A Cluniac monk, he was made Bishop of Ostia near Rome in 1078 and then a cardinal by Pope Gregory VII. At the Council of Clermont in 1095 he preached for the sending of the First Crusade to recover Palestine, which had fallen to the Muslims, hoping to unite the Christian West, then torn by strife between rival rulers. He continued Gregory’s work of church reform and his councils condemned simony, lay investiture, and clerical marriage.