Pope Urban II: The Pope Who Launched the Crusades

Written by Simon Williams

Pope Urban II could not safely enter Rome when he became pope in 1088. Seven years later, from Clermont, he launched a movement that reshaped Europe for centuries. He died in 1099, fourteen days after Jerusalem fell, never learning his call had succeeded.

• Birth name: Otho (Odo) of Lagery
• Born: c. 1035, Châtillon-sur-Marne, France
• Elected Pope: 12 March 1088
• Died: 29 July 1099, Rome
• Defining act: The Council of Clermont sermon, 27 November 1095
• Context: Elected while a rival antipope, Clement III, physically controlled Rome

On the day Otho of Lagery was elected pope, he could not go to Rome. The city that came with the job was in the hands of a rival, an antipope installed by the Holy Roman Emperor himself, and it would stay that way for five more years. Urban II, as he now called himself, governed the Western Church for the first stretch of his papacy the way a government in exile governs: through allies, letters, and councils held anywhere but the capital.

Seven years later, that same man stood in a field outside Clermont in central France and, by most accounts, triggered the largest mass mobilisation Europe had seen in centuries. Tens of thousands of people, from minor knights to entire peasant families, left their homes to march toward a city almost none of them had ever seen. The pope who could not enter his own capital had just launched an army that would take someone else's.

This is the story of how he got there, what he was actually trying to achieve, and the fact that he died without ever learning whether it had worked.

A Monk from Cluny, A Church at War

Before he was Pope Urban II, he was Otho, sometimes recorded as Odo, born around 1035 into a noble family near Châtillon-sur-Marne in the Champagne region of France. He trained under Bruno, the future founder of the Carthusian order, before becoming a monk and eventually prior at Cluny, the great Burgundian abbey that stood at the centre of a movement to reform the Western Church from corruption and secular interference. Cluniac monks like Otho believed the Church's authority depended on freeing it from the control of kings and emperors who treated bishoprics and abbacies as gifts to hand out to loyal followers.

That reforming instinct pulled him directly into the Investiture Controversy, the bitter decades long conflict between the papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV over who had the right to appoint bishops. Pope Gregory VII, the reform movement's most combative champion, made Otho cardinal bishop of Ostia in 1080, placing him at the centre of a papacy under sustained military and political attack from its own emperor.

Pope Without a Capital

Gregory VII died in exile in 1085. His short lived successor, Victor III, died in 1087. When the cardinals elected Otho as Urban II on 12 March 1088, they did not do it in Rome. They could not. Rome belonged to Clement III, the antipope Henry IV had installed there years earlier, and Urban's own election took place in Terracina, well south of the city he was nominally now head of.

I find this the detail that reframes everything that follows. Urban spent his first five years as pope unable to safely reside in his own capital, governing through a network of loyal bishops and travelling councils instead. He did not enter Rome to stay until 1093. A pope this precarious, this dependent on building coalitions from a position of weakness, is not the man most people picture when they imagine the pope who launched the Crusades.

Healing a Broken Church

By the time Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos sent envoys asking for Western military help against the Seljuk Turks in early 1095, Urban had spent years thinking about how to strengthen a Western Church that was still bitterly divided, both against the emperor's antipope and against the Greek Church in Constantinople, formally split from Rome since 1054.

Alexios wanted mercenaries. Urban saw something considerably larger. A campaign to help Byzantium and recover Christian territory in the East offered a way to demonstrate papal authority independent of Henry IV, a possible bridge toward healing the schism with the Greek Church, and an outlet for the chronic low level warfare between Christian knights that generations of Peace of God and Truce of God councils had tried and largely failed to contain. Redirecting that violence outward, toward a common and religiously sanctioned enemy, solved several of Urban's problems with a single stroke.

The Sermon at Clermont

Urban called a council at Clermont for November 1095, ostensibly to address a long list of Church business. On 27 November, outside the cathedral because no building could hold the crowd, he delivered the sermon that called for what became the First Crusade. The full story of that council and its immediate aftermath is covered in detail elsewhere on this site. What matters here is Urban's own role in what came next.

