Chapter 19
In This Chapter
● Counting popes at Avignon
● Whipping up things with the Western Schism
● Calming divisions at the Council of Constance
The medieval papacy loved a good argument. As I explore in Chapter 9, arguments between Christian leaders in Eastern and Western Europe produced the first schism during the ninth century. Then, some 200 years later, the East-West Schism of 1054 split medieval Christianity into Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) branches, which in time became the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.
Well, fast-forward around 300 years, and something even more remarkable happened. The papacy managed to split again, but this time with itself! During the fourteenth century, the papacy divided into two groups - one in Rome and the other in Avignon, France - both of which claimed to have the true pope. Read on to find out more about this truly remarkable series of events!
Reaching Crisis Point:
Church Versus State
Between 1309-1378, seven separate popes based at Avignon in southeastern France questioned the legitimacy of the pope in Rome. The major reason for this bizarre situation was conflict between Church and State rather than some grand theological debate. But the conflict’s roots went much further back in history.
Historians refer to the fourteenth-century period of papal disagreement as the Avignon Papacy. Some commentators at the time of the crisis referred to it as the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy, meaning that the good nature of the papacy was held captive by the Beast of Babylon or, in other words, those who supported the alternative papacy in Avignon.
Continuing an eternal argument
The massive problems between papal and secular rulers during earlier centuries were largely centred on the question of investiture: that is, whether Church or State had the right to appoint bishops (turn to Chapters 9 and 13 for more details). In the centuries that followed, the divisions of power between Church and State had become even murkier.
The papacy had taken on a big secular role during the Crusades (check out the chapters in Part III) by calling for and recruiting armies. Previously, the monarchs’s and nobles’s ability to command armies had given them power over the pope. But the papacy’s initial success in forming armies added massively to its prestige and influence. The many leading kings and nobles who went on Crusade were essentially ‘working for’ the papacy.
The papacy’s temporal power - its mixed role as both secular and religious leader - became only more confusing and also more out of control during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Although the pope was a spiritual leader, he was also a landowner and political administrator. With regard to the Vatican and other papal estates, he had the same powers and responsibilities as a duke or lord.
Making mounds of money
As a landowner, the papacy was rich - very rich. Like any other land or property owner, it had taxes to collect. Following is a quick list of some of the most significant charges that the papacy levelled:
● Tithes: The papacy taxed all Church property at 10 per cent of its value, and all communities were expected to contribute 10 per cent of their profits or crop to the papal coffers. The man tasked with collecting tithes was called, somewhat amusingly, a decimator. Tithes were by far the biggest source of revenues for the papacy, simply because of the vast amount of territory from which it could raise tithes.
● Benefices: A benefice was a piece of land given to a priest, bishop or other ecclesiastic and the revenues that derived from it. The intention was that by receiving the land, the priest would be better able to carry out certain spiritual duties as a result and thus receive payment or donations for his services. So, granting a benefice was effectively a form of patronage, like that enjoyed by kings and nobles through the feudal system (see Chapter 3). Competition for the best benefices (and therefore bribery and corruption) was extremely fierce.
● Annates: An annate was payable at the end of the first year of any benefice and amounted to the entire profits from the post, paid to the papacy. The size of some bishoprics meant that their annates to the papacy were seriously large amounts of cash.
● Other taxes: The papacy also initiated many other taxes for things such as Crusades (both national and international), as well as extra charges, rents, taxes and increases in the amounts payable from benefices and annates.
As well as being hugely profitable these taxes were completely unregulated by anybody except the papacy. They decided what to charge and possessed the administrational system required to enforce that decision across the whole of Medieval Europe. The taxes were all likely to be paid too. Failure to pay taxes could mean the withdrawal of a benefice or, worse, some kind of spiritual penalty. People in the Medieval World were terrified of failing to pass into Heaven (see Chapter 2) and believed that the papacy had the ability to influence their likelihood of doing so.
All these charges and taxes meant that by the late thirteenth century the papacy was very wealthy, which led to the position of pope being zealously fought over - and ripe for corruption. Some of the popes of the later end of this period lived richer and more indulgent lives than kings. They partly financed this lush lifestyle by accepting huge bribes to grant valuable benefices to rich candidates.
