Leo IX

Bruno of Eguisheim, cousin of the Salian emperors, was entrusted at five to the bishop of Toul and governed that diocese for more than twenty years before being named pope at Worms in December 1048. He set a condition: that Rome should elect him canonically. Then he entered it barefoot, in pilgrim's dress, having recruited on the way a young monk named Hildebrand — the future Gregory VII. His pontificate came down to a method: not to stay in Rome. He held a dozen councils across Europe, at Pavia, Reims, Mainz, Salerno, Vercelli, condemning simony and clerical marriage everywhere, and made a government out of the college of cardinals. In 1053 he raised an army against the Normans of southern Italy and commanded it himself: he was crushed at Civitate and held nine months at Benevento, where he learned Greek. He came back exhausted and died on 19 April 1054. It was three months later, on 16 July, that his legates laid on the altar of Hagia Sophia the bull excommunicating the patriarch of Constantinople — their mandate had expired with him, and the act was legally void. The schism attributed to him was made without him.