Urban III

Uberto Crivelli was elected the day Lucius III was buried, and the choice was a declaration of war. He was Milanese, and Frederick Barbarossa had destroyed Milan in 1162, driving its population into the countryside; members of his own family were said to have died in the emperor's hands. He kept the archbishopric of Milan after his election, which no pope had done, and it was in Milan that Barbarossa had just had his son Henry married to Constance of Sicily, a match that threatened to close the papal states between imperial territory north and south.

Urban refused to crown Henry VI, refused to yield on the Matildine inheritance, and consecrated a candidate to the see of Trier whom the emperor had rejected. Frederick replied by sending Henry to occupy the papal states and cut the roads. The German bishops, caught between them, begged Urban not to force the issue.

He was on the point of excommunicating Frederick in the autumn of 1187 when a Genoese ship brought word of what had happened at the Horns of Hattin in July: the army of the kingdom of Jerusalem destroyed, the True Cross taken, and Saladin moving on the holy city.