During this period, the candidates for the role of pope also changed. Big Italian families such as the Colonna in Rome fought like cats and dogs to get their family members into positions of influence and it became the norm for one of their members to get the job. These types of fights had been going on for centuries, but the scale of arguing and bribery had become breathtaking. Although the period did have its good popes, this situation meant that being spiritually driven to do a good job became increasingly difficult in the bloated political administration that surrounded them.
The first bothersome Boniface
Indulgent popes were nothing new to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and neither was the idea of different people claiming to be pope at the same time. The two issues came together rather nicely in Pope Boniface VII (nothing to do with Boniface VIII, whom I discuss in the later section 'Fighting for the top: Boniface VIII and Philip IV').
Boniface VII was born Franco Ferrucci and seized the papacy in 974 after allegedly having his predecessor, Benedict VI, strangled. Boniface didn't prove very popular in his new job and was forced to do a runner to Constantinople the same year - but not before squirreling away a vast fortune from the papal treasury. While in Constantinople he still claimed to be pope despite the fact that a successor had been appointed, and so he was very definitely an antipope - a rival pretender to the true papacy.
In 984 he staged a comeback, returning to Italy and unseating the current incumbent, John XIV, who he had imprisoned and then starved to death! Fortunately, like all the best villains, Boniface got his comeuppance. His second stint as pope proved even less popular than his first; when in July 985 he died, he was flayed (had the skin stripped from his body) and his corpse was dragged through the streets of Rome.
Boniface VII's story shows that people had been abusing the position of pope for centuries, but by the fourteenth century, corruption (albeit on a slightly less Hollywood scale) had become endemic and much more systemised.
Fighting for the top: Boniface VIII and Philip IV
By the beginning of the fourteenth century, the papacy was dying in Rome. The infighting between rival families combined with the corruption and indulgence of many high officials was bad enough, but the demands for secular power made matters even worse. The situation finally broke wide open with Pope Boniface VIII in 1301.
Boniface's extreme bull
To be honest, the situation wasn’t Boniface’s fault. As I mention in the earlier section ‘Continuing an eternal argument’, the problems with the papacy holding temporal power had been growing, and in 1301 these issues really kicked off. For the previous 20 years, the kings of England and France had been charging the Church and clergy their own secular taxes to help finance wars against each other. The papacy had been protesting against this practice, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was the arrest of the Bishop of Pamiers by King Philip IV of France in 1301.
Boniface’s response was to issue a famous papal bull (edict) known as the Unam Sanctam, which renounced any privileges that had previously been granted to French kings. Boniface followed up the bull a few weeks later with the statement that ‘God has placed us over kings and kingdoms’. According to Boniface, every human being on Earth was subject to the pope’s authority.
These events opened up again the old argument about primacy between pope and monarch.
War of words - more
Boniface can’t have expected Philip to take his bull and subsequent statement lying down, but even the pope must have been surprised at the king’s response. After replying in the same tone to the pope, Philip called a council of his nobles at which he accused Boniface of a vast number of crimes including simony (the selling of religious offices - probably true), sodomy (unlikely), sorcery (interesting but unproven) and heresy.
A furious war of correspondence ensued that came to a close only in 1303 when Philip sent his troops to Rome. The pope fled to his home town of Agni, but the king’s army caught up with him.
Philip’s troops surrounded the town and then captured the pope, as described by the historian and writer William of Hundlehy:
Not even the pope was in a position to hold out longer. Sciarra [Philip’s commander in Italy] and his forces broke through the doors and windows of the papal palace at a number of points, and set fire to them at others, till at last the angered soldiery forced their way to the pope. Many of them heaped insults upon his head and threatened him violently, but to them all the pope answered not so much as a word. And when they pressed him as to whether he would resign the papacy, firmly did he refuse - indeed he preferred to lose his head - as he said in his vernacular: ‘E le col, e le cape!’ which means: ‘Here is my neck and here my head.’ Therewith he proclaimed in the presence of them all that as long as life was in him, he would not give up the papacy.
Boniface was deeply affected by the attack, and some sources say that they saw him being beaten. Whatever the case, he died a few weeks later, ushering in an era of great confusion.
