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AVIGNON, PAPACY OF
former archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand de Got—
elected on 5 June 1305. He decided not to return immediately to Rome out of fear of conflict with violent factions that had been warring since BONIFACE VIII’s
pontificate (1294–1303). Moreover, he wished to stay
close to France, yet outside territory controlled by the
French, in order to negotiate a reconciliation between the
kings of France and England, which he deemed essential
for resuming the crusades. Clement V was crowned in
Lyon and convened a COUNCIL at Vienne in order to deal
with a controversy surrounding the Knights Templars.
He found it convenient to settle temporarily in an imperial city, near France and not far from the Venaissin
county, which the Holy See had purchased in 1229.
Clement V went to Avignon on 9 March 1309 and set up
temporary residence at its Dominican convent and in the
Comtat castles. The agitation provoked in Italy by Emperor Henry VII’s expedition there, as well as the pope’s
illness, were sufficient to dissuade Clement from leaving
the shores of the Rhone for Italy.
Bianchi in 1926. In the same year, twenty-five small trucks
were acquired from Fiat to replace the mules used at the
Vatican, and four limousines were rented for ceremonies.
Traffic issues concerning automobiles, planes, and boats in
Vatican City are mentioned in article VI of the Lateran Accords. The Holy See followed up these agreements by setting up a service to register all vehicles. The automobile
garage was divided into two categories: cars reserved for
the pope and high-ranking dignitaries were to bear license
plates with red letters and numbers on a white background;
service vehicles or residents’ cars were to bear license
plates with black letters and numbers on a white background. The registration of cars was simple: the three letters
SCV (Stato della Città del Vaticano), followed by a registration number. All the pope’s vehicles bear the first numbers
in red. It was long an enviable distinction to have Vatican
City license plates—something like an access card to the
ANNONA. Today that is no longer the case, given Holy See
functionaries’ preference for anonymity and the fiscal complications connected with temporary export license plates.
The pope, who had been a “prisoner of the Vatican”
since 1870, went out again into the city of Rome on 22
December 1929, to attend the jubilee celebration of his
priesthood at the St. John Lateran Church. The automobile
he used was a Graham-Page, offered a few months earlier
as a gift from the Graham brothers, pious Catholics from
the United States. After this, cars became the usual means
of transportation for the sovereign pontiff. Images of
popes in cars were not, however, very frequent until PAUL
VI and the increase in papal TRAVELS. Paul VI always borrowed cars lent to him abroad by his official hosts in different countries. In Bogota in 1968, he traveled through
the crowd aboard an open Land Rover, the modern version
of the SEDIA GESTATORIA. In the holy year of 1975, the
pope regularly began to move around St. Peter’s Square in
a motorized vehicle as when JOHN PAUL II held open-air
AUDIENCES. On 13 May 1981, John Paul II was injured in
an ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT while riding in a Fiat convertible with the top open. When he came back out in public
on 7 October of that year, he rode in the same car.
Nonetheless, security measures began to be imposed,
and the pope accepted a gift from Mexican Catholics especially designed for his protection. The so-called popemobile is a bullet-proof vehicle in which two people can
ride standing up. This famous car has since been as
closely connected to the pope as is the Rolls-Royce belonging to the queen of England.
Philippe Levillain
The City and the Lordship. An ancient Roman city and
since the 4th century, the seat of a bishopric, Avignon is
notable for its strategic geographic position high on a
rocky plateau dominating the Rhone Valley trade route.
A site of political unrest since the 5th century, it was
coveted by the Burgunds, the Ostrogoths, and the
Franks. The city then became part of the county of Forcalquier. In 1129, it was designated as a commune (“municipality”), with the count’s agreement. The importance
of Avignon for regional commerce was such that a
bridge was built there to span the Rhone River, inaugurated in 1180 by the bishop, St. Bénézet.
During the crusade against the Albigensians, the bourgeois residents of Avignon backed the count of Toulouse.
After a siege of three months, the city was taken on 12
September 1226 and destroyed. Charles d’Anjou, who
then became the lord of this county through his marriage
to Béatrice de Provence, brought Avignon under his control by abolishing the commune (1251). (It should be
noted that Avignon is not part of the nearby county of
Venaissin, whose capital is Carpentras.) For generations
this region had been divided between the count of
Provence, at this time Charles d’Anjou, and the count of
Toulouse, then Alphonse de Poitiers, later succeeded the
king of France, his heir. Avignon was reunified when
king Philip the Fair of France ceded his share in 1290 to
his cousin, Charles II of Anjou. It was his great-granddaughter, Queen Joanna I of Naples, who finally sold
Avignon to CLEMENT VI for 80,000 florins on 19 June
1348.
