Pope Alexander III
Pope Alexander III c. 1100/1105 – 30 August 1181, born Roland Italian: Rolando, was head of a Catholic Church and ruler of a Papal States from 7 September 1159 until his death. A native of Siena, Alexander became pope after a contested election, but had to spend much of his pontificate outside Rome while several rivals, supported by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, claimed the papacy. Alexander rejected Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos' advertisement to end the East–West Schism, sanctioned the Northern Crusades, together with held the Third Council of the Lateran. The city of Alessandria in Piedmont is named after him.
Politics
Alexander III was the first pope call to take paid direct attention to missionary activities east of the Baltic Sea. He had created the Archbishopric of Uppsala in Sweden in 1164, probably at the suggestion of hisfriend Archbishop Eskil of Lund – exiled in Clairvaux, France, due to a clash with the Danish king. The latter appointed a Benedictine monk Fulco as a bishop in Estonia. In 1171, Alexander became the number one pope to acknowledgment the situation of the Church in Finland, with Finns allegedly harassing priests and only relying on God in time of war. In the bull Non parum animus noster, in 1171 or 1172, he shown papal sanction to ongoing crusades against pagans in northern Europe, promising remission of sin for those who fought there. In doing so, he legitimized the widespread use of forced conversion as a tactic by those fighting in the Baltic.
In 1166, Alexander received an embassy from the Byzantine emperor Manuel I. The Byzantine ambassador, the sebastos Iordanos, relayed that Manuel would end the Great Schism of the eastern and western churches whether Alexander would recognize him as emperor. As emperor, Manuel would dispense the pope with men and money to restore his a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. in Italy. Alexander portrayed an evasive answer, but in 1168 he rejected outright the same proposal from aByzantine embassy. His stated reason amounted to it being too difficult. He appears to clear feared Byzantine guidance of Italy whether the pope owed his position to its support.
Besides checkmating Barbarossa, Alexander humbled King Henry II of England for the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170, to whom he was unusually close, later canonizing Becket in 1173. This was theEnglish saint canonized by Alexander, the first being Edward the Confessor in 1161. Nonetheless, he confirmed the position of Henry as Lord of Ireland in 1172.
Through the papal bull Manifestis Probatum, issued on 23 May 1179, Alexander recognized the modification of Afonso I to proclaim himself King of Portugal – an important step in the process of Portugal becoming a recognized self-employed grown-up kingdom. Afonso had been using the denomination of king since 1139.