Establishing the New Papacy in Avignon
Boniface VIII may have bitten off more than he could chew (check out the earlier section ‘Fighting for the top: Boniface VIII and Philip IV’), but at least he was an able politician. Without him, the papacy descended into political chaos. Remarkably, two years after Philip’s attack and Boniface’s death in 1303, the papacy moved its seat from Rome to France. I sort through all the details in the following sections.
Fleeing to France
In 1309, Pope Clement V made the remarkable decision to relocate the papal seat from Rome to the city of Avignon in southern France. Initially meant to be a temporary decision, it lasted until 1378.
This move became known as the ‘Babylonian Captivity’, because despite the fact that Avignon wasn’t legally the property of the French king, he effectively controlled it. Also, during this period, every pope between the move to Avignon and the return to Rome was French.
Despite the recent problems with the French king, moving the papacy to Avignon actually made sense, because the town was far removed from the murderous infighting happening in Rome:
● Avignon was located in the southern Languedoc region of France, well away from the French king’s court and his major sphere of influence.
● Avignon had adjacent territories, such as the city of Arles, which were loyal to the Holy Roman Emperor rather than the French monarch.
● Avignon represented a neutral space between two powers, much like a kind of medieval Switzerland!
● Avignon was centrally located in Western Europe, making constant contact with the rest of the Medieval World that much easier.
Living like kings
In Avignon, the papacy became much more like the court of a monarch than the seat of the highest representative of the Church. Senior posts within the administration were given to family members, and the popes spent lavishly. John XXII, Benedict XII and Clement VI were all famed as popes who spent recklessly and lived indulgent lives.
Avignon certainly fit the bill for this kind of indulgence. The town was dominated by the monumental Palais des Papes (or Papal Palace), which was constructed during the period. Overlooking the river Rhone, this Gothic palace - the largest still standing in Europe - covers more than 15,000 square metres (or 161,400 square feet). You can still visit it today.
Unsurprisingly this new palatial lifestyle received a fair amount of disapproval, including criticism from two of the most famous figures in European literature. The Italian intellectual and philosopher Petrarch (1304-1374) wrote the following letter to a friend in 1340 that makes plain his distaste for what he found in Avignon:
The long-lasting effects of the Defensor Pacis
Sometimes criticism of the Avignon papacy took on a very political edge. One of the most famous cases was that of Marsilius of Padua (1275-1342). Marsillus was a noted Italian scholar and politician who got involved in a much bigger fight than he was used to.
In 1324, Pope John XXII was involved in a war of words with the reigning king of Germany, Louis IV (who was looking to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor and finally was in 1328) over the usual issue - who was superior in the eyes of God. In response to this very public argument, Marsilius produced a text called the Defensor Pacis, one of the most famous medieval texts. In it, he set out what he thought were the main arguments for the supremacy of the emperor and how the papacy had constantly claimed more rights and powers than it was due. Marsilius argued that the state was entirely separate from religious authority and had power over it.
Unsurprisingly the Defensor Pacis didn't go down terribly well with Pope John, and Marsilius was forced to flee France. Equally unsurprisingly, he was welcomed with open arms by Louis IV, who later made him Bishop of Milan despite the fact that Marsilius was a layman. The Defensor Pacis turned out to be a hugely important document, much quoted and referenced by later thinkers and leaders to define the idea of sovereignty.
Now I am living in France, in the Babylon of the West. . . Instead of holy solitude we find a criminal host and crowds of the most infamous satellites; instead of soberness, licentious banquets; instead of pious pilgrimages, preternatural and foul sloth; instead of the bare feet of the apostles, the snowy coursers [swift, expensive horses] of brigands [robbers] fly past us, the horses decked in gold and fed on gold, soon to be shod with gold, if the Lord does not check this slavish luxury. In short, we seem to be among the kings of the Persians or Parthians, before whom we must fall down and worship, and who cannot be approached except presents be offered.
Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was also hugely critical of the contemporary Church in his most famous work The Divine Comedy. In this following brief excerpt from the first part called the Inferno, Dante’s disdain is very clear:
Ye who the things of God, which ought to be The brides of holiness, rapaciously,
For silver and for gold do prostitute.
