Tag: blconradofurach

Saint of the Day – 30 September – Blessed Conrad of Urach O.Cist (c 1180-1227) Priest, Prior, Abbot, General of the Cistercians, Cardinal and Bishop, Papal legate to France from 1220 to 1223 and to Germany (1224-1226), Peacemaker. Born as Konrad in c 1180 and died in 1227 of natural causes.

Conrad was the second son of Count Egino IV of Urach and his wife Agnes, sister of Berthold V of Zähringen, in the early generations of the line of Dukes of Württemberg.

His early education was entrusted to his great-uncle Rudolf of Zähringen, Bishop of Liège. At an young age he became a Canon of Saint Lambert’s Cathedral in Liège. This began his Ecclesiastical career.

In 1199 however, he entered the Cistercian Monastery of Villers in Brabant, whose Abbot was another uncle. He soon became Prior and in 1209 was elected as the Abbot. While he was in Rome on the business of the Order, Pope Honorius III, on 8 January 1219, created him Cardinal and later charged him as Papal legate with two important missions- one in France (1220-1223), to suppress the Albigenses.

The other in Germany (1224-1226), to promote the Crusade which Emperor Frederick II had vowed to undertake (the eventual Sixth Crusade) . During this period he also established the University of Montpellier (1222).

While in Germany, Conrad was responsible for the declaration as a Martyr of Engelbert II of Berg, Archbishop of Cologne, murdered on 7 November 1225.

After the death of Honorius III on 18 March 1227 he was appointed a member of a triumvirate of cardinals chosen to select the new pope the next day and as a matter of courtesy, was offered the papacy, which he refused out of concern he would be accused of self-aggrandisement.

He returned to Rome in 1227, undertaking negotiations with the Cities of the Lombard League. He died at Bari later that year and was buried, according to his own wishes, in the Abbey at Clairvaux. Cistercian records refer to him as Blessed (liturgical feast on 30 September).