Pope Urban III (1185-1187)

The Pope Who Broke with the Empire

Where Lucius III had continued the moderation of the Peace of Venice (1177), Urban III almost immediately reopened the confrontation between the Sacerdotium and the Empire.^[13][14] An avowed enemy of Frederick Barbarossa even before his election, he refused compromise on the two most sensitive issues of the time: the encirclement of the Papal State by the union of the Empire and Sicily, and the imperial control over bishoprics. His pontificate lacked the length and brilliance of Alexander III’s, but it marks the moment when the papacy, barely emerged from an eighteen-year schism, chose to stand firm rather than to negotiate.

This firmness earned him, among some historians, the reputation of an intransigent who recklessly reignited a war his predecessor had calmed. This judgment deserves nuance: what Urban III defended—the freedom of the Church in appointing its bishops and the safeguarding of the independence of the Holy See against an empire seeking to enclose it—strikes at the very heart of the Gregorian cause. His rigidity was not a whim: it continued, in a more perilous context, the struggle of the Gregorian Reform.

The Archbishop of Milan Who Never Left Milan

The second feature that distinguishes this pontificate is canonically remarkable: Urban III remained Archbishop of Milan after his election to the See of Peter.^[15][16] This case is exceedingly rare. The reason is precise: since Charlemagne, the coronation of the King of Italy traditionally belonged to the Archbishop of Milan, and by retaining this title, the pope intended to deprive the Emperor of canonical support to have his son crowned. When Frederick circumvented the obstacle by having Henry anointed by the Patriarch of Aquileia, Urban III saw this as a direct usurpation of his rights.^[17][18]

This detail, seemingly technical, reveals the logic of his reign: for Urban III, ecclesiastical dignities were not negotiable honors but bulwarks of the Church’s liberty. Keeping Milan meant keeping a barrier against imperial absorption.

A Short Reign Overshadowed by Two Threats

Finally, the pontificate of Urban III is entirely caught between two shadows that overshadow him. To the north, Frederick Barbarossa, the most powerful sovereign in the West, who closed the Alpine passes and sent his son to ravage the Church’s lands. To the east, Saladin, who crushed the army of the Latin kingdom at Hattin (4 July 1187) and then took Jerusalem (2 October 1187), eighteen days before the pope’s death. Between these two pressures, the old Milanese pope had neither the time nor the means for a great work: he died in less than two years, defeated less by men than by the succession of disasters. His reign is the story of unyielding firmness in a collapsing world.

Our knowledge of Urban III is based on his pontifical acts—letters, bulls, privileges—many of which were incorporated into classical canon law by the compilers of decretals in the thirteenth century; as such, several of his legal decisions survived long beyond their original context.^[19][20] The repertories of Philipp Jaffé, the Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, remain the standard tool for dating his interventions.^[21]

For the political narrative of the pontificate—the election, the Trier dispute, the Henry VI affair, the siege of Verona, the death at Ferrara—the standard encyclopedic entries overlap: the article “Pope Urban III” in the Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent, 1912), the entry in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, that of the Encyclopædia Britannica, prosopographical databases such as Catholic-Hierarchy, and modern encyclopedic articles in French and English provide a reliable framework, verified here fact by fact.^{[22][23][24][25][26][27]}

For the circumstances of his death, the documentation is more delicate: contemporary chroniclers—Benedict of Peterborough, Ernoul, William of Newburgh—do not agree on what Urban III actually knew of the catastrophe in the Holy Land at the time of his death. This divergence, far from being a detail, requires careful distinction between what is attested and what belongs to hagiographic embellishment (see below).^[28]

A Milanese Family Crushed by Barbarossa

Uberto Crivelli was born around 1120 in Cuggiono, a village in the Milanese countryside, into a family of the Milanese nobility. The Crivelli were vavasseurs—minor feudal nobility—who owned extensive lands and were among the staunchest opponents of the emperor in the city.^[29][30] Another pope would perhaps later emerge from this house: the future Celestine IV (1241), whom the old Castiglioni genealogy makes the nephew of Uberto Crivelli—a filiation that modern critical notices regard as unproven.^[31][32]

To understand the man, one must understand the Milanese wound. In the heart of the 12th century, Milan, proud city of the Lombard League, resisted Frederick Barbarossa’s attempt to subjugate the communes of Northern Italy. The imperial response was terrible:

“In March 1162, Frederick Barbarossa razed Milan.” — according to the chronicles and the entry “Urban III”; the exact day varies among sources (see note)^[33]

The sack of Milan in 1162 was no ordinary battle: the city surrendered in March 1162, was dismantled and its population scattered. It would not rise again until 1167, under the leadership of consuls including a Crivelli, Arialdo.^[34][35] And the Crivelli family paid in blood. The Catholic Encyclopedia states it plainly:

“During the sack of Milan in 1162, the emperor had several relatives of the pope proscribed or mutilated.” — Catholic Encyclopedia, article “Pope Urban III”^[36]

This sentence sheds light on everything that follows. Urban III’s enmity toward Barbarossa was not merely political or doctrinal: it was personal, rooted in the memory of a wounded family. Any historian who would judge his firmness without considering this wound would miss the essence of the man.

French Exile and Return to Milan

After the destruction of their city, Uberto and several Crivelli went into exile in France. There, the young cleric continued his studies and became archdeacon of Bourges, one of the great churches of the Capetian kingdom.^[37] This French exile was not a mere episode: it placed Uberto Crivelli within the network of ultramontane Christendom, beyond the reach of the Empire, and gave him a broader horizon than the local Lombard quarrels.

When Milan rose again from its ruins, Uberto returned to his city. He became a canon and then archdeacon of the cathedral, and firmly sided with the reforming archbishop Galdino della Sala against the clergy who remained close to the Emperor.^[38] The latter, created cardinal by Alexander III in 1165 and then Archbishop of Milan in 1166, had followed the pope into exile before returning to support the Lombard League; he would die in his own pulpit, on 18 April 1176, at the end of a sermon against the Cathars. Tradition attributes his canonization to Alexander III himself; the title of “saint” is in any case attested as early as a letter of Urban III dated 19 December 1185—the very model of the fighting pastor that the future Urban III had before his eyes during his Milanese years.^[39] In 1170, he founded the monastery of San Pietro all’Olmo, a founding act that attests to his deep roots in Milanese religious life.^[40] The man who would ascend the throne of Peter was thus no curial courtier: he was a Lombard pastor, shaped by trial and by reform.

Cardinal, Bishop of Vercelli, Archbishop of Milan

Uberto Crivelli’s rise through the Church hierarchy took place in stages that can be dated from the sources, though not without some discrepancies that must be honestly acknowledged.

According to prosopographical databases, Uberto Crivelli was first created cardinal in September 1173 under Alexander III.^[41][42] In 1182, under Lucius III, he was promoted cardinal-priest of San Lorenzo in Damaso and, in the same year, received the bishopric of Vercelli.^[43][44] Finally, in 1185, Lucius III raised him to the dignity of archbishop of Milan, the great Ambrosian metropolis.^[45][46]

A frequent confusion must be addressed here. Several entries summarize his career by stating that he was “created cardinal by Lucius III in 1182.”^[47][48] This is imprecise: Uberto Crivelli had already been a cardinal since 1173, under Alexander III; what Lucius III granted him in 1182 was a promotion (the presbyteral title of San Lorenzo in Damaso) and the bishopric of Vercelli.^[49] Historical honesty requires that both dates be maintained: 1173 for the cardinalate, 1182 for the promotion. This concern for accuracy—verifying each date rather than copying a summary—is what distinguishes a reliable entry from an approximation.

Lucius III Dies, the Archbishop Succeeds Him the Same Day

Pope Lucius III died in Verona on 25 November 1185, after a four-year pontificate spent in exile, far from Rome.^[50][51] The Sacred College, gathered in the same city, did not wait: on the very same day, they elected the Archbishop of Milan, Uberto Crivelli, as his successor, who took the name Urban III.^[52][53] The New Catholic Encyclopedia emphasizes that he was the unanimous choice of the cardinals assembled at Verona.^[54] He was consecrated and crowned on 1 December 1185.^[55][56]

The speed of the election is not surprising: since the Third Lateran Council (1179), a two-thirds majority is sufficient to elect a pope, eliminating the risk of a double election that had bloodied the previous century. But the choice of Uberto Crivelli carried heavy political significance. To elect the Archbishop of Milan, whose family had been crushed by Barbarossa, was to choose a man ready for confrontation—the exact opposite of Lucius III’s moderation.

Why Keep the Archbishopric of Milan?

The most singular gesture of the election is what did not happen: Urban III did not renounce his archbishopric of Milan.^[57][58] Normally, elevation to the papacy ends all previous episcopal offices. By retaining Milan, Urban III made a deliberate choice, for reasons both canonical and political.