Breaking Up: Another Schism and the Antipopes
As I describe in Chapter 9, a massive schism occurred between the Western and Eastern Churches in 1054, which some historians refer to as the ‘Great Schism’. In 1378 another schism happened - which is, helpfully, sometimes also known as the ‘Great Schism’! The 1378 schism - also known as the Papal Schism and the Western Schism - featured the Western Church splitting within itself. Shortly afterwards two men claimed to be pope at the same time. Prepare to be confused!
Returning to Rome: Gregory XI
Problems first began under Pope Gregory XI. In 1376 Gregory ended the Avignon Papacy (which I describe in the earlier section ‘Establishing the New Papacy in Avignon’) when he decided that the seat of the pope should again be in Rome. Gregory had spent most of his tenure as pope trying to eliminate heresies in Europe, such as condemning the writings of John Wycliffe (see Chapter 22), but a conflict with the city of Florence played the biggest part in his thinking.
The War of the Eight Saints
In 1372, at the start of this conflict known as the War of the Eight Saints, Gregory made clear that he intended to return to Rome and expand the papal estates throughout Italy. This plan annoyed the city of Florence, which feared it would lose territory. Along with the city of Milan, eight Florentine magistrates (the ‘eight saints’) instigated a revolt in the papal states in 1375.
A brief period of unrest followed and Gregory was forced to return to Italy earlier than anticipated. He made the Florentines pay for the revolt by excommunicating all members of their government and putting the city under an interdict, which meant that no religious services were permitted to take place there. The interdict lasted for the next two years.
So, the most significant reason for returning the papacy to Italy was a threat to the revenues of the papal estates, rather than being motivated by a desire to restore Rome as the seat of papal authority. Several Popes had in fact wanted to return to Rome before this point, but the unsettled political situation in Italy made doing so impossible. Now, returning to Rome had become vital.
Election fever: Urban ascends
Gregory XI didn’t do particularly well following the War of the Eight Saints because he died shortly afterwards in 1378 at the age of only 42. His death meant that an election was necessary. Unsurprisingly, a huge public clamour called for an Italian, specifically a Roman, to be elected in his place. Campaigns for the papacy threatened to turn violent in Rome, and the cardinals feared a mob uprising. Eventually they decided on a Neapolitan who took the name Urban VI.
Initially, the selection of Urban seemed to settle the issue, but the cardinals soon regretted their decision. Urban was very different from previous popes. Extremely devout, he lived a simple lifestyle and was suspicious of the rich, pampered cardinals who had arrived from Avignon. (For most of them, Avignon was the only papal home they had known in their lifetime, and Rome was a strange and new experience.) The mob weren’t too pleased either: Urban may have been Italian, but he wasn’t Roman.
Of pope and antipope
What happened next was remarkable. Many of the cardinals fled Rome for the small town of Anagni, where they decided to have another go and elect another pope! This time they settled on a man who took the name Clement VII. He travelled to France with the cardinals and established a new court in Avignon.
Therefore, two different but official popes existed. Rivalry for the papacy had raged before, but for the first time the same set of cardinals had elected two different popes, both of whom had a claim to being legitimate! Clement VII is usually referred to as the antipope because he was the second to be elected, but in many ways his claim was more legitimate because Urban VI hadn’t been a cardinal when he was chosen, and therefore Clement was technically his superior.
Kings and rulers now had to pick sides. The popes themselves didn’t really matter; the real decision was whether a person recognised Avignon or Rome as the seat of papal power. Lots of other interests were also at stake. For example, the king of France fairly obviously supported Avignon, and consequently the king of England supported Rome, and so therefore the king of Scotland supported Avignon; the Holy Roman Emperor of course supported Rome! These choices had nothing to do with Urban or Clement; older rivalries were simply at play.
The antipope was able to exist and function comparatively easily. After all, Avignon already had a beautiful palace and papal court. Also, despite missive after missive from Rome denouncing the antipope, he had the backing of, among others, the French king. Why quit?
The impasse continued as follows:
● In Avignon, when Clement VII died in 1394, he was replaced by a successor, Benedict XIII, who maintained the court in Avignon just as it had been since the beginning of the century.
● In Rome, when Urban VI died, he was replaced by Boniface IX in 1389. He in turn died in 1404 and in an attempt to solve the situation Roman cardinals offered not to elect a new pope in the hope that Benedict would resign too. The Roman cardinals were turned down flat and so proceeded to elect Innocent VII.
