Leo IX

Pope from 1048. Born in Alsace, he did military service in Lombardy during the reign of his relation, Emperor Conrad II, to whom he owed his appointment in 1027 as bishop of Toul. Having been influenced by the work of Cluny and Lorraine, he reformed various monasteries, which reforming zeal was apparent to the church at large after his election as pope. He traveled the Continent fostering a new ideal of the papacy. The councils at Bari, Mainz, Pavia, and Reims issued decrees against simony, clerical marriage, and other abuses. He forcefully opposed the Norman devastation of S Italy which antagonized both the German court and the Eastern Church. Defeated by the Normans in 1053, he was ready to embark on a triple alliance of papacy, empire, and Byzantium, but he died that year. Hildebrand, later Gregory VII, began his career in Rome under Leo’s pontificate.