Gregory VIII

Alberto de Morra had been chancellor of the Roman church for seventeen years, the man who drafted its letters and knew every file. He was elected on 21 October 1187, a day after Urban III's death, because the cardinals wanted somebody who could act immediately, and he did.

Eight days later he issued Audita tremendi. It is the most influential crusading bull ever written, and it is not a call to arms so much as an indictment of the people it addresses. Jerusalem had fallen, it said, because of the sins of Christendom, not only of those living in the East; and the answer was penance first and war second. It ordered a five-year truce among all Christian princes, prescribed fasting on Fridays for those who took the cross, forbade the crusaders costly clothes, dogs and falcons, and confirmed the protection of their property and the remission of their sins. Richard of England took the cross within weeks of hearing it, before his father knew.

Gregory then set about the conditions that would let the expedition happen. He worked to reconcile the papacy with Frederick Barbarossa, lifting the quarrel Urban III had pressed, and moved to make peace between Pisa and Genoa, whose fleets would be needed, travelling to Pisa in December to do it in person.

He died there on 17 December, fifty-seven days after his election. The Third Crusade he had summoned set out under three kings, and he had been dead for three years before any of them reached the Holy Land.