The news of the fall of Jerusalem had reached Europe even before the arrival there of Archbishop Josius of Tyre, whom the crusaders had sent with urgent appeals for aid.

Most probably, Saladin had not anticipated the European reaction to his capture of Jerusalem, an event that deeply shocks the West and to which it responds with a new call for a crusade to recapture Jerusalem.

Pope Gregory VIII dies in Pisa on December 17, 1187, of a fever after holding the papacy for only fifty-seven days.

He is buried in the Duomo in Pisa.