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When Boniface VIII died in 1303 the papacy was locked in a struggle with King Philip IV of France who had the upper hand. Nicholas Boccasini the former Master General of the Order of Preachers was elected as Pope Benedict XI (1303-1304). He carefully placated the angry French, lifted the excommunication of the Philip IV and dropped charges against those involved in the attempt to kidnap Boniface VIII except for the ringleaders. He conceded to all Philip IV's demands and did not press the issues Boniface VIII had raised. The Cardinals were bitterly divided between those who were pro-French and those who opposed France. When Benedict XI died, the secret conclave to elect the new pope drug on for more than ten months.
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Finally a Frenchman, Bertrand de Got, who had been subject to the English king as Archbishop of Bordeaux, was elected as Clement V (1305-1314). Clement crossed France to Lyons, but refused to go into Italy where political and economic chaos reigned supreme at the moment. Shortly thereafter, in 1307, responding to the pressure for him to leave the territory of the French King, Clement V chose for his residence an estate near the village of Avignon in Imperial territory held by the Angevins on the Rhone River south of Lyons. Eventually the entire curia Romana, except for the treasury, which remained temporarily at Assisi in Italy, moved to Avignon. Six Popes after Clement V resided at Avignon. It grew to be a boom-town bustling with ecclesiastical activity and reflecting the opulence and conspicuous consumption characteristic of the most flamboyant nobility. The number of French Cardinals began to increase. All but one of Clement V's 24 new Cardinal appointments were Frenchmen. Eventually, looking at the whole period while the papacy was at Avignon, the French would come to constitute two-thirds of that body. Meanwhile there were only two new English Cardinals and not a single German Cardinal named.
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The electors of the German Empire disappointed Philip IV who wanted to get his brother, Charles of Valois, elected as German king. Instead they chose Count Henry Wittlesbach of Luxembourg. King Henry VII (1308-1313) marched to Rome in order to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor by three Cardinals delegated by Pope Clement V for the purpose. When Henry VII then attacked the Angevin kingdom of southern Italy Clement V threw his influence and resources against him.
Clement V inaugurated the collection of a new fee from the church, the annate. It was imposed on certain numerous lower ranked ecclesiastical positions typically called incomes, i.e. benefices or prebends, when provisioned by the Pope. Indeed, the collection of annates seems to have originated in the territory of Aragon (Spain) in the thirteenth century, but Pope Clement V was the first to extended this imposition to other areas. The amount of the fee under Clement is uncertain, but the word suggests that it amounted to the annual income. Clement also introduced another innovation that became vital to the financial strength of the papacy. He was the first to reserve the revenues of vacant benefices, but only in limited cases.
In terms of Papal control over the church, Clement V extended the papal right to provision (i.e., fill) vacancies without qualification to all archbishops, bishops, abbots, and high ranking provincial and diocesan posts. This increased the income from the servitia into the papal coffers. He also issued a major contribution to canon law called the Clementinae.
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In 1307 Clement V made John of Montecorvino the archbishop of Mongol Cambalu (today Beijing, China). John de Piano De Carpine (1245-1247) and William of Ruysbroeck from Flanders (1253-1255) had carried out previous unsuccessful missions to the Mongols in central Asia. Both had lived to write accounts of their travels. John of Montecorvino had reached Cambalu in 1294 and worked among the Nestorian Christians there until his death in 1328. The majority of the people of Cambalu were Buddhists. Pope Clement V sent seven other Franciscans to serve under John as bishops, but only three eventually reached China.
Among those Europeans who had preceded John in reaching Cambalu, were the Venetian Polo brothers, Nicolo and Maffeo. They made their first trip in 1260-69 bringing back a request from Kubla Khan for instruction in the Christian religion. On their second trip, begun in 1271, they took along Marco, Nicolo's seventeen-year-old son. They remained in Cambalu serving Kubla Khan for seventeen years before returning to Venice in 1295. Three years later the illiterate Marco ended up in Genoa as a prisoner of war. Marco Polo dictated the story of his travels to a cellmate who was a notary. The veracity of this scenario has recently been challenged with the conclusion that Marco himself may not have traveled to Cambalu at all, but drew on the stories told by other Venetian traders including, probably, his father and his uncle.
