Pope Urban

The papal name Urban has been borne by eight bishops of Rome, spanning from the third century to the seventeenth. Because the subject is identified only as Pope Urban, without a numeral, the following account surveys the historically attested holders of that name rather than attributing a single biography to an unspecified individual. No single birth year, birthplace, or death date can be assigned without arbitrarily choosing among them.

Pope Urban I occupied the see of Rome from 222 to 230, during the reign of the emperor Alexander Severus. Contemporary evidence for his life is extremely sparse. The Liber Pontificalis, compiled centuries later and often unreliable, describes him as a Roman and the son of a man named Pontianus, and it credits him with liturgical and disciplinary measures that cannot be independently confirmed. Legendary narratives that connect him with Saint Cecilia are not regarded as historical. He died in 230 and was commemorated on 25 May. Later popular tradition sometimes confused him with Saint Urban of Langres, a separate Gallic bishop, which produced unwarranted attributions of patronage over vineyards and wine.

The most consequential bearer of the name was Pope Urban II, who reigned from 1088 to 1099. Born Odo (or Eudes) in the Champagne region of France, probably at Lagery, in the first half of the eleventh century, he had been a prior of Cluny and cardinal-bishop of Ostia before his election at Terracina, while Rome was still contested by the imperial antipope Clement III. At the Council of Clermont in November 1095 he issued the call that launched the First Crusade, offering spiritual privileges to those who would go to the aid of Eastern Christians and recover Jerusalem. He died in Rome on 29 July 1099, within days of the crusaders' capture of the city, news of which is not believed to have reached him. His cult was confirmed when Pope Leo XIII beatified him in 1881.

Urban III (Uberto Crivelli of Milan, 1185-1187) and Urban IV (Jacques Pantaléon of Troyes, 1261-1264) belonged to the high medieval papacy. Urban III's brief reign was dominated by conflict with the emperor Frederick I Barbarossa; he died at Ferrara in October 1187. Urban IV, who had previously served as Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, never established his court in Rome; he instituted the feast of Corpus Christi and died at Perugia in 1264. Urban V (Guillaume de Grimoard, 1362-1370), a French Benedictine from the Gévaudan, was the only Avignon pope of the fourteenth century to attempt a lasting return of the curia to Rome; he was beatified by Pius IX in 1870. Urban VI (Bartolomeo Prignano of Naples, 1378-1389) was the pope whose contested election precipitated the Western Schism.

Urban VII (Giovanni Battista Castagna, 1590) reigned only thirteen days, the shortest pontificate on record, and died in Rome. Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini, 1623-1644), born in Florence in 1568, presided over a long Baroque pontificate marked by the condemnation of Galileo Galilei's advocacy of Copernican astronomy, extensive nepotism on behalf of the Barberini family, involvement in the politics of the Thirty Years' War, and ambitious artistic patronage in Rome, including major commissions to Gian Lorenzo Bernini. He died in Rome on 29 July 1644. Because these eight men lived in different centuries and regions, fields such as a single birth year, birthplace, religious order, feast day, and patronage cannot be filled for an unspecified Pope Urban without conjecture.