LUCIO III, POPE. — Ubaldo Allucingoli of Lucca, d. at Verona on 25 Nov. 1185. A Cistercian, he was received into the Order by St Bernard of Clairvaux himself. Created cardinal of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in 1141 by Innocent II, he was bishop of Ostia and Velletri from 1159. The popes, especially Alexander III, entrusted him with various political and religious missions. Upon the death of Alexander III he was elected pope (1 Sept. 1181) at Velletri and crowned there on 6 Sept. After a brief stay in Rome (Nov. 1181–March 1182), Lucio III was compelled to leave it for good because of the rebellion of the Romans, to whom he had refused to pay the sum demanded for their oath of fealty and on account of the question of Tusculum, which the pope wished to preserve from total destruction.
He subsequently resided at Velletri, Anagni, Segni, Veroli and Albano, since the death of Christian, archbishop of Mainz and imperial chancellor, deprived him of the strong support that might have restored him to Rome. In the summer of 1184, Lucio III, passing through Lucca, Bologna and Modena (to inspect the body of St Geminianus), reached Verona on 22 July, where he met Frederick Barbarossa to discuss major religious and political issues. The conference, which took on the character of a synod, lasted three months, but Lucio III did not obtain the aid he had hoped against the Romans, nor did he reach a happy solution regarding the estates of the Countess Matilda of Canossa. He refused to crown Frederick’s son Henry VI as emperor and opposed his marriage to Constance, heiress of the Norman kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Lucio III found Frederick in agreement with him only on the severe measures to repress heretics, who had grown bold and numerous in northern Italy; this was sanctioned on 4 Nov. 1184 by the constitution Ad abolendam, which laid down rules for the detection and punishment of heretics. Shortly afterwards the aged Pontiff died.