He did not simply issue a call and wait. Urban personally toured France for the following months, preaching the crusade at city after city and coordinating the network of regional preachers, including Peter the Hermit, who carried the message further still. He also introduced the specific mechanism that gave the whole enterprise its force: the crusading indulgence, a formal remission of the temporal punishment for sin granted to those who took the cross. This was new. Urban had turned participation in a military campaign into an act of penance.

What Urban Actually Said

No verbatim transcript of the Clermont sermon survives. Every account we have, including the two most detailed, Robert the Monk's and Fulcher of Chartres's, was written years after the event by chroniclers reconstructing or embellishing what they remembered or had heard secondhand. Robert claims to have been present. Even so, his version and the others differ from each other in emphasis and detail, and all were shaped by what the crusade had already become by the time they were writing.

The famous rallying cry Deus vult, God wills it, may never have been chanted at Clermont in the form later chroniclers describe. It is better understood as a slogan that crystallised in the retelling than as a verbatim record of the crowd's actual words.

None of this means Urban's sermon was not effective. It means the version of it that shaped Western memory for the next nine centuries was substantially a product of the crusade's own success, written back onto the moment that started it.

Death Before Victory

Urban spent his final years doing exactly what he had done from the start of his papacy: building coalitions and travelling to secure them. He held a council at Bari in October 1098 aimed at reconciling the Greek and Latin Churches, then returned to Rome for a final council in April 1099, still preaching the crusade even as its armies fought their way toward Jerusalem without him.

Jerusalem fell to the crusaders on 15 July 1099. Urban died in Rome on 29 July, fourteen days later, before any messenger could have reached him with the news. He never knew that the movement he had launched from a position of genuine institutional weakness had achieved the one outcome nobody, least of all Urban himself at Clermont, had been certain was achievable. He never once travelled east to see it for himself, and his authority over the crusade, once it left Clermont, was exercised almost entirely at a distance, through preachers, bishops, and letters rather than personal command.

The Pope Behind the Movement

The gap between the man and the myth is worth sitting with. Urban is remembered as the pope who commanded Christendom into holy war. The historical Urban spent most of his papacy unable to guarantee his own security in Rome, negotiating constantly with a church still split by schism and civil war.

That makes what he achieved more remarkable, not less. A pope operating from real institutional weakness turned a foreign request for mercenaries into a continent spanning movement, using a sermon, a new theological instrument in the indulgence, and a network of preachers he never fully controlled. Readers who want to follow what came next will find the wider Crusades collection at the Histories and Castles store, alongside a free illustrated guide to Richard the Lionheart.

From the Histories and Castles store

Read further into the Crusades and get a free guide

From Richard the Lionheart to the Knights Templar, go deeper into the people, battles, and relics that defined the medieval holy wars. Download a free illustrated guide to Richard the Lionheart, or browse authentic Crusades collectibles from the store.

Free Download

Richard the Lionheart: Myth vs Reality

A free illustrated guide separating the legend from the man. Richard's role in the Third Crusade, his captivity, and what the records actually say.

Get the free guide →

From the Store

Knights Templar Sword Medieval Replica

A full-size replica of a Knights Templar sword, hand-finished with authentic detailing. A striking piece for any medieval history collection.

Shop now →

From the Store

Vintage Knights Templar Cross Ring

A vintage-style signet ring bearing the Knights Templar cross. Solid construction with a bold medieval design, suitable for everyday wear.

Shop now →

This article is part of the Crusades series. Read all articles at https://historiesandcastles.com/blogs/the-crusades.

Deepen Your Understanding

→ The History of the Crusades: the full sweep of the crusading era, from Urban's call at Clermont to the fall of Acre in 1291

→ The Council of Clermont and the Crusades: the full story of the sermon itself and its immediate aftermath

→ Saladin: The Sultan Who Recaptured Jerusalem: the man who would recapture the city Urban's crusade took, less than a century later

→ Baldwin IV of Jerusalem: The Leper King Who Defeated Saladin: the kingdom Urban's crusade created, at its most resilient and its most exposed

→ Who Were the Knights Templar?: the military order founded in Jerusalem within a generation of Urban's sermon

→ Balian of Ibelin: The Real Knight Behind Kingdom of Heaven: the knight who negotiated Jerusalem's surrender in 1187, less than a century after Urban's sermon set the city's capture in motion

→ Godfrey of Bouillon: The Crusader Who Refused a Crown: the crusader who led the final assault on Jerusalem in 1099, fulfilling Urban's call in person

→ The Investiture Contest: Popes vs Emperors for Church Power: the wider struggle over papal authority that Urban, a former cardinal under Gregory VII, inherited and continued as pope

People Also Ask

Why did Pope Urban II call for the First Crusade?