The situation seemed likely to go on for some time.
Healing the split: The Council of Constance
Part of the difficulty in solving the pope/antipope situation was purely down to a legal tangle that the conflict had caused. Cannon law - laws devised by the Church to run its own affairs - governed the papacy. Any dispute over the election of a pope needed to be resolved at a full meeting, or ecumenical council, and only a pope was able to call these meetings. Neither pope nor antipope was likely to call a council at which he was likely to be asked to resign - even if one of them had called a council, the rival was unlikely to attend: a tricky situation.
But the situation didn’t stay tricky for much longer. For several years theologians argued over whether changes could be made to cannon law. Leading theologian Jean Gerson argued that the Church had the right to change the law if it was defending itself and that the current situation demanded such action. Surprisingly, Gerson managed to get leading lawyers to agree to this idea.
In 1409, a meeting was organised between Pope Gregory XII (who succeeded Innocent VII in 1406) and antipope Benedict XIII. They were supposed to meet at the town of Pisa in Tuscany, Italy, but at the last moment, both sides pulled out.
To make matters worse, the general frustration with the situation had caused both sets of cardinals to look elsewhere for leadership, so they abandoned their popes and instead elected another one - Alexander V. That’s right, three popes were now in place simultaneously! Alexander only managed a year in office before he died in 1410 and was replaced by yet another pope - John XXII. The situation was getting ridiculous.
Catting the council
The situation required another four years before it was completely resolved. The German King Sigismund called a full ecumenical council in the town of Constance in southern Germany. Sigismund, who would later become Holy Roman Emperor, had his own issues to discuss involving the borders of his kingdom with Poland, but the main business of the council was to resolve the mess that the papacy had become.
At the time that the council was called, three men claimed to be the pope:
● Gregory XII: The Roman antipope was abandoned by the cardinals in 1409, but still in place in Rome.
● Benedict XIII: The Avignon antipope was abandoned by the cardinals in 1409, but still in place in Avignon.
● John XXII: The ‘official’ pope and successor to Alexander V was elected in preference to the first two claimants in 1409.
Technically, the man with the greatest claim was John XXII, who was at least the most recently ‘officially’ elected. Benedict XIII was the only antipope, although he still had backing in France.
Eventually the council decided that the only way forward was to wipe the slate completely clean, and that none of the claimants who came to Constance were acceptable as pope. Gregory XII had already suggested that he would allow the succession of anybody elected by the council and John XXII was persuaded to resign. Benedict XIII was treated rather differently as the antipope: he refused to step down, and so the council excommunicated him!
Meeting the new guy: Martin V
The council then elected a new pope, Martin V. Ironically, Martin came from the Colonna family in Rome - one of the powerful and dominant Roman families, which had motivated Clement V’s decision to move the papacy from Rome back in 1305 (check out the earlier section ‘Making mounds of money’). The papacy was back in Rome and back in the hands of the Colonna 109 years and about 20 popes later.
But Martin V was not universally accepted. Over the next 20 years, a couple of pretenders appeared as antipopes in the kingdom of Aragon (in modern-day France), but they didn’t attract support from anywhere else and every other powerful figure in Europe acknowledged Martin as pope and Rome as the home of the papacy.
Continuing the argument
The Council of Constance wasn’t the end of the story. Although the issue of papal leadership was settled, arguments continued all the way through to the nineteenth century. Admittedly these later debates were theological arguments and didn’t result in wars or antipopes, but as recently as 1880, theologians were still arguing about whether the line of Roman popes was truly legitimate.
As with some other historical events that I cover in this book, the Schism of 1378 had only a minor impact on the daily life of ordinary people. Debates over papal power had a real effect on everyday life only when the churches were closed due to an interdict (such as in Florence in 1372 - flip to the earlier section ‘The War of the Eight Saints’). Military conflict had serious effects of course, but the papal conflicts rarely went that far.
For ordinary Europeans, these arguments were a world away compared to something else that happened during the fourteenth century - a form of bubonic plague known as The Black Death that devastated the continent. Many people thought that the plague was a judgement from God on the sinful times that they lived in, and many cited the papal mess as a cause. Read all about the plague in Chapter 20.