Seat of the papacy from 1309 on and seat of one of the
popes during the GREAT SCHISM OF THE WEST, Avignon
remained Holy See property, with the inclusion of the
Bibliography
Moretti, V. Le auto dei papi, Rome, 1981.
AVIGNON, PAPACY OF. The establishment of the papacy in Avignon was the choice of Pope CLEMENT V—the
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AVIGNON, PAPACY OF
Venaissin county and its capital, Carpentras, after 1274.
The inhabitants of Avignon opposed the plan of ceding it
to Louis XI, a proposal put forward by Pope EUGENE IV’
in order to gain favor with the king of France. The papal
presence was ensured by a cardinal LEGATE and then, after
the 16th century, by an archbishop bearing the title of
vice-legate.
The university created by Boniface VIII in 1303 was
splendid evidence in the 14th century of advances in law
and medicine. During the period of the Avignon papacy,
it also served as a curial school and benefited from the
presence of celebrated theologians attached to the papal
court.
Avignon has several abbeys. Most of these were
founded before the arrival of the popes: Saint Agricol,
founded in 680 by Bishop Agricol with the Benedictines
from Lérins; Saint-Laurent (Benedictines), founded in
951 by Count Amelio; Notre-Dame-des-Doms, Regular
Canons of Saint Augustine, 1068; Saint-Catherine,
founded in 1254 for the Cistercians by Bishop Zoen Tencarari and joined to Saint-Véran in 1436; Saint-Claire,
Claritians or “Poor Clares,” founded in 1250; and Saint
Véran, Benedictines, founded in 1140 by Count Guy de
Forcalquier and joined to Saint-Catherine in 1436. The
papal residence in Avignon prompted the foundations of
new abbeys, such as Notre-Dame, transferred from Tours
to Avignon by Cardinal Anglic Grimoard (Benedictines,
1368; suppressed in 1428) and Saint-Pierre-de-Luxembourg (Celestines, 1390). The College of Saint-Martial,
created in 1362–79 for the Cluny monks studying in Avignon, was established in Queen Joanna’s former palace.
the antipope NICHOLAS V (1328–30). He was also shaken
by his blunder in the affair of the Beatific Vision and was
prey to the unrest of the Spiritual faction of the Franciscan order. Nonetheless, John XXII took good advantage
of his borderline position with the empire, which guaranteed his safety and independence.
The Avignon papacy was temporary in John XXII’s
view, but he was content to renovate the episcopal palace.
Well-placed on the economic and political arteries of
western Christianity, until the arrival of the Great Companies in the 1360s Avignon remained a small, tranquil
town. Pope BENEDICT XII (1334–42), a former Cistercian
monk born Jacques Fournier, undertook several theological and moral reforms. He taught theology, and, as bishop
of Pamiers, bishop of Mirepoix, and finally cardinal of
the Curia under John XXII, he enthusiastically directed
the INQUISITION against burgeoning heresies. As pope, he
repressed the abuses of pontifical administration, forced
bishops to stay in residence, and reduced the practice of
EXPECTATIVES. He was a model of personal rectitude and
refused to practice any type of nepotism.
Benedict XII led an important reform of religious orders. He reestablished the original requirements of austerity for the Cistercians, unified the Order of St. Benedict, and revived strict discipline in intellectual activities,
which had fallen by the wayside since the emergence of
the mendicant orders and the establishment of universities. Despite the resistance and discontent freely expressed after his death, he managed to bring the Franciscans to obedience and curbed the anarchical evangelism
of the smaller brotherhoods.
This wave of reforms, led with a constant refusal of
any concessions to certain common practices of the time,
did not win over the Curia and the clergy, and public
opinion even less. The pope was accused of authoritarianism, contempt, egotism, and avarice. Deeply involved
with the internal workings of the Church, he proved to be
little suited for ensuring a leadership role in the political
life of Christianity. He did not understand events in Italy
and made multiple failed and awkward gestures at reconciliation. Likewise, he failed to end quarrels that had opposed the papacy to Emperor Louis of Bavaria since the
time of John XXII. In order to ensure his authority over
the Church through efficient government, Benedict XII
organized a comfortable pontifical seat by building his
palace as an austere fortress. This was conceived as a useful setting for rapidly developing administrative needs
and for the stability sought for the Curia outside Italy.
