Pope Eugenius III was the first Cistercian pope, a disciple of Bernard of Clairvaux, who called the Second Crusade and granted the Knights Templar the right to wear the red cross.
Pope Eugenius III (reigned 1145–1153) was the first Cistercian to become pope — a modest, monastic figure whose reign was shaped by the towering influence of Bernard of Clairvaux and by the crusading fervour of the age.
Born near Pisa and a monk of Clairvaux under Bernard, Bernardo Pignatelli was abbot of a Roman monastery when he was elected pope in 1145 — a surprising choice that dismayed even Bernard, who feared his pupil too gentle for the office.
Eugenius was, by all accounts, a genuinely humble and devout man, more at home in the cloister than the curia. He kept his Cistercian habit and simplicity as pope, and was widely respected for his sincerity and mildness.
His closeness to Bernard of Clairvaux defined him. Bernard wrote his famous treatise On Consideration to advise (and gently admonish) his former pupil, and contemporaries sometimes wondered who truly governed the Church. Yet Eugenius was no mere cipher: he held firm on matters of principle, defended papal authority against the Roman commune that drove him from the city, and steered the Church with quiet resolve.
It was under Eugenius that the crusading energy of Bernard’s preaching reached its height — and that the Templars, Bernard’s special protégés, received the red cross that became their emblem of martyrdom.
In 1145 Eugenius issued the bull Quantum praedecessores, calling the Second Crusade, which Bernard of Clairvaux then preached across Europe — though the expedition ended in failure.
Around 1147 Eugenius granted the Knights Templar the right to wear a red cross on their white mantle, the sign that marked them as men ready for martyrdom and that became the order’s enduring emblem.
Eugenius died in 1153, only weeks before Bernard of Clairvaux, the mentor whose shadow had fallen across his whole pontificate.
Eugenius III is remembered as the Cistercian pope of the Second Crusade and as the pontiff who gave the Templars their red cross.
His reign marks the high tide of Cistercian and crusading influence over the 12th-century papacy.