Decline of the Byzantine Empire of its territory in Asia Minor, and was in immediate danger of complete annihilation. It recovered following the Komnenian restoration, as Alexios I Komnenos restored relations with the Papacy, and requested aid against the Turks from Pope Urban II at the Council of Piacenza in 1095. Later that same year, the pope preached the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont. In the wake of the success of the First Crusade, the three competent Komnenian emperors, especially Manuel I Komnenos (r. 1143–1180), may have had the power to expel the outnumbered Seljuks, several factors combined to ensure that they never
Pope Lucius II Pope of his temporal power. The principal groups involved in this movement were the merchants and artisans, while the urban nobility kept their neutrality. The Senate, which practically took all temporal power from the Pope during the pontificate of Innocent II, had been managed with considerable skill and firmness by Lucius at the beginning of his pontificate, convincing many senators to either leave the Capitoline Hill or to lay down their magisterium. Now, encouraged by Lucius II's defeat, the Senate, led by Giordano Pierleoni, brother of the former Antipope Anacletus II, rebelled against Lucius II, driving out the papal prefects