The court of Avignon had five hundred curialists, half
of whom were administrators and judges. Domestic services increased with the needs of so many people, both
in the papal palace and in the cardinals’ quarters. The
size of the apostolic chamber grew with the development
of a fiscal system extending to all church revenues. The
CHANCERY increased the number of its offices to deal
The Avignon Popes. When Clement V died (6 April
1314), a CONCLAVE was held at Carpentras, where the pope
had spent the winter and where the Curia was still in residence. It then transferred to Avignon and finally to Lyon.
There the cardinals, after two years of debating candidates
in vain and many upheavals, interruptions, and temporal
pressures, finally decided on an old cardinal, Jacques
Duèse, who was considered a “transition pope” (7 August
1316). Duèse, who took the name JOHN XXII (1316–34),
decided to settle in Avignon, where he had been a bishop
(March 1310–February 1313) and where the bishop at the
time was his nephew, Jacques de Via. He set up his home
within the episcopal palace, kept the bishopric and the
revenues, and organized the Curia around his residence.
The major structures for handling administrative matters
and spiritual and temporal justice at Avignon were definitively set forth during his pontificate.
The pope enjoyed precious independence in Avignon
while he and Emperor Louis of Bavaria were in the throes
of the last episode in the struggle between the Church and
the empire. John XXII was declared deposed by an emperor he excommunicated and faced the inauguration of
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AVIGNON, PAPACY OF
Clement VI courageously and intelligently confronted
the Black Plague of 1348 and its consequences. A merchant friend of Petrarch’s wrote that the epidemic had
killed half the population of Avignon. Clement VI especially protected the Jews, who were threatened by the
populace who believed that they were guilty of spreading the epidemic. The pope also reacted firmly to the expansion of the Flagellant movement, fanatic groups who
did penance by whipping themselves and begging for divine pardon. These groups had come from the Rhine Valley to Avignon in 1349, but they mostly dispersed after
the pope’s condemnation; those who remained ended up
in prison or were executed.
INNOCENT VI (Etienne Aubert, 1352–62) was a law
professor, loyal to the king of France. He had been a
judge in the seneschal’s court in Toulouse. A sick and indecisive man, he never even thought of returning to
Rome, but he intended to reestablish order in papal Italy
through the work of his legate, the remarkable Cardinal
Albornoz. Simultaneously, he redoubled efforts to bring
peace between France and England. He suffered the consequences of the dispersion of mercenary companies
when they were left without work after the treaty of
Brétigny, especially the company of the “Archpriest” Arnaud de Cervole, who ravaged the south of France and
threatened Avignon. Convinced of the need to reform the
Church, Innocent VI restricted pontifical luxury and
brought the Franciscans to obedience, curbing the
prophetic and evangelical tendencies of certain members
of the order. He also attempted to reform the order of the
Hospitalers, who had been unwilling to submit to the
Holy See.
URBAN V (Guillaume Grimoard, 1362–70) initiated a
different politics. This pious and erudite Benedictine,
who had been abbot at St. Victor’s in Marseilles and
NUNCIA in Naples, became the protector of the universities and created new faculties and colleges. Nonetheless,
his politics was marked by awkwardness. He impeded
the efforts of his legate Gil Albornoz against Bernabo
Visconti, and he treated the problem of the mercenary
companies invading the south of France and the Rhone
Valley with naïveté. Urban V dreamed of reestablishing
the Holy See in Rome yet underestimated the difficulties
of such a return when he affirmed the principle that St.
Peter’s seat is in Rome. He left Avignon on 30 April
1367 with only a part of the Curia, but he returned disappointed and exhausted on 27 September 1370. He died in
Avignon on 19 December of that year.
Gregory XI was the nephew of Clement VI and had
been created cardinal at the age of nineteen. He was an
excellent jurist and a member of the Church’s government. One of his major preoccupations was the fate of
the religious orders, whose reforms he organized and
supported. However, lacking clear vision regarding the
deep causes for the success of heretical preaching, he
with the policy of automatically reserving collations.
