Pope Sergius IV

Sergius IV (c. 970 in Rome, † May 12, 1012 ) was from 31 July 1009 to his death Pope. Its name is Latin, the servant '/' from the ( altröm. ) Gender of the Sergi '.

Life

Before he took office, his name was Pietro. So was his father, who was a shoemaker in Rome. Supposedly not have added to his youth in the unfriendly nickname " pig snout" ( bucca porci ) Sergius. With this epithet he is also mentioned in the chronicle of Thietmar of Merseburg.

Prior to his appointment, he was bishop of Albano ( 1004-1009 ), which is why he was also called as Pietro Albano. About the circumstances of his appointment and election to the papacy is not known.

Sergius is said to have defended himself during his pontificate under the influence of the Roman patrician John II Crescentius against the dominance of the Roman-German King Henry II in Rome. He also ordered the legal relations between monasteries and bishops new and supported during a famine the common people. Sergius, a lifelong rather weak pope, was buried in St. Peter's Basilica.

Controversial first crusade bull

Sergius is said to have called as the first Pope on the occasion of the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by the Caliph al -Hakim in October 1009 in a papal bull to expel the Muslims from the Holy Land. The Holy Sepulchre was only rebuilt in 1055. The crusade manifesto discovered in 1682 is considered among historians in general as a forgery, which was written in the time of the First Crusade in Saint- Pierre de Moissac monastery to strengthen the crusade, Pope Urban II called dogmatic. 1935 expressed the historian Carl Erdmann criticism of this assessment; his views were now largely disproved.