Simon de Brion, son of Jean, sieur…
1281 CE
Simon de Brion, son of Jean, sieur de Brion, was born at the château of Meinpincien, Île-de-France, France, in the decade following 1210.
The seigneurial family of Brion, who took their name from Brion near Joigny, flourished in the Brie français.
He spent time at the University of Paris, and is said to have then studied law at Padua and Bologna.
Through papal favor, he had received a canonry at Saint-Quentin in 1238 and spent the period 1248–1259 as a canon of the cathedral chapter in Rouen, finally as archdeacon.
At the same time, he was appointed treasurer of the church of St. Martin in Tours by King Louis IX of France, an office he will hold until he was elected pope in 1281.
In 1259, he had been appointed to the council of the king, who made him keeper of the great seal, chancellor of France, one of the great officers in the household of the king.
The new French Pope, Urban IV, had made Simon de Brion cardinal-priest, with the titulus of the church of St. Cecilia, in December 1261, and entailing a residence in Rome.
Returning to France as a legate for Urban IV and also for his successor Pope Clement IV in 1264–1269, and again in 1274–1279 under Pope Gregory X, he had become deeply involved in the negotiations for papal support for the assumption of the crown of Sicily by Charles of Anjou.
As legate, he has presided over several synods on reform, the most important of which had been held at Bourges in September 1276.
Six months after the death of Pope Nicholas III in 1280, Charles of Anjou intervenes in the papal election at Viterbo by imprisoning two influential Italian cardinals on the grounds that they are interfering with the election.
Without their opposition, Simon de Brion is unanimously elected to the papacy, taking the name Martin IV, on February 22, 1281.
Viterbo is placed under interdict for the imprisonment of the cardinals, and Rome is not at all inclined to accept a hated Frenchman as Pope, so …