Jacques Pantaléon (Urban IV) elected Pope

Pope Urban IV (c. 1195 in Troyes, France – October 2, 1264 in Perugia), born Jacques Pantaléon, was Pope, from 1261 to 1264. He was not a cardinal, and there have been several Popes since him who have not been Cardinals, including Urban V and Urban VI.

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 Lyon (1245) he attracted the attention of Pope Innocent IV (1243-1254) who sent him on two missions in Germany. One of the missions was to negotiate the Treaty of Christburg between the pagan Prussians and the Teutonic Knights. He became the bishop of Verdun in 1253. In 1255, Pope Alexander IV (1254-1261) 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 Palaiologos) a fortnight before Urban IV's election; Urban IV endeavoured without success to stir up a crusade to restore the Latin Empire. 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-Imperial Ghibellines and even more nominally pro-papal 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 wa...

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."
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