CALLISTUS II, Pope. - For many years (from 1088) archbishop of Vienne in the Dauphiné, Guido, son of William count of Burgundy, carried on a fervent activity in legations and councils during the investiture struggle, particularly in the period between Urban II and Paschal II, when he burned to break at a stroke, by condemning the emperor, the sad situation resulting from the imprisonment and the violence exercised by Henry V against that pontiff, wresting from him the confirmation of investitures. On the day after the death of Gelasius II, an exile in France, the prestige of his works and the eminence of his birth, which made him a relative of the ruling houses of France, Germany, and England and of the counts of Savoy, and the necessity of raising up again the papacy prostrated by imperial violence and by the schism
(against Paschal II, Henry had elected Maurice Burdino [Gregory VIII], to continue the tradition of Cadalus and of Guibert), pointed him out, although he was not a member of the Sacred College, to the suffrages of the cardinals gathered on 2 Feb. 1119 at Cluny. But, before accepting the tiara, the elect wished to await the confirmation of the cardinals and of the Roman clergy, obtained through the authority of the vicar, Peter of Porto, and of a wealthy layman, Peter Pierleoni, who had succeeded his father in the direction of the reform movement in the city, to which the great Hildebrand had appointed him. He then set himself to the arduous task of settling the age-old controversy with the empire, starting from the clear reaffirmation, at the Council of Reims, of the positions of intransigence and imposing himself, by his authority and energy, upon the respect of Henry himself and of the German clergy; he also availed himself of the conciliationist element, represented by Bishop Ivo of Chartres and by the abbot of Cluny, which led to a transaction, rather than to a solution, of the problem, based on the distinction of the nature of the two powers.
At Würzburg, in Oct. 1121, the foundations were laid for the agreement, which would follow on 23 Sept. 1122 at Worms, the most solemn act, together with the Lateran Council celebrated the following year, of the pontificate and of the middle term of the two phases of the grand struggle between empire and papacy. Meanwhile, the antipope Burdino had been removed from the scene, and from his refuge at Sutri, after having given through the streets of Rome a sad spectacle of the vicissitudes of human fortunes, he was dragged from one prison to another of the Lazio territory; in Rome peace had been restored, with the demolition of the fortresses and the humiliation of the Frangipane and the Corsi, and the renewed constructive fervor of buildings and churches bore witness to it; the preaching of the Crusade had been resumed and the reform prescriptions reaffirmed; the power of the Curia had been consolidated, through legations and personal interventions of the Pope, throughout all Christendom. A notable figure of a pontiff, who stands out among the successors of Gregory VII, a temper of a ruler and of a politician, C. knew how to restore to the Roman Church prestige and power. With him the new French curialism made its entry; the Curia became politicized and, out of love of pomp and the reestablishment of credit already dispersed, it was preferred, and perhaps the Pope suffered it, to close an eye on the means, on the corruptibility of the closest and most powerful, while temporal and spiritual power tended toward a closer bond: as the events following the death of C., which occurred at the Lateran on 13 Dec. 1124, were about to show.
Bibliography10 works
Pier Fausto Palumbo