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Pope Clement V's easy-going vulnerability was fully exploited by Philip IV of France. The thing Clement V feared the most was that Philip would make good on his threat to reactivate the trial of Boniface VIII. Even though Boniface was long dead his decrees and condemnations still hung over France and her king. Such a trial in the French courts would perhaps publicly repudiate papal authority and damage the papacy's reputation beyond repair to say nothing of the large number of French churchmen, including himself, that would be jeopardized. Clement V meekly allowed Philip IV to savagely exterminate the Knights Templars and appropriate their wealth because he feared the alternative might result in even more damage to the Papacy.
The Templars had served with distinction since eight French crusaders had taken monastic vows--including a vow of secrecy--to form the order in Jerusalem in 1118. They served valiantly as defenders and escorts for helpless pilgrims. Gradually they had acquired enormous land holdings and wealth scattered all across Europe, but with the largest amount concentrated in France. Recent authors have described them as the largest banking firm in the early fourteenth century Europe. In France there were about 2000 elderly knights and perhaps 10,000 sergeants and other dependents.
When Pope Clement V and Jacques de Molay, grand master of the Order, jointly announced in August 1307, that because some scandalous and embarrassing gossip had recently surfaced an investigation of the charges would be made, Philip IV saw his opportunity. As an autonomous and sovereign international order the Templars were beyond Philip IV's authority, but they inspired his greed and provoked his determination to ruin them. William of Nogaret was in charge of magnifying and disseminating the already scandalous rumors. Finally using false witnesses before the Church's inquisitional court Philip secured a charge of heresy against them. On the night of October 13, 1307, all the Templars in France were arrested. They were tortured until they confessed to heresy and a variety of other improbable crimes. Clement V urged bishops elsewhere in Europe to prosecute them with equal vigor.
When fifty-four Templar officers were brought before the legates of the Pope as churchmen they recanted their confessions and protested their innocence. Philip intervened again and burned sixty-three of them as "relapsed heretics" in May, 1310. Clement did nothing, and the remaining Templars lost all hope. Even though a council of churchmen convened by Clement V at Vienne in 1311 declared the Templars innocent on all charges, and church courts in other parts of Europe had uncovered nothing amiss, Clement dissolved the order and attempted with limited success to transfer its property to the Knights Hospitalers. Only a fraction of the Templar property in France and none of it at all in Castile was preserved. The monarchs in those two states profited handsomely. Jacques de Molay and three other high officials of the order survived in a Paris prison until 1314 when they were brought forth and asked publicly to divulge the sordid secrets of the order's guilt. When instead they protested their innocence they were burned to death.
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Meanwhile the pronouncements of Boniface VIII against the French king in Salvator mundi were withdrawn and France was officially excluded from the claims of Unam sanctam. Sciarra Colonna was reinstated into the College of Cardinals, and William of Nogaret was absolved. The papacy had completely capitulated.
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John XXII turned out to be a very active pope in spite of his sixty-seven years. His election came after more than two years of deadlock between the Italian and French Cardinals and was finally achieved because Cardinal Jacques de Osa's advanced age promised a short tenure. He had been the Chancellor of Charles II, the Angevin king of Naples. John XXII was almost the opposite of Clement V, a man of iron determination and single-mindedness.
John's administrative style provoked resistance even among his friends and supporters. Among his most significant accomplishments were legal, administrative and financial reforms. The administration of the papal court and the church in general was streamlined and systematized by John XXII's insistent leadership. He plugged up the leaks in papal finances and established several policies which augmented the cash flow pouring into Avignon from all over Europe. This restored the comfortable margin between the papal government's resources and the next most affluent government in all Europe. But papal spending was also increased. All these adjustments were codified in the Decretales extravagantes which now replaced the Decretals of Gregory IX as the legal basis for ecclesiastical operations.
The Papal judiciary also became a big business operation. Pope John XXII in 1331 renamed the Court of the Sacred Palace, as the Sacra Romana Rota, the Sacred Roman Rota [i.e., wheel, as in the rotating part of a grain mill; hence, a mill for grinding out justice]. The new court was made competent to try all civil and criminal cases involving clergy anywhere.
This extension of papal judicial jurisdiction knew no practical limitations and no existing legal restraints. So long as the Papal court could get its jurisdiction recognized, it could essentially legislate whatever seemed fitting and appropriate simply by issuing a decree that automatically became a part of canon law. It is not surprising that papal decrees are often at variance with one another and sometimes they contradict each other. The most recent pronouncement is always the one in force.
