Martin IV

Martin IV (Simon de Brion), born towards 1210/1220, French, Pope of the February 22nd 1281 until its death the March 28th 1285 with Perugia. Its pontificate lasted 4 years and 1 month.

Judged severely by his contemporaries as by the modern historians, entirely pledged with the interests of Charles of Anjou and with the French ambitions, this pope with the calamitous reign appears to miss as much nature than of intelligence political. Its true personality admittedly almost entirely escapes to us.

Origins

One knows nothing sure of his origins and his years youth. Born in Andrezel a small town from Seine-et-Marne where a street bears its name - towards 1210/1220, it appears to belong to a family of minor nobility. A Guillaume de Brion whom one finds among the advisers of holy Louis is perhaps his brother, in any case a member of his family. Itself made a fast career. After a short passage to Rouen where he exerts the functions of Archidiacre, he obtains a canonicat with Saint Martin's day Turns and becomes treasurer of the chapter. They are there in XIIIe century of the emoluments required which are accessible only to clerks introduced well near the powerful ones and who often do not constitute, for their youngest holders, who a simple milestone along the way of the honors.

Legations

In 1260, Simon is called by Louis IX with the load of Minister of Justice, a rather honorary function which it does not appear to have really exerted. The following year the pope Urbain IV - which perhaps knew it in France - the cardinal fact of the title of Holy-Cecile.

Under short pontificates which follow one another until Nicolas III, it spends most clearly its time to France as legate. In 1264, Urbain IV charges it with concluding the final treaty which gives to Charles of Anjou the crown of Sicily, then, under the pontificate of Clément IV (1265-1268), it activates himself to preach and organize the support for the policy antigibeline of the pope, against Manfred and the Hohenstaufen. During the one second legation, of 1274 to 1279, the situation having evolved/moved in Italy, its missions appear less political, but it deals of many disciplinary problems and in particular with the reform of the statutes of the Université of Paris. The last year, it takes part without success in the efforts of the pontifical diplomacy to reconcile Philippe III and the Castille.

It is undoubtedly for its first period legatine that the political convictions of the future pope are if not are forged, at least deeply anchored and that its indéfectibles fidelities were tied.

Election

After the death of Nicolas III, in August 1280, the brought together cardinals with Viterbe do not manage to get along on the name of a successor and the pontifical see remains vacant for six months. This Conclave is completed in February 1281 by a takeover by force of Charles of Anjou which makes throw in prison two cardinals of the “Roman” group partisans to continue the anti-angevine policy of Nicolas III (whose its nephew Matteo Rosso Orsini) and imposes the election of his man, French Simon de Brion.

Simon appears well not to have been candidate. Even its adversaries affirm that it was elected against its liking and that it accepted the tiara only under the pressure of king de Sicile. He took the name of Martin IV, in homage, says one, with holy Martin for which he had brought back Tours a devotion particular.

Charles of Anjou and States of the Pope

Martin IV consequently gets busy to return on the polique one of political rebalancing undertaken by his predecessor. As of its election, it makes a decision fraught with consequences while returning to Charles of Anjou the dignity of “senator” of Rome, which makes of him the absolute master of the urban administration and the States of the Pope in general.

Nicolas III had known to take again these prerogatives carefully that Clément IV had granted to king de Sicile for ten years, at the same time as the vicariate of Toscane. At the limit of 1278, the pope, in his capacity as Roman citizen, had been made elect itself “senator with life”, then rejecting the office plurality of the functions, delegated the title to members of the urban aristocracy, initially with his own nephew Matteo Rosso into 1278/1279, then jointly with a Colonna and a Savelli into 1279/1280. The constitution Fundamenta militantis Ecclesiæ of July 12th, 1278, proposing the need for preserving the freedom of the pope and that of his cardinals in particular during the holidays of the Seat, made the good share with the big families of the City; it posed in theory that no one could not be a senator without permission express of the Holy See and that the function could not in no case to exceed the one year duration.

The dissatisfaction with the Roman aristocracy makes that Martin IV could never put the feet at Rome and during any sound pontifiat agitation became endemic in the States of the Church where Charles of Anjou, by his brutalities, had had time to make itself unpopular. The new pope had to leave Viterbe (city under prohibited because of the imprisonment of the cardinals and where the quarrels did not calm down) to settle with Orvieto where it was made crown. Its registers make it possible to follow displacements of the pontifical court. Orvieto even was not always sure: local disorders obliged it to be exiled for six months with Montefiascone (June-December 1282), then definitively, at the beginning of the summer 1284, with Perugia which had just made him its tender. During these four years, the Romagna, in spite of a rain of prohibited and excommunications, had remained in a state of permanent insurrection.

Relations with Byzance

Much more seriously, Martin IV adheres to the chimerical vision of Charles of Anjou to reconquer Byzance and believes to solemnly facilitate its company in excommunicating the emperor Michel VIII Paleologist (November 18th, 1281) and while claiming to prohibit any relation of the Western princes with the Empire. This not very diplomatic initiative sows the disorder in many cardinals and well beyond in the Church. The death of more “Roman” of the Byzantine empreurs in December 1282 and the return to the strict orthodoxy proclaimed at once by its successor Andronic II complete to put an end to the hopes reunification born of the council of Lyon (1274), but the papal initiative had compromised them already well. The call of the council to prepare a news Croisade is as much. A little everywhere, in Germany in particular, in spite of the real efforts of Martin IV, one stops practically the collection of the Décime S, for fear the collected money of Anjou under pretext of will not finance its “crusade in the cases of Charles” anti-Byzantine.

King d' Aragon

The sicilian revolt which culminates with the massacre of the French of Palermo on March 30th, 1282 (“sicilian Vespers”) rings the knell of all these phantasms. Martin IV exhausts his spiritual weapons against the rebels without succeeding in impressing them. The arrival in Palermo of the king Pierre III of Aragon, which claims its rights on the island as a son-in-law of Manfred, obliges Charles of Anjou to raise without glory the seat of the city and is made acclaim king de Sicile, with the unquestionable complicity of Michel Paléologue, more does not appear to disturb the pope who especially sees re-appearing the spectrum of Hohenstaufen. As of on November 18th, 1282, it excommunicates derechef the rebellious Sicilians, the king, his comrades in arms and its ministers; in February of the following year, its summations having remained without effect, he declares Pierre III stripped of his kingdom and throws the interdict on all his possessions, without being obeyed besides of the bishops concerned. The idea of anti-Aragonese a “crusade”, perhaps suggested by Charles of Anjou itself, is rather ripe so that it engages of the talks with the king of France Philippe III and offers the crown of Aragon to the one of his sons. It is the prelude to the disastrous French forwarding of the summer 1285 whose pope will not know the exit.

The death of the pope and his assessment

Martin IV dies indeed on March 28th, 1285, a little more than three months after Charles of Anjou. He is buried in the cathedral of Perugia. The cardinals elect to succeed a Roman aristocrat to him, Giacomo Savelli, which, under the name of Honorius IV, will manage to pacify the States of the Church and will endeavor to initiate in Italy of the South a realistic policy.

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