Urban II called for the First Crusade for several overlapping reasons. Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos had requested Western military help against Seljuk Turkish advances, and Urban saw an opportunity to strengthen papal authority, redirect chronic warfare among European knights toward an external target, and potentially help heal the 1054 schism between the Latin and Greek Churches. Recovering Jerusalem and other Christian holy sites became the specific, religiously charged goal that turned a limited military favour into a continent-wide movement.

Did Pope Urban II actually say "Deus vult"?

There is no verbatim record confirming Urban II personally said or that the crowd at Clermont chanted "Deus vult" in the form later made famous. No transcript of his sermon survives, and the earliest detailed accounts, including Robert the Monk's, were written years after the event based on memory and secondhand report. The phrase became strongly associated with the crusade very quickly afterward, but its exact origin at Clermont itself cannot be confirmed from contemporary evidence.

Why couldn't Urban II live in Rome when he became pope?

When Urban II was elected in 1088, the city of Rome was controlled by Clement III, a rival antipope installed years earlier by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV during the Investiture Controversy. Urban's own election took place outside Rome, in Terracina, and he was unable to safely reside in Rome itself until 1093, five years into his papacy. He governed for that period through allies, letters, and councils held elsewhere in Italy and France.

Did Pope Urban II live to see Jerusalem captured?

No. Jerusalem fell to the First Crusade on 15 July 1099. Urban II died in Rome on 29 July 1099, only fourteen days later, before any messenger could realistically have reached him with news of the crusade's success. He spent the final months of his life still actively preaching and organising support for the crusade, unaware that its central objective had already been achieved. He held his last council that April, still working to build support for a campaign whose outcome he would never learn.

What was the crusading indulgence Urban II introduced?

The crusading indulgence was a formal declaration that participation in the crusade, undertaken with the right intention, would remit the temporal punishment normally owed for a person's sins. Urban introduced this at Clermont, and it was a genuine innovation. It transformed joining a military campaign into a recognised act of religious penance, giving knights and commoners alike a powerful spiritual incentive to take the cross that no earlier Church appeal for military aid had offered.

Was Pope Urban II a monk before becoming pope?

Yes. Before his election, Urban II, born Otho of Lagery, trained under Bruno of Cologne, later the founder of the Carthusian order, and became a monk and eventually prior at Cluny Abbey, the centre of the era's major Church reform movement. Pope Gregory VII made him cardinal bishop of Ostia in 1080, placing him at the heart of the papacy's conflict with Emperor Henry IV nearly a decade before his own election as pope.

Primary Sources and Further Reading

• Sweetenham, Carol, trans. (2005): Robert the Monk's History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana, Crusade Texts in Translation 11, Ashgate. Robert claimed to have been present at Clermont, and his chronicle became the most widely circulated medieval account of Urban's sermon, though written years after the event.
• Cowdrey, H.E.J. (1984): Popes, Monks and Crusaders, Hambledon Press, London. Includes Cowdrey's influential essay "Pope Urban II's Preaching of the First Crusade," a foundational modern study of Urban's aims and methods.
• Robinson, I.S. (1990): The Papacy 1073 to 1198: Continuity and Innovation, Cambridge University Press. A comprehensive academic history of the papacy across Urban's era, situating his reign within the Investiture Controversy.

Note: no verbatim transcript of Urban's Clermont sermon survives. The versions recorded by Robert the Monk, Fulcher of Chartres, Baldric of Dol, and Guibert of Nogent were all written after the First Crusade's outcome was known, and differ from each other in specific wording and emphasis. This article treats the widely reported phrase "Deus vult" and other specific quoted lines as elements of the sermon's later retelling rather than as a confirmed verbatim record, consistent with current scholarly caution on this point.

Regular podcasts by Histories and Castles to help you get a deep dive understanding of histories events and figures.