This led clerics, bishoprics, and abbeys throughout Christianity to address their requests directly to the pope to obtain even the most modest benefices. In addition, it was
necessary to manage the surplice fees and to record the
collations and deferred collations called expectatives. All
this engendered countless disputes which were brought to
the attention of the CONSISTORY and AUDIENCES, not to
mention the PENITENTIARY.
CLEMENT VI (Pierre Roger, 1342–52) was a Benedictine from Limousin. A theologian known for his sacred
learning and talent as a preacher as well as for his background in classical culture, he was also a statesman
whose behavior often recalled that of a temporal prince.
Richly funded in BENEFICES (as the abbot of Fécamp,
bishop of Arras, and then archbishop of Sens and finally
Rouen), he served the interests of King Philip VI. He
acted as the spokesman for the clergy at the assembly of
Vincennes in 1329 and sat on the royal council. The king
used him as an ambassador on numerous occasions, notably in England and in Avignon. During his pontificate,
there was collusion between the papacy and the French
king’s government, so obvious that it provoked severe
criticism and hostile reactions up to and including the
Great Schism, the ultimate result of this conflict. Clement
VI’s nepotism offended his contemporaries, who saw the
pope make four of his nephews cardinals; one of them became Pope GREGORY XI, and a fifth nephew became an
archbishop and another an officer in the Roman court.
After buying the lordship of Avignon from Queen Joanna
I of Naples in order to be “at home” when in residence,
Clement VI considered Avignon as the proper residence
for the pope. In order firmly to establish the papacy on the
banks of the Rhone, the pope doubled the papal palace in
size and grandeur, with a definitive intention to create and
maintain a luxurious bastion for the papacy. He held a
brilliant court there which attracted literary and artistic
figures as well as businessmen. Avignon then drew many
immigrants, mainly from the south of France and from
the Rhone Valley area. As the city grew and construction
projects proliferated, religious foundations began to take
on more importance and the university flourished. Business intensified, both in order to fulfill the new, larger
city’s needs—it had 30,000 inhabitants in 1376—and to
benefit from the influx of capital resulting from the fiscal
exploitation of Christiandom.
Clement VI was the last pope to act as an arbiter in European affairs, but this ended in more disappointments
than prestige. In particular, he failed in his attempts to impose mediation and forge a peace between France and
England. He also failed to be recognized as the arbiter in
the conflict between Aragon and Mallorca. After the
death of King Robert I of Anjou, he lost himself in the
imbroglio of Italian quarrels and reacted with difficulty to
the Roman revolt in Cola di Rienzo. Nevertheless,
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attempted more or less in vain to give the Inquisition an
efficacy it had lost owing to a lack of support from the
temporal powers.
The pope was especially concerned with the CRUSADES
necessitated by the advance of the Turks. He managed to
end several conflicts that had been immobilizing Europe
in its confrontation with the Turkish invaders. His diplomatic successes won him true prestige, especially when
he resolved the conflict between Emperor Charles IV and
King Louis of Hungary and that between Bavaria and
Savoy. Moreover, he had experience in Italian affairs,
something his predecessor Urban V lacked. He therefore
decided to reestablish the papal presence in Rome, whatever the cost. He did so despite a dramatic conflict with
Florence, for whom the pope’s return to the peninsula
countered its claims to control central Italy. Gregory XI
left Avignon on 13 September 1376 and entered Rome on
17 January 1377, but he died the following year (27
March 1378) without having achieved his political goals.
At this point, the Great Schism exploded the West.
CLEMENT VII (Robert de Genève, 1378–94), the antipope
elected by the conclave at Fondi, naturally found in Avignon a Holy See with most of Gregory XI’s adherents
still in residence. His successor, BENEDICT XIII
(1394–1417) abandoned Avignon only in March 1403
when threatened by an armed force. After his departure
into exile in Peñiscola, Avignon welcomed the antipope
JOHN XXIII, elected successor to ALEXANDER V
(1409–10). By ending the schism with the election of a
single pope (November 1417), the Council of Constance
finally ended the Avignon papacy, which had lasted more
than a century.
both secular governments and the clerics of all of western Christianity that made Avignon a true capital.
