Vézelay Abbey unique importance in the development of the Crusades. Thirty years before the Vézelay tympanum was carved, Pope Urban II planned on announcing his call for a crusade at La Madeleine. In 1095, Urban altered his plans and preached for the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont, but Vézelay remained a central figure in the history of the crusades. The tympanum was completed in 1130. Fifteen years after its completion, Bernard of Clairvaux chose Vézelay as the place from which he would call for a Second Crusade. Vézelay was even the staging point for the Third Crusade. It is there
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