> On Mon, 29 Jul 1996, GP. Ferzoco wrote:
>
> > Today, 29 July, is the feast of ...
> >
> >
> > * Urban II, pope (1099)
> > - dare I ask Michael Hynes what he thinks of the cult of Urban?
> >
>
Ok, I'll just say one or two things about Urban II. He is indeed the
infamous pope of the 1st Crusade (called for at the Council of Clermont in
1095). He was born of an aristocratic French family, was prior of Cluny
(1067-70) under Abbot Hugh, archbp of Reims, and finally pope (1088-99).
His was one of the most sucessful pontificates. He was sucessful in
besting Henry IV and the anti-pope, Clement III; he was a great
legislative and conciliar pope; he (mostly) suceeded in consolidating the
reform. Politically adroit, Urban tackled the thorny problem of what to do
about scismatic (N.B. that contoumacious scism was regarded as
a heresy) ordinations and (because of the scism) multiple claimants
to the same office with pragmatism and diplomacy. His politically
adroitness (like the Am. pres. Bill Clinton), however, often left his
actual positions open to misunderstanding. He has, for example, been
viewed as a moderate on issues of investiture and clerical hommage. I am
arguing in my diss. that this was merely a tactic-- Urban was as opposed
to these practices as G VII. Urban also completed the reformation of the
south-western French church that had been initiated by G VII at the
Council of Poitiers (1078). It was no accident that he chose Clermont in
Eastern Aquitaine as the opening site for a series of French councils
which basically took the papacy on a tour of Aquitaine and culminated with
the Council of Poitiers (under Urban's sucessor) in 1100. From the pt. of
view of French social history (I include this out of personal interest and
for Richard), Urban suceeded in taming the peace and truce of God (prob.
repressed in this region by G VII), and (this is especially for you
Richard) he took action against the cult of Saint Martial. As far as my
evaluation of Urban goes, he was a corpus mixtum. But I think that given a
choice between an inflexable purist like G VII and a wiley pragmatist
like Urban, I'd choose the latter. For his legislative achievements alone,
I suppose he earned his sainthood.
MFH
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