The administrative institutions developed in Avignon,
included the Consistory, where cardinals and certain high
prelates close to the pope met; it acts as both a political and
ecclesiastical advisory committee and the supreme arm of
papal jurisdiction. The Curia also includes the Chancery,
responsible for the diplomatic form of decisions and judgments made by the pope in the form of BULLS; the APOSTOLIC CAMERA, which organizes and controls the financial
management of the papal state and its accounting; and the
Penitentiary. It also has a number of specialized tribunals
responsible for judging cases that are not brought before
the pope himself but judged in the Consistory. For example, forbidden literature goes through an audience, a preliminary hearing, before the examination of the matter in
depth; in particular, the validity of the evidence produced
and the ecclesiastical quality of the plaintiffs are reviewed.
Created in Rome in the 13th century, the institution of the
audience was reorganized in Avignon under John XXII
(with the constitution Qui exacti temporis of 1331). The
auditor of forbidden literature is assisted by readers responsible for the public reading of the documents in question. He must also attend to the publication through public
reading of all bulls that can be opposed.
Auditors of cases from the apostolic palace know the
substance of all matters referred to them by the pope, but
the audience’s particular area of competence is the
countless cases involving benefices. Organized in Rome
as early as the 1270s, the audience did not receive a permanent delegation from the pope until the first years of
the 14th century. It received its definitive status through
the constitution Ratio juris (1331). From 1330 on, it is
often called the ROTA tribunal, a reference to the circular
bench on which the judges, called auditors, are seated.
These auditors have increased in number over time
(eight in the 14th century, twelve at the end of the 15th)
and are selected from among the best jurists of the Curia.
No appeal is possible after their judgment.
The Penitentiary, already active in Rome in the 13th
century, was also reorganized by John XXII (constitution In agro dominico, 1338). It specializes in the judgment of spiritual matters and conflicts relating to the
sacraments. It instructs and judges requests for absolution following canonical punishments. The abuse of excommunication practiced at the end of the 14th century
by the Apostolic Camera—which sometimes excommunicated bishops and abbots for payments of common services made a day late—led to the dismantling of the
canonical competencies of the Penitentiary. The Apostolic Camera then took on the responsibility of judgments against prelates who finally paid their debts. The
cardinals’ tribunals, presided over by an auditor, are
often responsible for giving summary instruction on
matters later deferred to the pope.
The Legacy of the Avignon Period. Avignon then became a mere possession of the Holy See. A local administration governed by vice-legates was established, and this
delegation continued as a royal but nonpolitical court
until the French Revolution. Considerably strengthened
during the Avignon period to handle the responsibilities
of the pope’s expanded role, the papal administration reflected increased centralization in the Church that began
at the time of the Gregorian REFORM. The pope was increasingly involved in the affairs of local churches as a
result of the dormancy of the conciliary institution after
the Councils of Lyon (1274) and Vienne (1312) and the
increasingly extensive reservation of even minor
benefices to the pontifical collation. In addition, there was
the sheer weightiness of the fiscal system established
since the 13th century for churches and clerics. John
XXII and his successors were thus led to organize and
lodge smaller jurisdictions and administrations with an
itinerant Curia of few members, who followed the pope’s
moves among his residences in the area of Rome. Thus, it
was the fact that the administration handled matters with
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AVIGNON, PAPACY OF
Crises in the Church. The history of the Avignon papacy
was marked by several political and ecclesiastical crises.
The first was a result of the conflict between Boniface
VIII and Philip the Fair. The king threatened to revive litigation against the memory of Boniface, and Nogaret
pursued his absolution for his participation in a skirmish
at Anagni, as well as in a new matter, the affair of the
Templars. Clement V had vacillated for a long time before reforming the military orders and had dismissed denunciations of the Templars as bothersome. King Philip
arrested the French Templars on 13 October 1307; among
those seized were high dignitaries of the order. Later,
royal justice, the cardinals’ commission, and the dioceses
conducted investigations whose conclusions indicted the
Templars, but they were never able to make any charge
stand against the order.
The Council of Vienne, opened on 1 October 1311,
hesitated to support an order crippled by unpopularity
and incapable of refuting accusations against it. Nonetheless, it decided not to condemn it for alleged acts committed by only some of its members. Clement V hesitated
once again and refused to allow dignitaries to appear who
would certainly have convinced the council, but he refused to make a formal condemnation. King Philip came
to Vienne to urge a decision whereby the pope chose to
suppress the order—not as guilty, but because it would
prompt a scandal—without consulting the council (bull
Vox in excelso, 3 April 1312). The Templars’ possessions
and wealth were allocated to the Order of Hospitalers, in
order to facilitate the organization of a future crusade.
