Obituary- Pope Urban ll

Allison bohan

Last Saturday, July 29, the Roman Catholic Pope, Urban II past away. Urban was born in 1035 in Lagary, Champagne, France. He was born to a noble French family, and spent his time studying at Soissons and Reims. He took a position as archdeacon of Reims, which was a fairly powerful position. During his young ages he learned from the former Pope Gregory VII. Pope Urban II followed after most of Gregory VII main focuses like, internal reform, which is changing things within the church. An example is the canons regular clergymen dedicated to the church. He also focused on things like clerical abuses prevalent, and simony, the selling of church offices. He was elected pope in the year of 1088 and served till his death.

During the battle of Manzikert in the year of 1071 the Turks took the Holy Land from the Jews, and made it so Christian's could no longer go there. The Byzantine emperor, Alexius asked Pope Urban II to join forces to help fight the Muslim Turks, and take back the Holy Land that had been taken from him once before. Urban excepted Alexius offer to join him in battle against the Muslims. In the year of 1095 on November 27, he had a speech in the town of Clermont in central France, declaring a war against Christians in Europe with Muslims, to reclaim the Holy Land(Middle East). He preached a powerful sermon calling for thousands of Christian volunteers, to help the Jews get Jerusalem back from the Turks. Within his sermon he stated " A horrible tale has gone forth, an accursed race has violently invaded the lands of those Christians, and has depopulated them by pillage and fire." This means, that the Turks killed everyone by stealing, and burning down their houses." At the end of his speech he called for the Christians to" tear that land from the wicked race and subject it to yourselves." Urban and his representatives travelled Europe trying to gain supporters of the First Crusade. It took him awhile to convince the Europeans to join, but eventually he did, and in total ended up gathered about 100,000 people called Crusaders, then started their trek to the Holy Land. He didn't actually go on the trip to Jerusalem, he stayed in Rome. There are many stories of horrible things that the Crusaders did in the name of God. Some say the Crusaders brutality helped strengthen the Muslims resolve, which means they didn't follow the "Christian" rules. They killed and tortured Muslim, making them fight back harder. The first crusaders did eventually take over the Holy Land in July of 1099. Pope Urban II died fourteen days after the crusaders took back the Holy Land due to a heart attack. Unfortunately, the news of this victory hadn't yet reached Rome at the time of his death so he never got to celebrate his achievement. This great soul will be missed greatly by many, and will go down in history for being the man who took back Jerusalem from the Muslims.