HONORIUS II, Pope. - He reigned from 1124 to 1130. The Sacred College, casting its votes (Dec. 21, 1124), not without difficulty, in favor of the name of Lamberto, cardinal bishop of Ostia, one of the negotiators of the Concordat of Worms of 1122 and one of the moving spirits of the Ninth Ecumenical Council of the Lateran (1123), oriented the new pontificate toward the effective realization of ecclesiastical reform. Good relations with almost all the kings of the West procured for O. II a peaceful and fruitful pontificate.
The election of Lothair of Saxony as king of Germany, which took place in 1125 through the efforts of the archbishop of Mainz Adalbert, against the last wishes of Henry V, placed on the imperial throne a prince docile to the influence of the Church. Episcopal elections were carried out regularly, and the King left to the pontifical legate the task of deciding in cases of dispute, as in the succession of the bishop of Würzburg. In return, the Pontiff and the episcopate supported Lothair III against his rival Conrad, excommunicating the latter and his partisans, for example, the ambitious archbishop of Milan Anselm, who had already conferred the iron crown on the pretender (1228).
The moderation and longanimity of O., which astonished even St. Bernard, led to the submission of Louis VI the Fat, who was in conflict with the bishop of Paris, Stephen of Senlis, and with the archbishop of Sens, Henry Sanglier, and the King permitted the elections to be carried out freely. The same happened in England, where the episcopate was entirely in the hands of the Pope. In every kingdom there was a papal legate who transmitted the will of Rome.
Only in Italy was the pontificate of O. not equally happy. He could not settle as he wished the succession of William of Apulia, nephew of Robert Guiscard, nor prevent Roger II of Sicily from seizing it. The Papacy, reconciled with the Empire, for the time being had no need of a refuge; nevertheless in Rome the rivalry of the Frangipani and the Pierleoni, which had remained latent during the pontificate of O., broke out violently in the last days of the Pope, who was dying in the monastery of St. Gregory on the Caelian, where he died on the night between Feb. 12 and 13, 1130.