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Biography

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Giovanni Caetani, later Pope Gelasius II, was born in Gaeta, a coastal city in southern Italy, during the second half of the eleventh century. He belonged to the Caetani (or Gaetani) family, a noble lineage of that city. In his youth he entered the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino, then among the foremost monastic and intellectual centres of Latin Christendom. There he was formed in the monastic life and acquired the learning that later distinguished him as a papal administrator and man of letters. Contemporary and near-contemporary accounts present him as a cultivated monk rather than as a political or military figure.

Brought into the service of the Roman Church by Pope Urban II, he was created cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Cosmedin around 1088. From about 1089 until his own election as pope he served as chancellor of the Holy Roman Church under both Urban II and Paschal II. In that office he reorganized the papal chancery, regularized its documentary practices, and is associated with the introduction of a clearer minuscule script in papal letters, a reform of lasting importance for medieval papal administration. His long tenure at the centre of curial business made him one of the most experienced members of the Sacred College when the see of Rome fell vacant.

Paschal II died in January 1118. On 24 January the cardinals, meeting under the threat of imperial and baronial violence, elected Caetani as his successor; he took the name Gelasius II. The election was held in the church of Santa Maria in Pallara on the Palatine Hill. Almost at once Cencio Frangipane, a leader of the pro-imperial Roman faction, seized the new pope and held him prisoner until a popular rising secured his release. Emperor Henry V then advanced on Rome. Gelasius fled south to Gaeta, where, because he had been only a deacon at his election, he received episcopal consecration. Henry installed Maurice Bourdin, archbishop of Braga, as antipope under the name Gregory VIII. Gelasius responded by excommunicating the emperor and the antipope, thereby continuing the struggle over investiture and the freedom of papal elections that had marked the preceding decades.

Unable to maintain himself in Rome against the Frangipani, Gelasius left Italy for France. He celebrated a synod at Vienne and sought the support of the French church and of the great Burgundian abbey of Cluny. His pontificate lasted little more than a year. He died at Cluny on 29 January 1119 and was buried in the abbey church. The cardinals then elected Guy of Vienne, who took the name Calixtus II and who would, a few years later, conclude the Concordat of Worms. Gelasius II’s brief reign did not resolve the Investiture Controversy, but it preserved the line of reform popes against imperial imposition and illustrated the continuing volatility of Roman politics in the early twelfth century.

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