Although Pope Boniface VIII had extended the principle of "papal reservation" to cover vacancies that occurred while the late incumbent was within two days journey of Rome, John XXII enlarged the scope still farther. The papal right was now extended to all vacancies that had resulted from any action (deposition, promotion, translation) of the pope. It specifically included all prebends (i.e., incomes) formerly held by a cardinal or curial official. For example, by deposing all ordinary churchman who held more than one pastoral position with pay from all but his most recent appointment the papacy increased its income from servitia and annates. The Cardinals and sons of princes were permitted dispensations (for a fee) to hold only one additional post. Unfortunately, these limitations on holding pluralities would not last long.
Papal income was already being drawn from such traditional sources as the papal tithe drawn from all benefices of the church, the curial fees charged for all actions by the papal administration, and the gratuitues such as visitation fees collected from all churchmen who make their regular visits ot Rome. To supplement papal income there were new financial devices. Papal procuratia, called "procurations", were fees paid to the papacy when a bishop does not reside in his bishopric. While his predecessor had started collecting the incomes from certain vacant benefices, John XXII extended this practice universally. This practice was open to serious criticism very frequently in the next century because of the temptation of drag out the process of provisioning the vacancy. Also, since the inception of the papal reservation of the spolia, the spoils, cannot be precisely dated we might as well mention it here. This was the right to confiscate a deceased clergyman's personal property if that individual had been provisioned by the Papacy in his former post.
Pope John XXII further regulated the collection of annates by setting the annate for benefices related to Cathedral churches and exempt abbeys to one tenth, and all others to one half, of the first years' gross income which was equivalent to the entire net taxable income of the benefice.
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After the death of Bonaventura, their most influential Minister-General, in 1274, the Franciscans polarized rapidly with the Conventuals accepting revenues and building churches "for the pope". Further the Conventuals persecuted the Spirituals. Pope Celestine V ordered them to separate and invited the Spirituals to join his Benedictine hermits. Pope Boniface VIII had revoked Celestine's decree in the hope of keeping the order unified. Then Pope Clement V worked out a compromise favoring all but the strictest of the Spirituals in 1312. And finally John XXII, in 1317, demanded that Spirituals submit to Conventuals. Indeed the General Chapter of the O.F.M. in 1322 strongly endorsed the idea of Apostolic Poverty as the ideal toward which the order would aim, indicating that the Conventuals were seemly reaching out to the disaffected Spirituals.
But compromise was not an acceptable solution. Pope John XXII took sudden and decisive action in 1323 by disolving the Franciscan Spirituals and condemning as heresy the teaching that Jesus and the apostles either practiced or advocated poverty. The machinery of the inquisition was unleashed on the Franciscans and not a few were dutifully burned as heretics by compliant secular authorities. The Franciscans of both varieties defended the orthodoxy of apostolic poverty and condemned John XXII as a heretic. See the discussion below on Michael of Cesena and William of Ockham. It was not surprising that there were violent deaths reported among the inquisitors.
In the context of this controversy some papal supporters argued in support of a curious concept that was called "infallibility", but John XXII rejected this concept in the bull Quia quorundam (1324), on the grounds that such an understanding would severely weaken papal authority. The argument goes that a true pope always infallibly believes and practices true beliefs and practices. If it becomes obvious that a pope has believed or practiced something untrue, then he was, after all, not a true pope. Such an understanding would dangerously undermine papal authority.
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John XXII's intervention into German imperial politics seems to have been the result of his inflexible determination to force German and Italian politics into papal service in anticipation of moving the papal court back to Italy. Having decided in advance to support a Hapsburg to succeed Henry VII Wittlesbach as Emperor, John XXII was surprised when both Louis IV of Bavaria and Frederick the Fair of Austria (Hapsburg) were each elected as king of Germany in a disputed election in 1314. John XXII claimed that the final decision was now his, but he did nothing more. With the Pope's blessing Frederick the Fair of Austria (Hapsburg) launched an effort to take the German crown by force, but he was defeated in 1322 and taken prisoner by Louis. Meanwhile, Louis had attempted to exercise the imperial rights in Italy that he considered his by right of his German election. The Pope refused to deal with Louis for that reason and announced that the imperial throne was vacant and that he, the pope, would rule in Italy. Pursuant to that end a papal army of French, Austrian and Bohemian Hapsburg troops assembled near Bologna (Italy) with the aim of retaking the disputed papal territories from the encroaching Italian kingdoms, principally the Duchy of Milan. The result was a groundswell of nationalistic sentiment among the north Italians against the papacy.
