Pope Sergius IV

Pope from 1009 to 1012

  • Fame60.0
  • Momentum12.5
  • Religious Figures rank#203
Source-basedStable
  • Fame60.0
  • Momentum12.5
  • Religious Figures rank#203
  • Wikipedia2.9K
Lived 970–1012, aged 42Italy
  • Wikipedia
    67 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Era
    970–1012
    Aged 42
Summary
Updated 2026-06-08

A medieval pope whose hold on Rome was so weak that a nobleman actually ran the city, and who may—or may not—have issued the earliest papal call for a crusade against Muslim control of Jerusalem, decades before the First Crusade.

Biography

About

Sergius IV became bishop of Rome on 31 July 1009, but his reign was one of the papacy's quieter humiliations: the patrician John Crescentius held the real temporal power, leaving Sergius a figurehead in his own city. Historians still debate whether he issued a summons to expel Muslims from the Holy Land—if genuine, it would predate the crusading movement by generations, though it clearly went nowhere. He died on 12 May 1012. What stuck wasn't his political impotence or his disputed letter, but the precedent: from his time forward, it became tradition for a newly elected pope to take a new name…

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By the numbers

Score breakdown

The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Stable
60.0
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Momentum12.5
Historical22.1
Source confidence60.0
Completeness70.0
Global rank
Country rank
Category rank
#203
Receipts

Sources

  • Wikipedia
    wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
    High confidence
  • Wikidata
    wikidata · wikidata.org
    High confidence
  • Pantheon 2.0
    database · pantheon.world
    High confidence