1208/1209 he was elected abbot. His reputation as an
ardent reformer and as a rigorous administrator led to
his elevation as abbot of Clairvaux in 1214, and, as such,
he attended the Fourth Lateran Council.
Despite his having become a monk, Conrad could not
escape the responsibilities placed on him as one of the
most infl uential individuals in the Latin Christendom
of his day. In December 1216, he was sent with Abbot
Arnald of Citeaux to Philip II and Louis of France to
negotiate peace with England. In 1217 Conrad became
abbot of Citeaux and general of the Cistercian Order; he
probably assumed offi ce at the general meeting of the
chapter of the order held at the end of the year.
In January 1219, Pope Honorius III consecrated
Conrad as cardinal bishop of Porto and San Rufi na. At
the time, there were twenty members of the College of
Cardinals: four cardinal bishops, eight cardinal priests,
and eight cardinal deacons. Of these, sixteen were from
Italian provinces, two from Iberia, one from England,
and one from Languedoc. Conrad thus joined the col-
lege as its only German member and remained so thus
until 1225. During Lent 1220, he was appointed as the
successor of Cardinal Bertrand as legate to the Albig-
ensian lands, and given a mandate to support Amalrich
de Montfort against Count Raymond of Toulouse. His
fame spread, to the extent that soon thereafter, he was
nominated to the archbishopric of Besançon. Honorius
III would not allow this, however, claiming that Conrad’s
talents were needed throughout the Church.
In 1224 Conrad was given the legation as crusade
preacher in Germany, but he also participated in various
other activities, such as the condemnation of the accused
renegade prior Henry Minneke at Hildesheim in October
1224, the national synod held at Mainz in November
and December 1225, and the burial of Archbishop En-
gelbert of Cologne in December 1225. By May 1226
he was back in Rome, and he was present on March 18,
1227, when Honorius III died. According to tradition,
Conrad was the fi rst to be offered the tiara, but, again,
he rejected an episcopal offi ce. Only then was Gregory
IX chosen. Even had Conrad accepted, however, his
pontifi cate might well have been a brief one: he died
on September 29, 1227, and was buried at Clairvaux,
at the side of the smaller altar.
See also Henry VI
Further Reading
Neiningen, Fulk. Konrad von Urach († 1227 ): Zähringer, Zister-
zienser, Kardinallegat. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1994.
Pixton, Paul B. “Cardinal Bishop Conrad of Porto and S. Rufi na
and the Implementation of Innocent Ill’s Conciliar Decrees in
Germany, 1224–1226.” In Proceedings of the Tenth Interna-
tional Congress of Medieval Canon Law [.. .] 1996.
Schreckenstein, Karl Heinrich Freiherr Roth von. “Konrad von
Urach, Bischof von Porto und S. Rufi na, als Cardinallegat
in Deutschland 1224–1226.” Forschungen zur deutschen
Geschichte, 7 (1867):319–393.
Winter, F. “Ergänzungen der Regesten zur Geschichte des
Cardinallegaten Conrad von Urach, Bischof von Porto
und St. Rufi na.” Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte 11
(1871):631–632.
Paul B. PixtonCONRAD VON SOEST (ca. 1360–ca. 1422)
One of the most signifi cant German painters of the late
Middle Ages, Conrad von Soest played a pivotal role
in the diffusion of the International Courtly Style in
northern Europe. His name is known through signatures
on two altarpieces. A marriage contract, dated February
11, 1394, can plausibly be connected with the painter.
It was signed by six of the most prominent patricians
of Dortmund and attests to the painter’s considerable
wealth and high social standing. He was a member of
the confraternities of the Marienkirche (1396—?) and
of the Nikolaikirche (1412–1422).
Iconographic and stylistic evidence suggests that, fol-
lowing his apprenticeship in Dortmund, Conrad joined
the workshop of the Parement Master in Paris in the
1380s. There he seems to have had access also to designs
by Jacquemart de Hesdin. The creative and vigorous
style of Conrad’s underdrawing, consistent in the two
signed altarpieces, refutes any notion of an imitative art-
ist dependent on Burgundian patterns. Instead, Conrad
achieved a synthesis of the style and technique learned
in the royal workshops in Paris with this Westphalian
inheritance, without forsaking originality.
His earliest surviving work, the signed Niederwildun-
gen Altarpiece from 1403 (Stadtkirche, Bad Wildungen),
was painted under the patronage of the Order of St. John.
The Closed altarpiece depicts four saints venerated in
the church. When open, twelve painted scenes, arranged
in two rows around a central full-height Crucifi xion,
describe the life of Christ from the Annunciation to
the Last Judgment. In the multifi gured Crucifi xion, the
courtly elegance of some attendants contrasts with the
realism of bucolic fi gures. The noted art historian Erwin
Panofsky (1953, p. 71) spoke of precocious natural-
ism when he extolled the sharp characterization and
powerful modeling of the thieves, and he compared the
linear description of the noble fi gures to work by the
universally esteemed Limbourg brothers. Conrad was
a gifted and observant storyteller. The tender human-
ity of his elegant protagonists combined with selective
naturalistic description, together with the outstanding
craftsmanship, decorative surface pattern created by
sinuous line, and a sophisticated iconography, place
the altarpiece in the forefront of artistic development
around 1400.
By around 1420, when Conrad painted his other
signed work, the altarpiece for the church of the Vir-CONRAD OF URACH