Not forgetting that it had been convened to reform the
Church, the Council of Vienne made various specific decisions concerning the Beghards and Beguines and the
Inquisition, as well as a response to the “evangelical” tendencies of the Spiritual Franciscans. For the most part,
the reform was put off, and the Church went through
many crises before the Councils of Constance and Basel
in the 15th century resolved these issues.
By 1312, relations between the papacy and France had
calmed down. This was favored by the inclusion of many
French clerics in the Curia at all levels, from the Sacred
College to the institutions of financial administration. Although the association between the popes at Avignon and
the king of France was not as close as was claimed by the
clergy in England or Italy at the time, the Holy See was
ever ready to hear the preoccupations and wishes of the
French clergy. This was favored by the distribution of
benefices the papacy reserved in collation.
With England, difficulties arose during the time of John
XXII over the same practice, the collation of benefices.
The king had no intention of sacrificing his royal rights.
The French–English war exacerbated the conflict, since
the English clergy saw that the revenues the popes reaped
from England served to finance politics favorable to the
king of France. By the reign of Clement VI, the conflict
was openly declared. Parliament voted a statute on provisors (1351) that took away practically all prerogatives
from the pope in matters of benefices, and then a statute
of praemunire (1353) that removed all jurisdiction from
him. In 1375, Gregory XI reached a limited agreement,
which nevertheless left a hostile climate encouraging
England to adhere to Rome during the Great Schism.
With the Holy Roman Empire, there were successive
crises. Henry VII’s 1312 expedition to Rome to be
crowned emperor in the absence of the pope reinforced
the GHIBELLINE party in Italy, which was hostile to papal
power and to the influence of an ally of the papacy, the
ANGEVIN king of Naples. On the occasion of the coronation, there were battles in Rome; the Orsini blocked the
road to St. Peter’s to prevent the emperor from passing
through, although he was finally crowned at the Lateran.
The death of Henry VII allowed Clement V to proclaim
the superiority of the pope over the emperor (decretal
Pastoralis cura). Later, John XXII entered into conflict
with Emperor Louis of Bavaria, who nurtured the hostility of the Angevins in Italy. Louis had an antipope
elected in 1328, the Franciscan Pietro Rainalducci da
Corvaro (Nicholas V), whose party was composed
mainly of brothers of the mendicant orders and who died
in prison in Avignon (1333). From 1327 to 1346, war
ravaged Italy. Supported by France and Bohemia, the
pope pushed Louis of Bavaria to abdicate (1333), an abdication he then recanted. The pope also placed Germany under interdict just at the time a new imperial dynasty was rising in Luxembourg.
This conflict with Louis of Bavaria gave rise led to a
whole body of political and juridical literature. The Defensor pacis is a long treaty justifying imperial independence and combating the political Augustinianism on
which papal pretensions to universal sovereignty were
founded. The authors were two Parisian academics, Jean
de Jandun from Champagne and Marsilio of Padua, Italy.
Both theologians were influenced by the writings of
French legislators, by treatises written by Italian
civilists, by Ghibelline literature, and by the Averroist
current in philosophy. Opposing the views developed by
Boniface VIII in the bull Unam sanctam and even the
theses of moderate partisans of pontifical power such as
Giles of Rome and James of Viterbo, the authors of the
Defensor pacis defined the state as a natural reality. As
such, it should be ruled by the consent of the people,
who delegate powers to the prince without the intervention of the Church. They even denied the origin of divine
power in the Church and ecclesiastical hierarchy. Pontifical power was seen as the result of a long series of
usurpations at the expense of the community of the faithful. The supreme authority of the Church could only belong to the assembly of clergy and the faithful—that is, a
council situated outside all hierarchy. As for secular affairs, the pope should not be involved. Louis of Bavaria
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had Marsilio of Padua come to act as his doctor and advisor, and Nicholas V was for a time archbishop of Milan.
