Lucius II

Gerardo Caccianemici was a Bolognese of good family, a long-serving legate to Germany and papal librarian, and a friend of Bernard of Clairvaux, who thought well of him and worried about him. He was elected in March 1144 into a situation no amount of ability could fix.

Rome had thrown out its papal government. The commune, proclaimed the year before, had restored the Senate on the Capitoline hill, appointed a patrician to head it, and demanded that the pope surrender all temporal authority in the city and live on tithes. This was not a baronial faction fight of the old kind but a civic republic, drawing on a genuine memory of the ancient city and on the example of the northern Italian communes.

Lucius tried diplomacy first, appealing to Conrad III of Germany, who was too occupied to come. Then, in early 1145, he assembled what forces he could from the Frangipani and their allies and attacked the Capitol directly.

The cardinals met the same night, and chose a Cistercian abbot who had never been a cardinal at all.