The coronation of the King of Italy traditionally belonged to the Archbishop of Milan. Now, Frederick Barbarossa wanted his son Henry crowned King of Italy to secure the imperial succession. By keeping the Ambrosian see, Urban III reserved for himself—or withheld from the Emperor—the canonical authority over this coronation.^[59][60] The Catholic Encyclopedia notes this intention: he retained the archbishopric “perhaps for this purpose” of asserting the Holy See’s rights over Henry’s coronation.^[61]

Here the deep coherence of the reign becomes clear. For Urban III, an ecclesiastical title is not an ornament: it is a legal lever in service of the Church’s freedom. Keeping Milan meant keeping the key to a coronation coveted by the Emperor.

The history of Urban III’s pontificate is almost entirely that of his conflict with the Empire. Four issues followed one another, each worsening the next, until invasion and siege.

The Marriage of Henry VI and Constance of Sicily

The first danger was dynastic and geographic. Frederick Barbarossa arranged for his son Henry—the future Henry VI—a crucial marriage: that of Constance of Hauteville, daughter of King Roger II and heiress to the Norman kingdom of Sicily. On 27 January 1186, in Milan, Constance married Henry VI.^[62][63] For the papacy, this union was a strategic nightmare: if the Empire in the north and Sicily in the south fell into the same hands, the Papal States would be caught in a pincer, encircled from north to south.

This was precisely what the Normans of Sicily had long prevented: they were the natural protectors of the papacy against the Empire. To see Sicily pass to the Hohenstaufen was to lose this vital counterweight. The Britannica summarizes the issue: the marriage “confronted him with the alarming prospect of Hohenstaufen domination over both southern and northern Italy.”^[64] Urban III opposed it with all his might: according to sources, he saw it as an attempt to ruin papal power, and suspended from office the prelates who had taken part in the ceremony.^[65]

The Coronation of Henry VI and the Affront at Aquileia

The Milanese marriage was immediately followed by an even graver act. Shortly after the ceremony, Henry VI was crowned King of Italy in Milan—but not by the city’s archbishop, since that archbishop was Urban III himself, who refused. Instead, it was the Patriarch of Aquileia, won over by the Emperor, who performed the coronation in his place.^[66][67]

“The Patriarch of Aquileia was induced by the emperor to perform this office, although it belonged to the pope by virtue of the archbishopric of Milan which he had retained.” — according to the Catholic Encyclopedia and the entry “Pope Urban III”^[68][69]

For Urban III, this was a blatant usurpation of his rights, a deliberate affront to his authority. The coronation of 1186 turned a diplomatic opposition into an open conflict: the Emperor had disregarded the pope’s refusal, and the pope could not accept this without betraying the very reason he had kept Milan.

The Trier Dispute: Folmar versus Rudolf

The third case concerns one of the great archbishoprics of the Empire: Trier. A double election pits two candidates against each other. Folmar of Karden (Folmar de Carden) was canonically elected by part of the chapter; but Frederick Barbarossa granted investiture to the minority candidate, Rudolf (Rodolphe). The conflict sets two principles in opposition: canonical election by the Church, and investiture by imperial authority—precisely the issue at the heart of the Investiture Controversy.^[70][71]

Urban III decides in favor of the Church, and does so decisively. The Catholic Encyclopedia is precise:

“On May 31, he promoted the archdeacon Folmar to the cardinalate, and the next day consecrated him archbishop of Trier, contrary to a promise he had made to the emperor; for although Folmar had been canonically elected, Frederick had granted investiture to Rudolf, the candidate of the minority.” — Catholic Encyclopedia, article “Pope Urban III”^[72]

By consecrating Folmar as archbishop of Trier on June 1, 1186, against the imperial candidate and in violation of a promise made to Frederick, Urban III makes a gesture of defiance.^[73][74] The imperial response is swift. But one fact must be honestly noted: the German episcopate, for the most part, does not follow the pope; it sides with Frederick.^[75] Urban III’s firmness, though correct in principle, leaves him partly isolated before the Empire.