In 1346, Louis of Bavaria was dethroned by the election as emperor of Charles IV of Luxembourg, son of the
king of Bohemia, John of Luxembourg. This led to an imperial decree, the “Golden Bull” (13 January 1356),
which definitively ended the imperial crown’s manipulation by papal intrigues through the establishment of organized elections of emperors. Innocent VI accepted this
fait accompli. For the papacy, this had the double advantage of making the split between the two parts of the empire (German and Italian) both official and permanent,
and of precluding for a time the hereditary succession to
the imperial crown. The conflict nonetheless continued in
Italy, especially in Tuscany, Emilia, and Romagna. It represented one of the main preoccupations and one of the
most burdensome financial responsibilities of the Avignon papacy.
Clement V responded successfully to a move by Venice
to take over Ferrara (1308–13). John XXII managed to
resist the league of Ghibelline cities in Lombardy
(1316–34). The battles were directly fought by the papal
legates Bertrand du Pouget and Giovanni Orsini. Benedict XII contended with an insurrection in Bologna, then
the chaos perpetuated by the lords of Romagna and in the
Marches with their old autonomist tradition. Clement VI
experienced the loss of Bologna to the Visconti. Peace in
Tuscany was reestablished with the treaty of Sarzana
(1353), and the legate Gil Albornoz was then able to attempt pacifying relations between the papal state and
Bernabo Visconti. Urban V finally chose to yield to Visconti in order to be free to organize a crusade (1364), but
this did not create a lasting peace. Urban V’s vain attempt
at returning to Rome and his less than glorious return to
Avignon only served to aggravate the anarchy in Italy and
to consolidate the Avignon papacy. The uprisings in Florence and Bologna were evidence of the all-out war
against the papacy that had existed since 1375. The “War
of Eight Saints” seriously disturbed economic life for
western Christianity when a papal ban was inflicted on
the commercial and banking companies headquartered in
Florence. Gregory XI assumed the battle fought by Urban
V and died in Rome (1378). An election in Rome resulted
from the pressure of the Roman people, tired of French
popes and the exile of the seat of St. Peter.
More or less in response to this popular pressure, the cardinals meeting in Rome took advantage of the occasion to
end French control of the Holy See. They elected an Italian
archbishop, Bartolomeo Prignano (Urban VI). With the
support of the French party, a new conclave was held in
Fondi, where the son of the count of Geneva was elected. A
relative of the king of France, Cardinal Robert of Geneva
(Clement VIII) was not well loved in Italy, where he had
brutally managed the interests of the Holy See as its legate
in the conflict with Florence and in Roman affairs. After a
deliberately anti-French election, the choice of Robert of
Geneva was clearly an anti-Italian provocation. Positions
hardened and the Great Schism of the West took on a nationalist dimension from which the Church suffered until
the Council of Constance. Each pope sought his own faithful and attempted to organize his obedient followers.
France and the Spanish kingdoms constituted the majority
of Clement VII’s followers. When he returned to Gregory
XI’s palace, he found a good part of the administration,
archives, and treasury intact in Avignon. This inheritance
counted as an especially important political and financial
advantage while the pope in Rome failed miserably at improvising an effective administration owing to the absence
of experienced men. This was one of the main reasons for
the long duration of the Avignon papacy after 1378. However, this papacy was connected to the Angevin dynasty in
Naples, also in difficulty. Both military force and diplomacy failed to reconcile the popes from the time of Benedict XIII (a cardinal from Aragon, Pedro de Luna), elected
hastily in 1394, by cardinals who feared the schism would
be resolved by a general rallying behind the sole surviving
pope in Rome. Thereafter, the Church began to pressure
the popes in a context of aggravated violence in Avignon,
but the presence there of a good number of mercenary
companies preserved the pope. The French clergy—
strongly influenced by the University of Paris, disapproved
of by the University of Toulouse, and supported by the
government of Charles VI, which was dominated by the
Burgundy party—twice declared its “subtraction from
obedience.” Castille followed France, while other kingdoms kept their distance. The Church of France thus
learned to live without a pope, without realizing that it thus
played into the hands of the king, and GALLICANISM began
to take shape.
