CALLISTUS II, POPE. — For many years (from 1088) as archbishop of Vienne in the Dauphiné, Guido, son of William Count of Burgundy, carried out an active role in legations and councils during the Investiture Controversy, particularly in the period between Urban II and Paschal II, when he dared to break suddenly with the emperor’s condemnation, thus ending the sad situation arising from the imprisonment and violence exercised by Henry V against that pope, and wresting from him the confirmation of investitures. On the morrow of the death of Gelasius II, exiled in France, the prestige of his works and the high rank of his birth, which made him a kinsman of the royal houses of France, Germany, and England and of the Counts of Savoy, the necessity of restoring the papacy, which had been prostrated by imperial violence and schism (against Paschal II, Maurice Burdino [Gregory VIII] had been elected by Henry to continue the tradition of Cadalo and Guibert), pointed him out, though he was a stranger to the Sacred College, to the suffrages of the cardinals gathered on 2 February 1119 at Cluny. But before accepting the tiara, the elector wished to await the confirmation of the cardinals and the Roman clergy, which was obtained through the authority of the vicar, Peter of Porto, and of a wealthy layman, Peter Pierleoni, who had succeeded his father in directing the reform movement in the city, to which he had been appointed by the great Hildebrand. Then he set himself to the arduous task of settling the long-standing controversy with the empire, beginning with the clear reaffirmation at the Council of Reims of the intransigent positions and imposing, through his authority and energy, respect even from Henry himself and the German clergy; he also made use of the conciliatory element represented by Bishop Ivo of Chartres and the abbot of Cluny, who sought a compromise rather than a solution to the problem, based on the distinction between the nature of the two powers.
At Würzburg, in October 1121, the foundations were laid for the agreement that would follow on 23 September 1122 at Worms, the most solemn act, with the Council of the Lateran celebrated the following year, of the pontificate and the midpoint of the two phases of the great struggle between empire and papacy. Meanwhile, the antipope Burdino had been removed, and from his refuge in Sutri, after having given a sad spectacle of human fortunes in the streets of Rome, he was dragged from one prison to another in the territory of Lazio; in Rome peace had been restored, with the demolition of fortresses and the humiliation of the Frangipani and the Corsi, as attested by the renewed fervor in the construction of buildings and churches; the preaching of the Crusade had been resumed and the reforming prescriptions reaffirmed; the power of the Curia had been strengthened, through legations and personal interventions of the Pope, throughout Christendom.
A notable figure among the popes, standing out among the successors of Gregory VII, a man of strong character and a skilled politician, Callistus II restored to the Roman Church prestige and power. With him there entered the new French curialism; the Curia became politicized and, out of love for splendor and the restoration of its diminished credit, it was perhaps tolerated by the Pope to turn a blind eye to abuses and the corruptibility of the most influential and powerful, while temporal and spiritual power tended toward a closer bond: as the events following his death, which occurred at the Lateran on 13 December 1124, were soon to show.