This Trier schism would outlive Urban III himself: neither Folmar nor Rudolf would ever take full possession of the archiepiscopal see, ravaged by their rivalry. Only on 26 June 1189—nearly two years after Urban III’s death—would Pope Clement III, by a bull of that day, depose both claimants and install a third man, John I (consecrated in 1190). Folmar would die the same year in exile at Northampton, in England; the German historian Bernhard von Simson portrays him as “der unruhige, ehrgeizige und harte Mann” (“that restless, ambitious and hard man”).^[76]

The Invasion of the Papal States and the Siege of Verona

The rupture turns to war. Frederick Barbarossa closes the Alpine passes to the pope’s messengers bound for Germany, cutting Urban III off from his ultramontane supporters, and sends his son Henry to ravage the Papal States.^[77] The New Catholic Encyclopedia summarizes the climax: the conflicts “resulted in an invasion of Italy and the siege of the pope and the curia at Verona.”^[78]

The pope finds himself besieged in the very city where he had been elected. His situation is all the more precarious because Verona is a city of the imperial march, little inclined to let the pontiff turn its walls into a base for a crusade against the Emperor. The noose tightens around a reign not yet three years old.

Toward a Prevented Excommunication

Cornered, Urban III makes the gravest decision a pope can take against a Christian sovereign: to excommunicate Frederick Barbarossa. But he cannot do so from Verona. The Britannica explains: the citizens of Verona refused to allow this act in their city, and the pope had to seek another place to pronounce the sentence.^[79]

Urban III then decides to head for Venice, a free city hostile to the Empire, to render his judgment publicly there.^[80][81] The excommunication of the most powerful emperor in the West is about to be pronounced. But the pope never reaches Venice: death overtakes him on the way.

To reduce Urban III to his conflict with the Empire would be unjust. Like every pope of the 12th century, he governed the universal Church through letters, judgments, and privileges, and his contribution to canon law was not insignificant.

The Decretals of Urban III

A great number of decretal letters from Urban III—papal responses to legal questions posed by bishops or delegated judges—were considered important enough to be collected by canonists and inserted into the major compilations of decretals in the 13th century, which would form the foundation of classical canon law up to the Corpus Iuris Canonici.^[82][83] Thus, in a paradox common to the Middle Ages, a pope with a brief and politically unsuccessful pontificate left a more lasting mark on Church law than on the politics of his time.

This legal activity recalls a fundamental truth: the ordinary governance of the Church—settling disputes, confirming elections, protecting monasteries, responding to appeals from across Christendom—continues even under a besieged pope. Petrine primacy is not measured only by grand gestures; it is exercised in the patient administration of ecclesiastical justice.

Hattin, the True Cross, and the Collapse of the Latin Kingdom

While Urban III was exhausting himself against the Empire, the Latin East was collapsing. On July 4, 1187, at Hattin, near the Sea of Galilee, the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was annihilated by Saladin. King Guy of Lusignan was taken prisoner, the military orders decimated, and above all the True Cross—the most sacred relic of Christendom, carried into battle—was lost.^[84] Deprived of its army, the Latin kingdom was left defenseless: city after city fell, and Jerusalem itself surrendered to Saladin on October 2, 1187.^[85]

This was one of the greatest catastrophes in medieval Christian history. Eighty-eight years after the conquest of the Holy City by the First Crusade (1099), earthly Jerusalem once again slipped from Christian hands. News of Hattin spread through the West during the summer and autumn of 1187, stunning the courts and the Church.

Death from Grief? The Chroniclers' Debate

Urban III died at Ferrara on October 20, 1187, en route to Venice.^[86][87][88] As for the cause of his death, the chroniclers differ, and the careful historian must distinguish between the versions.

The most widespread tradition holds that Urban III died of grief upon learning of the fall of the Holy Land.^[89] But here a chronological clarification is needed, which quick summaries too often gloss over. The news of the disaster of Hattin (4 July) had indeed reached the West by autumn 1187.^[90] As for the fall of Jerusalem (2 October 1187), on the other hand, the exact arrival of the news in Rome and Ferrara in the last days of October is debated among historians: the bull Audita tremendi itself, promulgated by Gregory VIII on 29 October—nine days after Urban III’s death—already laments the disaster in the Holy Land, so that one can no longer assert without qualification that the information had “not yet reached Europe”.^[91] It is therefore, at the very least, fragile to hold as established that Urban III died of grief at the news of the capture of Jerusalem: if the old pope did indeed die of shock, it was more surely at the news of Hattin and of the loss of the True Cross.^[92][93]

On the other hand, news of the disaster at Hattin (July 4) had more than enough time to reach the West by autumn. If the elderly pope did indeed die of shock, it was thus at the news of Hattin and the loss of the True Cross, not the fall of Jerusalem.^[94][95] This distinction is not mere scholarly fastidiousness: it illustrates the method of a serious encyclopedia, which does not simply repeat a beautiful legend without checking the dates. William of Newburgh, noting that the news arrived after the election of the successor, is probably correct against the embellished version.

