THE residence of the popes within the walls of Avignon, from 1305 till subsequent to the year 1370, and the schism which, in 1378, divided for a long time the church between rival pontiffs, are the two leading circumstances of the ecclesiastical history of the fourteenth century; both have contributed to the decline of the pontifical empire. It is true that in leaving Italy the popes sheltered themselves from some perils: they removed from the theatre of the commotions which their ambitious policy excited or reanimated. It is also true that the apprehension of authorising, by so imposing an example, the wandering life of the bishops, was no longer worthy of restraining the sovereign pontiff: the time was past, in which sacred laws confined each pastor within the bosom of his flock; interests had amplified, had reformed these humble manners, and dissipated these apostolic scruples. But, to disappear from Italy, was to weaken the influence of the Holy See over the then most celebrated and enlightened country of Europe; it was to desert the post where they had obtained so many victories, the centre in which were united all the radii of the power they had achieved; it was to renounce the ascendancy which the very name of Rome conveyed, whose ancient glory was reflected on the modem pontificates that seemed to continue it; it was, in fine, to discontent the Italians, to deprive them of the last remains of their ancient consequence, and, by private rivalries, to prepare the way for a general schism. We may be astonished that this consequence should have been deferred for seventy years; but it was inevitable; and this schism, in exposing publicly the ambition of the pontiffs, in placing before the eyes of the multitude the picture of their scandalous quarrels, in revealing, by their reciprocal recriminations, the secret of their vices, dissipated for ever the illusion with which the power of their predecessors was environed.

The sojourn of the popes in the Comtat Venaissin, evinces at least that the pope could dispense with a residence in Rome; and many other proofs unite here to demonstrate, that any other city could become the seat of the first pastor of the church. To fix the papacy to a geographical point would be, to cut it off from the number of institutions necessary to Christianity; for it is, without doubt, impossible that an essential article in the gospel establishment should depend on any particular locality, changeable at the will of a thousand circumstances.

Not one word in the gospel, or in the writings of the apostles points out the city of Rome as the indispensible metropolis of Christianity. There is no spot upon earth, where one may not be, a Christian, bishop, patriarch, or pope. But this demi-theological discussion exceeds the limits of our subject: let us return to the popes of Avignon.

To throw a light on this portion of the history of the papacy, and to compensate for the details which would occupy too much space here, we shall present in the first place, a slight sketch of the political revolutions of the fourteenth century.

In the East, the Turks were masters of Palestine. Ottoman, their head, founded the empire which bears his name; he turned to account the discord of the Persians, the Saracens, and the Greeks; he deprived them of Asiatic, and European provinces. The throne of Constantinople verged towards its ruin; seditions menaced it in the city, conspiracies encompassed it in the court; and the sons of the emperor were frequently the conspirators against him. The Russians were as yet barbarous; but in Denmark, Valdemar, taught by adversity, did honour to, and established the throne. Under his daughter Margaret, Sweden and Norway, formed with Denmark, but one monarchy. Poland, agitated for a long time by the Teutonic knights, respired under Casimir III. The English deposed Edward II., seconded the activity of Edward III,, and condemned and banished the proscriber Richard. In Spain, Peter the Cruel perished at the age of thirty-five, the victim of Henry Transtamare who succeeded him. In France, Philip the Fair had for successors his three sons, Louis X., Philip the Long, and Charles IV., weak princes, and dupes of their barbarous courtiers. After them, Philip of Valois, and John his unfortunate son, supported against the English an unsuccessful war: in vain did Charles V. devote himself to the reparation of so many evils; they recommenced with aggravations during the minority of Charles VI., continued during his derangement, during his whole reign, which was prolonged into the fifteenth century.

Since the Sicilian vespers, Sicily had remained subject to the king of Arragon, Peter III., who, in spite of the anathemas of Rome, transmitted it to his descendants; from the year 1262, Charles of Anjou had only reigned over Naples. Robert, the grandson of Charles, contributed in a singular degree to fix the popes in Avignon: he thus preserved a more immediate influence over the Guelphs, over Florence, over Genoa, and the other cities which belonged to this faction. The Holy See had clothed Robert with the title of vicar imperial in Italy during the vacancy of the empire; and, when the emperors Henry VII. and Louis of Bavaria restored once mort the Ghibeline party, Robert served as a counterpoise. Joanna, his grand-daughter, married the king of Hungary, Andrew, whom she is accused of having murdered; she herself died the victim of Charles Durazzo, who, fixing himself after her on the throne of Naples, transmitted it to his own children Ladislaus and Joanna II.

