Urban I succeeded Callixtus I as Bishop of Rome in 222 and governed the Roman community through the relatively peaceful reign of the Severan emperor Alexander Severus (222–235) — a brief period of unusual imperial tolerance toward Christianity during which the Roman Christian community grew substantially and acquired (per several 4th-century sources) its first official property holdings.
The Liber Pontificalis attributes to him the institutional decision to provide silver liturgical vessels for the Roman parish churches (the celebrated patenae argenteae of which Urban is the foundational beneficiary in the 4th-century papal-property tradition). The medieval German popular tradition associated him strongly with vineyard cultivation and with the patronage of vintners and coopers — his feast day of May 25 falls at the critical moment of late-spring vine-growth in central European wine country, and the German peasant rhyme 'Wie das Wetter am Urbanstag, so der ganze Sommer mag' reflects this.
He is traditionally counted as a martyr — buried in the catacombs of Praetextatus along the Via Appia.