In 1323 Louis IV sent military aid to the north Italians who were fighting the Pope's army. John XXII now demanded that Louis IV give up the German crown, but Louis appealed to a general council. John XXII's response was to excommunicate Louis in 1324 and declare his subjects free from their obedience. Louis' response was to charge John XXII with heresy with regard to his condemnation of Apostolic Poverty. The Pope's action stirred a German national spirit much as Boniface VIII's challenge of Philip IV had rallied the French.
Louis had strong public support not only in Germany but in Italy and the rest of Europe when he successfully invaded Italy in 1327. He was crowned at St. Peters' in Rome (1328) by Sciarra Colonna, a layman and prefect of the city, in the name of the Roman people without the benefit of the Papal blessing. Louis established an anti-pope, a Franciscan named Nicholas V.
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One of the defenders of the Imperial power was the Florentine, Dante Alighieri, author of the famous Divine Comedie. Dante's contribution to Louis IV's arsenal of ideas was little book entitled On Monarchy that appeared about 1315. Dante emphasized the medieval view of church-state relations which had more or less prevailed in the West since the fifth century: namely, the parallel existence of church and state. Dante argued that there are no good reasons for either to interfere in the sphere of the other. He specifically refuted the pope's arguments for intervening in the affairs of state.
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Perhaps the most radical and far-reaching ideas among the several publications expressing popular support for Louis IV was the book (1324) by Marsiglio of Padua and John of Jandun, scholars as the University of Paris, entitled Defensor pacis, Defender of the Peace. The sovereignty of the people was proclaimed herein as the only source of external authority necessary for the government of the state. The people have delegated external governmental power to the king. The authors denied any role whatsoever to ecclesiastical law in the government of the state, because ecclesiastical law does not pertain to external authority. On the same grounds they denied that any single churchman or hierarchy of churchmen had any external authority. They thus denied that the hierarchically organized clergy constituted the church (as the fourth Lateran Council had ruled), and insisted that the church was composed of all Christian people. The highest human power over the church was neither the clergy nor the pope but resided in a general council of Christians including both laymen and clergy. It was also within the general council's exclusive powers to interpret the supreme authority of the Scripture. John XXII excommunicated these authors in 1327, but they spent their last years under the protection of Louis IV in Germany.
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The ideas of Marsiglio and John were not as appealing or as influential in the short term as were the ideas of William of Ockham, the most significant philosopher and theologian of the century, and Michael of Cesena, Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor. William played a double role. He was the defender of the Franciscans and the advocate of a new idea of state intervention to preserve truth within the church. William and Michael had gone to Avignon to defend the Franciscan cause only to be thrown into prison by Pope John XXII. When they escaped both fled to the court of Louis IV in Germany. Michael subsequently became critical of the whole papal position and advocated the general council as the supreme authority in the church. While Michael's position agreed in part with Marsiglio and John, he also strongly supported the arguments of his fellow Franciscan, William of Ockham. Accepting the premise of Dante and a long string of other earlier authors, the parallel existence of church and state, Ockham, unlike Dante, also accepted the pope's claims justifying papal intervention in the state to preserve it from error and destruction. Ockham next introduced and argued the opposite notion: when the church is in jeopardy the state has the obligation to intervene to preserve the true church. Christ's promise was not that the pope or the clergy would always remain in the true faith, but that the true faith would remain in the church. Hence if the clergy has introduced heresy and error into the church it is the responsibility of Christian princes and laymen (i.e. the state) to intervene to preserve and safeguard the true faith. Both Michael of Cesena and William of Ockham believed sincerely that John XXII was demonstrably guilty of heresy in his proceedings against the Franciscans.
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Benedict XII was a former Cistercian monk who continued to wear his habit after his consecration as pope. Aside for building a very permanent fortress-like papal palace at Avignon, he gave his primary attention to reforming the monastic and canonical orders. Although he did enlarge the scope of papal reservations, it was only his successors who would exploit this for financial gain. In spite the the loss of income from papal procurations, Benedict XII ordered all the clergy living at Avignon, or anyplace else away from their benefices, to return and remain in their places of service. He also regulated the visitation fees which churchmen collected from their subordinates whenever they visited them. Benedict XII left some reserved positions vacant rather than have to fill them with candidates qualified only by dispensation.
