Uzerche numerous donations. The city of Uzerche began to take shape around the monastery. All the 100 resident monks were vassals of the abbot and he himself was a vassal of the king. In 1095 Pope Urban II travelled to Clermont-Ferrand to prepare for his first crusade and also made a visit to Uzerche in the same year. A monk named Maurice Bourdin, who was born in the neighbourhood of Uzerche, set up as an anti-pope from 1118 to 1121, under the name of Gregory VIII. The Benedictine Abbey was powerful and prosperous with its golden age from 12th to 13th
Clermont-Ferrand Jerusalem from Muslim domination: Pope Urban II preached the crusade there in 1095, at the Second Council of Clermont. In 1120, following repeated crises between the counts of Auvergne and the bishops of Clermont and in order to counteract the clergy’s power, the counts founded the rival city of Montferrand on a mound next to the fortifications of Clermont, on the model of the new cities of the Midi springing up in the 12th and 13th centuries. Until the early modern period, the two remained separate cities: Clermont, an episcopal city; Montferrand, a comital one. Clermont became a royal city