Gregory VIII, Audita tremendi, and the Third Crusade

Upon the death of Urban III, the cardinals immediately elected Gregory VIII (Alberto di Morra), whose pontificate would last only two months.^[96] Yet this short-lived pope accomplished two decisive acts: he reconciled with the Empire, ending the standoff that Urban III had pushed to the point of excommunication, and he issued the call to crusade that the catastrophe in the East had made urgent.

On October 29, 1187, Gregory VIII promulgated the bull Audita tremendi, which lamented the disaster at Hattin, the execution of the Templars and Hospitallers, and the loss of the True Cross, and called Christendom to the Third Crusade.^[97] This crusade—the one of Frederick Barbarossa himself, Richard the Lionheart, and Philip Augustus—was thus born in the very weeks following the death of Urban III. The Milanese pope would not witness the reconciliation or the response: he died at the exact turning point between the era of conflict he embodied and the era of crusade his successor would inaugurate.

An Intransigent?

The bust reproduced here, the Cappenberger Kopf, was long presented—on the basis of a hypothesis dating to 1886—as the only known contemporary portrait of Frederick Barbarossa. The inscriptions and analyses (laboratory work in 1978, 3D microscopy and X-ray fluorescence in 2021) have since refuted this identification: the object, commissioned before 1158 by Otto of Cappenberg, was from the outset a reliquary of Saint John the Evangelist—tradition sees in it a gift from his godson the emperor to his godfather. It nonetheless remains the closest material witness to Barbarossa’s immediate entourage—encyclopedic honesty requires noting this rather than perpetuating a 19th-century legend.^[98]

What should we think of Urban III? The most common reproach is that of intransigence: by reigniting the conflict with Barbarossa that Lucius III had managed to calm, he is said to have exposed the Church to a war it could not win, and to have died defeated, isolated from a German episcopate that had sided with the Emperor.

This judgment is not false, but it is incomplete. For what Urban III defended was just. The Sicilian marriage truly threatened to stifle the independence of the Holy See between two imperial jaws; the investiture of Rudolf at Trier against a canonically elected candidate truly violated the freedom of the Church. On these two points, Urban III held to the Gregorian line: not to surrender the appointment of bishops to secular power, not to allow the Empire to encircle the papacy. His firmness was not a matter of temperament, but of fidelity.

One may judge that he lacked the political prudence of his predecessor, and that his haste to consecrate Folmar or to seek the excommunication of the Emperor did not sufficiently take into account the balance of power. But the Catholic who considers this pontificate must recognize that he defended, under desperate conditions, a principle greater than himself: the freedom of the Bride of Christ in the face of the powers of this world.

What This Pontificate Teaches

Three lessons emerge from this brief and tragic reign.

First, that the Petrine office remains intact under the most extreme pressure: besieged in Verona, cut off from Germany, isolated before the Emperor, Urban III continued to govern, to judge, to consecrate—and died on the road while undertaking an act of authority. The defeated pope remains the pope.

Next, that doctrinal firmness comes at a cost, and is not always rewarded in the time of men: Urban III defended the just cause and died without seeing its triumph. The Church does not judge its pastors by earthly success alone.

Finally, that catastrophes are intertwined: the death of Urban III, at the junction of the imperial conflict and the collapse of the Holy Land, reminds us that no pontificate unfolds in isolation. It was in this fractured world—between Barbarossa and Saladin—that the old Archbishop of Milan held his rank to the end, then died at Ferrara, his gaze turned toward a lost Jerusalem.

• Pope Lucius III (1181–1185) — the direct predecessor of Urban III, who died in Verona, and who made him cardinal-priest and then archbishop of Milan.
• Pope Alexander III (1159–1181) — the great pope of the schism and the Peace of Venice, who created Uberto Crivelli cardinal in 1173.
• The Gregorian Reform — the Investiture Controversy and the freedom of the Church, the underlying issue in the conflict of Trier.
• The Crusades — the disaster of Hattin, the fall of Jerusalem, and the Third Crusade called by Gregory VIII.
• The First Crusade — the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, lost again the year of Urban III's death.