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There were 694 Cistercian houses by 1300, but the growth of the Order had slowed considerably and the relaxation of the original strictness was also evident. In 1335 Benedict XII officially relaxed the White Monks' rules about eating meat and leaving the monastery to study in the university. By 1500 the Cistercians were no longer working their own land, but renting it to non-monks.
Similar relaxation in the restrictions common to the life of Black monks were legislated by Benedict XII in 1336, allowing them to eat meat periodically, and requiring all those capable of study at the universities to be given leave for that purpose. These adjustments tended to blur the apparent differences between the monastic, mendicant and canonical orders.
Benedict XII also prescribed new regulations for the orders' provincial chapters and visitations, but he did not address the root of the problem. The practice of dividing the income of the monastery into prebends so that the abbot and other monastic officials as well as the individual monks became independently supported eroded the community spirit. The worst fate of the run-down Black monasteries in the fourteenth and fifteenth century was to experience commendam. In that case the Papacy, or later the king, might assign the office of abbot with its prebend to a secular churchman or even a layman who would enjoy the income but employ one of the monks to administer the monastery in his place.
New Benedictine Orders had been founded in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Only the Silvestrines (known as Blue Benedictines) founded in 1231 and the Olivetans founded in 1344 still exist.
The relaxation of the discipline of the canonical orders was promulgated in 1339 allowing more meat in their diet and the freedom to leave their canonries and attend university.
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Scholars believe both Emperor Louis IV and Benedict XII would have settled their differences if left to themselves, but neither Philip VI of France nor the Angevin King of Naples wanted a reconciliation. Both were using the papacy for their own ends, France wanted to weaken Germany and Naples wanted to keep Italy divided and keep the Papacy out. But the German princes were not prepared to deal any further with the papacy. In 1338 they determined to employ the title, Holy Roman Emperor, without deference to papal approval.
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A Frenchman and sometime Benedictine abbot, Clement VI, was known for his impressive preaching. He had advanced to a Cardinal's chair from service of the French king, being for many years the keeper of the seals. Unfortunately, he openly favored anything French and anyone related to him. When John XXII had condemned the practice of churchman holding more than one benefice with pastoral duties he had specifically exempted the cardinal clergy and any clergyman who was the son of a ruler. The standard of living of the cardinals at Avignon was such that they could build palatial chateaux. Clement VI also lived in luxury. Indeed, the palaces of the papacy and the cardinals had already choked the available territory so in 1348 Clement VI purchased sovereign rights over Avignon and the surrounding county from the Angevin ruler, Queen Joan of Naples, for 80,000 florins. Although Benedict XII had expelled all the visiting clergy from Avignon sending them back to the posts, they soon rushed back during the reign of Clement VI who increased the size of the court in order to augment papal income.
In 1343 Pope Clement VI issued the bull Unigentius which officially clarified the so-called "treasury of merit" and the rationale by which indulgences were offered. This was not a new understanding, just an official pronouncement of the understanding formulated nearly a century earlier by the Franciscan scholar, Alexander of Hales, and the Dominican, Thomas Aquinas.
The Black Death struck Europe in 1348 with immediate and far reaching misery. While its repercussions will be discussed elsewhere, the disastrous death toll added weight to the urging of St. Bridget of Sweden and Petrarch that Clement VI announce a papal Jubilee in 1350. While Clement did not return to Rome for the Jubuilee he sent Cardinal Gaetani Ceccano as his representative. Every pilgrim who came to Rome that year for a visit and made daily visits to the churches of St. Peter, St. Paul and St. John's Lateran would receive an indulgence. This was the first Jubilee celebration where St. John's Lateran (the Pope's Church) was included.
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Charles IV (Luxembourg) of Bohemia entered into an alliance with Clement VI and because of complicated German politics managed to get Louis IV deposed and get himself elected as Holy Roman Emperor in 1346. Louis IV did not relinquish his office, however, until his death in 1347. Meanwhile at Rome a revolution occurred. Cola di Rienzi with a popular following overthrew the existing aristocratic oligarchy and announced the creation of an Italian Republic. Cola di Rienzi was deposed in 1348, but returned in 1352.
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