Pope Urban VI
1318 CE–1389 CE · Naples
Born Bartolomeo Prignano in Naples, Urban VI was the first pope of the Western Schism. A respected administrator and archbishop of Bari, he was elected in 1378 amid a Roman crowd demanding an Italian pope. Once enthroned he turned harsh, suspicious, and violent toward the cardinals, who soon declared his election invalid as made under duress and chose Clement VII, who returned to Avignon—splitting Western Christendom into rival obediences. Urban's reign was marked by bitter conflict, including the reported torture and execution of cardinals who plotted against him. His difficult temperament deepened a schism that would divide the Church for nearly forty years.
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NaplesנאפוליItaly
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Naples in this era
Under its own autonomous dukes and later Norman kings, Naples remained a vibrant Latin ecclesiastical hub where its archbishop wielded regional influence, and Thomas Aquinas studied at the city's university founded by Frederick II in 1224.
About Naples
Naples, capital of the Campania region in southern Italy, began as a Greek settlement, refounded as Neapolis in the sixth century BCE. Tradition places Virgil's tomb in the city; papyri of the Epicurean Philodemus, recovered from the Villa of the Papyri at nearby Herculaneum, are kept in its National Library. Frederick II founded its university in 1224, where Thomas Aquinas studied and later taught. From the late thirteenth century until 1816 it was capital of the Kingdom of Naples and an important Catholic see. Its Jewish community dates back to Roman times; after the 1492 expulsion from Spain, Isaac Abarbanel served its king until the French took the city in 1495, and Jews had left Naples by 1541.
In Naples at the same time
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The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pope Urban VI’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
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