CALLISTO II, POPE. — For many years (from 1088) archbishop of Vienne in the Dauphiné, Guido, son of Guglielmo, count of Burgundy, carried out fervent activity in legations and councils during the Investiture Controversy, particularly in the period between Urban II and Paschal II, when he burned to put an end at a stroke,
by condemning the emperor, to the grievous situation resulting from the imprisonment and violence inflicted by Henry V upon that pontiff, having induced him to confirm the investitures. On the day after the death of Gelasius II, an exile in France, the prestige of his works and the distinction of his birth, which made him related to the ruling houses of France, Germany, and England and to the counts of Savoy, together with the need to raise up the papacy, prostrate under imperial violence and schism
(against Paschal II, Henry had elected Maurizio Burdino [Gregory VIII], continuing the tradition of Cadalus and Guibert), designated him, although not a member of the Sacred College, for the votes of the cardinals assembled on 2 February 1119 at Cluny. But, before accepting the tiara, the elected pope wished to await confirmation from the cardinals and the Roman clergy, obtained through the authority of the vicar, Pietro of Porto, and of a wealthy layman, Pietro Pierleoni, who had succeeded his father in directing the reform movement in the city, to which the great Hildebrand had appointed him. He then undertook the arduous task of settling the longstanding dispute with the empire, beginning with the clear reaffirmation, at the Council of Reims, of the positions of intransigence and commanding, through his authority and energy, the respect even of Henry himself and of the German clergy; he also made use of the conciliatory element, represented by Bishop Ivo of Chartres and the abbot of Cluny, which led to a compromise, rather than a solution, of 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: together with the Lateran Council held the following year, it was the most solemn act of the pontificate and the midpoint marking the end of the two phases of the great struggle between empire and papacy. In the meantime, the antipope Burdino had been removed, and from his refuge at Sutri, after providing along the roads of Rome a melancholy spectacle of the vicissitudes of human fortune, he was taken from one prison to another throughout the territory of Latium; peace had been restored in Rome through the destruction of the fortifications and the humiliation of the Frangipane and the Corsi, as testified by the renewed building fervor in the construction of edifices and churches; the preaching of the Crusade had been resumed and the reforming prescriptions reaffirmed; the power of the Curia had been strengthened throughout Christendom by legations and by the Pope’s personal interventions. A notable pontiff, standing out among the successors of Gregory VII, a ruler and politician by temperament, C. succeeded in restoring prestige and power to the Roman Church. With him the new French curialism made its entrance; the Curia became politicized and, out of a love of splendor and the restoration of the credit it had already squandered, it was preferred—and perhaps the Pope tolerated it—