The solution imagined in 1409 would not come from the
cardinals. Defeated on both sides, they finally agreed to
meet at the Council of Pisa to elect a third pope, Alexander
V (a Greek, Peter of Candia, 1409–10), succeeded by Cardinal Baldassare Cossa as John XXIII (1410–15). The latter was the main architect of the abandonment of the
Roman pope Gregory XII by his own cardinals. The only
result of the Council of Pisa was to provide the Church
with three popes instead of two. In any case, Gregory XII
had few followers, and Benedict XIII remained a refugee
in his own country in Peñiscola. Thus, the paths to unity
were opened, and the Council of Constance in 1415 dismissed the three warring popes and reunited the Church
around a single pontiff. Martin V (Oddone Colonna,
1417–31) definitively reestablished the Church in Rome.
Matters of Doctrine and Morality. Theological reflection flowered after debates that, up through the 1270s,
were the fruit of western Christianity’s discovery of
Aristotelian metaphysics, often through Arab philoso132
AVIGNON, PAPACY OF
phers, such as Avicenna and Averroes. In the 14th century, Thomism was little regarded and only taught discreetly in Dominican convents. The universities were
more concerned with law and logic than with metaphysics. This was the time when, in both Paris and Oxford, a new approach to the material world was being
founded (e.g., by William of Ockham), and French and
Italian jurists worked to comment on the decretals, the
last book of which was published by John XXII. Thus, it
was completely unintentional when, during a sermon in
1332, the pope ignited a vicious quarrel on the subject of
the “Beatific Vision.” Traditional doctrine admitted that
the just could see God and therefore enter paradise as of
their particular Judgment Day—that is, the day of their
death. John XXII shocked theologians and worried the
faithful when he suggested that the elect were not really
chosen until the Last Judgment, at the end of the world.
After long consultations, the pope retracted this statement
on his deathbed; his successor, Benedict XII, returned explicitly to the traditional doctrine in the bull Benedictus
Deus, 29 January 1336.
During the 1300s, spiritual movements influenced theology and morality. Influenced by Joachim of Flora’s eschatological prophetism and marked by the heritage of
Cathar thought, some clerics—specially Franciscans—denounced the Church’s compromises with the temporal
world. One part of the Franciscan order, in northern Italy
and southern France, came to advocate a return to absolute
poverty. The “Fraticelli” also condemned community possession of places of worship or provisions and personal
possessions. The “Spirituals” thus opposed the laxer attitude of the “Conventuals,” who saw no contradiction in St.
Francis’s doctrine that mendicant brothers might exercise
some power in the church and in society, as long as this
power and its financial bases remained collective.
John XXII thought that he would be able to end this
quarrel by being decisive. He decided that it was licit to
possess a roof over one’s head and provisions necessary
to live on, and that it was heretical to place the ideal of
poverty at the level of a tattered robe; moreover, poverty
dispensed one neither from obeying the pope nor from
internal discipline. The Fraticelli and Beguines were excommunicated unless they reentered their the order (7
October and 30 December 1317; 23 January 1318). The
Franciscan Order then took a stand of solidarity in an attempt to defeat the papal call for control. Debate arose
on subjects such as Christ’s way of life with the Apostles: Did they possess anything, and was it collectively or
individually? In 1322, the general chapter of the order issued a declaration in favor of absolute poverty. The bull
Cum inter nonnullos (8 December 1322) declared the
doctrine of the general chapter a heresy. The affair became even more complicated as a result of its interaction
with Nicholas V’s schism. The master general, Michael
of Cesena, was taking refuge with Louis of Bavaria and
backing the antipope, a former Fraticello. The Spirituals
supported Defensor pacis, and the secular world took
positions in the affair according to their political attitudes toward papal power. This long repression would finally succeed in stopping the Spirituals and their doctrine, often through the rigors of the Inquisition. The last
of the Spiritual Franciscans disappeared in the 1350s, although some preachers such as Wyclif, revived their
ideas through the end of the century. In much more modest form, these ideas are the basis of much university research and writing on the subject of Church reform.
Jean Favier
Bibliography
Guillemain, B. La Cour pontificale d’Avignon,
1309–1376: Étude d’une société, Paris, 1966.
La Papauté d’Avignon et le Languedoc (1316–1342)
Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 26, Toulouse, 1991.
Mollat, G. The Popes at Avignon (1305–1378), J. Love,
trans., London and New York, 1963.
Mollat, G. Vitae paparum avenionensium (1305–1394),
new ed., 4 vols., Paris 1914–27.
Renouard, Y. The Avignon Papacy, 1305–1403, D.
Bethell, trans., London, 1970.
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