Pope Leo IX

Born Bruno von Egisheim-Dagsburg on 21 June 1002, he became Bishop of Rome on 12 February 1049 and immediately set about cleaning house. At the Easter synod that year he began pushing traditional morality and Church discipline, then traveled with Emperor Henry III through Saxony, Cologne, and Aachen. He summoned the higher clergy to Reims and passed sweeping reform decrees, then convened a council at Mainz where Italian, French, and German clergy gathered alongside Byzantine ambassadors — the chief targets were simony and clerical marriage. But his uncompromising push collided with the East, a…