
fourteenth century became practically the whole College.
Among the new cardinals were the three future popes,
Clement IV, Martin IV, and Honorius IV, who were to have
the greatest share in finishing and defending his work.
Urban's first step towards the restoration of his
power in Italy was to put the finances in order and pay
his predecessor's debts. He changed the bankers of the
Apostolic Camera, employing a Sienese firm whose
services did much to assure the ultimate success of his
plans. Urban's Italian policy gives a complete picture
of his statesmanship--astute and diplomatic on
occasions, but with a marked predilection for energetic
measures. He aroused dissensions between rival
Ghibelline cities and, by an adroit use of the then
generally acknowledged right of the Holy See to declare
null all obligations towards persons excommunicate, was
able to throw their commercial affairs into confusion
(for some curious details see Jordan, "Origines", 337
sq.). He established an ascendancy over his partisans
and raised up a new Guelph party bound to him by
personal interest, which eventually furnished Charles of
Anjou with monetary support without which his expedition
must have failed. In the Papal States new officers were
appointed, important points fortified, and the defensive
system of Innocent III restored. At Rome Urban obtained
the recognition of his sovereignty, but he never risked
a visit to the city. In Lombardy his most important act
was the strengthening of the traditional alliance
between the Holy See and the House of Este. By the
middle of 1263 the general results of Urban's
extra-Sicilian Italian policy were seen in the almost
complete restoration of order in the Papal States, the
weakening of Manfred's alliances in Lombardy, and the
resurrection in Tuscany of the crushed Guelphs.
A foreign conqueror for Sicily was necessary to
attain the expulsion of Manfred, for after the defeat of
Alexander IV's forces at Foggia (20 Aug., 1255) all hope
was lost of a direct conquest by the papacy. In 1252
Innocent IV had granted the crown of Naples to the
English Henry III for his second son, Edmund; but the
king had his hands too full at home and was himself too
prodigal to allow him to embark on the very costly
Sicilian adventure. Charles of Anjou, though he had
refused the offer of Innocent IV, had both the power and
the ambition necessary for such an undertaking. St.
Louis's scruples as to the rights of Conradin and Edmund
were overcome, and though he refused the crown for
himself or his sons, he finally permitted its offer to
his brother. In the mind of the holy king the Sicilian
expedition appeared as a preliminary to a great crusade:
he saw that Sicily would, in the hands of a French
prince, be an ideal starting-point. Yet Louis had been
desirous of peace between the pope and Manfred, and even
the pope for a time seemed prepared to recognize him as
King of Sicily, but the negotiations finally failed.
Urban made it his business to prove that the fault lay
with his opponent, for European opinion was interested
in a struggle in which great princes such as Alphonsus
of Aragon and Baldwin, the exiled Latin Emperor of
Constantinople, had intervened on the side of peace. It
was about May, 1263, that St. Louis made up his mind,
and shortly afterwards the envoy of Charles of Anjou
appeared in Rome. The chief conditions laid down by
Urban were as follows: Sicily must never be united to
the empire, its king must pay an annual tribute, take an
oath of fealty to the pope, and abstain from acquiring
any considerable dominion in Northern Italy; the
succession also was strictly regulated. The treaty in
fact "was to be the last link in the long chain of acts
which had established the suzerainty of the Holy See
over Sicily" (Jordan, 443).
The negotiations dragged on slowly as long as the
pope felt no acute need of French intervention in Italy,
but by May, 1264, the fortunes of the Church were
threatening to decline quickly, in face of the rising
activity and fortunes of the Ghibellines. Urban sent the
French Cardinal Simon de Brion to France as his legate
with power to concede certain disputed points: he was,
however, to insist on a guarantee that Charles would not
retain in perpetuity the Senatorship of Rome; vows to go
on a crusade to the Holy Land were to be commuted for
the crusade against Manfred and his Saracens, which was
to be preached throughout France and Italy. Urban's
position was daily growing more dangerous in spite of
the incomprehensible inactivity of Manfred. He feared a
simultaneous attack from north and south, and even
attempts to assassinate himself and Charles of Anjou by
the emissaries of Manfred's reputed ally, the "Old Man
of the Mountains". In August St. Louis's last objections
to the treaty were overcome, and various concessions
made to Charles's demands. The legate held several
synods to obtain from the French clergy the tithes
granted by the pope for the expedition. In Italy fortune
continued to favour the Ghibellines; a Guelph army was
defeated in the Patrimony, and Lucca deserted to the
enemy. Sienese intrigue threatened Urban's security at
Orvieto, and on 9 Sept. he set out for Perugia, where he
died.
"Thus the man, whose bold initiative was to influence
so greatly the destinies of three great countries, to
bring to a close the most glorious period of medieval
Germany by the ruin of the Hohenstaufen, to introduce a
new dynasty into Italy, and to direct French policy in a
direction as yet unknown, quitted the stage before he
had seen the consequences of his acts at the very hour
when the negotiations, commenced at his accession and
continued throughout his reign, had reached completion"
(Jordan, op. cit., 513).
If Urban's treatment of Manfred appear harsh and
unscrupulous, it must be remembered how the Church had
suffered at the hands of the Hohenstaufen ever since the
days of Frederick I. In the eyes of feudal law Manfred
was a usurper without rights: he had callously seized
his nephew Conradin's crown, and even that nephew could
not inherit from a grandfather who had been deprived of
his fief for rebellion against his suzerain. At this
period, too, the papal Government, owing in part to its
very weakness, stood for municipal freedom, while the
Hohenstaufen had in Sicily substituted for the
aristocratic hierarchy of feudalism a bureaucratic
despotism supported by the arms of their devoted
Saracens.
Two other points in Urban's policy must be noted: his
dealings with the Byzantine Empire and with England.
Manfred's designs on the territories of Palaeologus,
together with the exiled Baldwin's secret attempt to
reconcile Manfred with St. Louis, made the Greek
emperor, politically, at least, the natural ally for a
pope fearful of an increase in the power of the Sicilian
king. Urban sought an understanding with Michael
Palaeologus, and here too gave a lasting direction to
papal policy, setting it on the path which led to the
union (inoperative though it was) of Lyons in 1274. In
England Urban's collectors of money were exceedingly
busy; like St. Louis, he supported Henry III against the
barons. He absolved the king from his promise to observe
the Provisions of Oxford, declared oaths taken against
him to be unlawful, and condemned the rising of the
barons. He was buried in the cathedral at Perugia. The
Feast of Corpus Christi (q.v.) was instituted by Urban
IV.
RAYMUND WEBSTER
Transcribed by Carol Kerstner
The Catholic
Encyclopedia, Volume XV
Copyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton Company
Nihil Obstat, October 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D.,
Censor
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of
New York
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