Pope Urban IV

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Urban IV, born Jacques Pantaléon (Troyes, c. 1195 – October 2, 1264 in Perugia), was Pope, from 1261 to 1264, the last to become Pope without being a cardinal.

Urban IV was the son of a cobbler of Troyes, France. He studied theology and common law in Paris, and was appointed a canon of Laon and later Archdeacon of Liège. At the First Council of Lyons (1245) he attracted the attention of Pope Innocent IV (1243–54) who sent him on two missions in Germany before becoming the bishop of Verdun in 1253. In 1255, Pope Alexander IV (1254–61) made him Patriarch of Jerusalem.

He had returned from Jerusalem, which was in dire straits, and was at Viterbo seeking help for the oppressed Christians in the East when Alexander IV died, and after a three-month vacancy Pantaléon was chosen by the eight cardinals of the Sacred College to succeed him, on August 29, 1261, taking the name of Urban IV.

The Latin Empire of Constantinople came to an end with the capture of the city by the Greeks (led by their Emperor Michael VIII Paleologus) a fortnight before Urban IV's election; as Pope Urban IV endeavoured, but without success, to stir up a crusade to restore the Latin empire, without success. The festival of Corpus Christi ("the Body of Christ") was instituted by Urban IV in 1264.

Italy commanded Urban IV's full attention: the long confrontation with the late Hohenstaufen Frederick II had not been pressed during the mild pontificate of Alexander IV, while it devolved into interurban struggles between nominally pro-papal Ghibellines and even more nominally pro-Imperial Guelf factions, in which Frederick II's heir Manfred was immersed. Urban IV's military captain was the condottiere Azzo d'Este, nominally at the head of a loose league of cities that included Mantua and Ferrara. Any Hohenstaufen in Sicily was bound to have claims over the cities of Lombardy, and as a check to Image:Urban IV2.gif Manfred, Urban IV introduced Charles of Anjou into the equation, to place the crown of the Two Sicilies in the hands of a monarch amerable to papal control. Charles was comte de Provence in right of his wife, maintaining a rich base for projecting what would be an expensive Italian war. For two years Urban IV negotiated with Manfred, whether Manfred with aid the Latins in regaining Constantinople in return for papal confirmation of the Hohenstaufen rights in the regno. Meanwhile the papal pact solidified with Charles, a promise of papal ships and men, produced by a crusading tithe, and Charles' promise not to lay claims on Imperial lands in northern Italy, nor in the Papal States. Charles promised to restore the annual census or feudal tribute due the Åope as overlord, some 10,000 ounces of gold being agreed upon, while the pope would work to block Conradin from election as King of the Germans. Before the arrival in Italy of his candidate Charles, Urban IV died at Perugia, on October 2, 1264. His successor was Pope Clement IV (1265–68), who immediately took up the papal side of the arrangement.