The exterior power of the Venetians rose or fell, their territories were extended or confined, according to the various success of their eternal wars with Hungary and Genoa. They took Smyrna and Treviso; they lost a part of Dalmatia; they made themselves masters of Verona, of Vicenza, and of Padua; they possessed, but could not preserve Ferrara: but they maintained and consolidated the the aristocratical government which Gradenigo had given them, and punished the attempted alteration by Salieri. Liguria, on the contrary, harassed for ages by intestine changes, presented in the fourteenth century a spectacle fickle as ever: we behold her obeying in succession a captain, two captains, sometimes Genoese, sometimes foreigners; a council of twelve, of twenty-four; a mayor; a doge: and, in the intervals of these ephemeral governments, receive or reject the yoke of the emperor, of the pope, of the king of France, or of the lord of Milan. This last title at this time belonged to the family of Visconti. From the thirteenth century, an archbishop of Milan, Otho Visconti, had become lord of this city, and had obtained for his nephew Matthew the title of vicar imperial of Lombardy. Matthew, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, associated with himself his son Galeas. Overthrown by the Torriani, restored by Henry VII., and upheld by Louis of Bavaria, the Visconti resisted the pope, the king of Naples, the Florentines, and the whole Guelphic party. After the emperor Venceslas had bestowed on one of these Visconti, John Galeas, the title of Duke of Milan, they became powerful enough to defend themselves against the head of the empire himself. When Robert, the successor of Venceslas, wished to deprive them of the cities of which they had become masters, a decisive battle in 1401, confirmed their possession and retarded their fall.

The emperors of the fourteenth century were, Albert of Austria, whose yoke the Helvetians shook off; Henry VII. of Luxemburgh, who, during a reign of five years, began to shed some lustre on the imperial crown; Louis of Bavaria, the restless enemy of the popes; Charles IV. or of Luxemburgh, their creature; and his son Venceslas, a vindictive monarch, deposed in 1400. Robert belongs more pro-properly to the fifteenth century.

Thus the Visconti, being substituted for the emperors in Italy, erected themselves into heads of the Ghibeline faction, at the same time that the Ghelphic escaped from the popes, and submitted to the influence of the house of Philip the Fair, sovereign of France and of Naples. The war continued between the two Italian factions, without any reference, of esteem or of interest, to their ancient chiefs; the pope was as little regarded by the Guelphs, as the emperor by the Ghibelines; even the latter were seen in arms against the emperor, Charles IV., when he suffered himself to be drawn by the pope into the Guelphic party; and against Robert, when he had declared war against the Visconti. On their side, the Guelphs, whom the weakness of their chiefs, pontiffs, kings of France, or of Naples, abandoned to their own exertions, fought only for the independence of their cities or the general liberty of Italy. At the end of the fourteenth century, Guelphs and Ghibelines, animated by similar interests, tended towards the same end; but it was undesigned; they would have feared to perceive it; and, when their ancient discord had no longer any motive, habit still continued to preserve it.

It results from this statement, that the court of Avignon had for rivals, Germany and France: Germany, which preserved till near 1300, the management of the Ghibeline faction; France, which protected the popes only to rule over them, and which endeavoured to become master in Italy of the Guelphic one.

It was requisite to temper, or elude by intrigue, the French influence, to repress by anathemas the imperial power, and, when Charles IV. devoted himself to the Holy See, to direct against the Visconti, the thunders of the church. Such were, in Avignon, the cares of the supreme pastors of the flock of Jesus Christ. They taught little, and edified less; they were temporal princes, and reign they would.

Benedict XI. the immediate successor of Boniface VIII. reigned but one year; he had retired to Perugia, to withdraw from the domination of the lords and cardinals who pretended to the government of Rome; the Colonnas, proscribed by his predecessor, entered it again. Out of Rome, Philip the Fair, aspired to the preponderance; connected at first, with the Ghibeline party by the anathemas of Boniface, absolved subsequently by Benedict XI., he little dissembled his intention of ruling the Holy See. Benedict became uneasy in consequence, and directed enquiries to be made after the authors of the outrages which Boniface had experienced. An excommunication thundered against the Florentines, for a political interest of trifling importance, was perhaps the principal fault which Benedict XI. had time to commit: Italian authors have imputed, without proof, to Philip the Fair, the premature death of this pontiff.

After an interregnum of nearly a year, the election of Bertrand de Gotte, or Clement V. was the work of Philip the Fair, who had reason to complain of him: the monarch wished to select, from among his personal enemies, a pope who would be altogether indebted to him for the tiara, and who would pledge himself to pay dearly for a benefit so little merited beforehand. Gotte made six promises to Philip, all of which were not redeemed by Clement V. For instance, this pontiff excused himself from condemning the memory of Boniface VIII.; and, when the empire became vacant by the decease of Albert I., the king of France, who canvassed for this place for a French prince, vainly counted on the services of the holy father: whilst seconding by a public letter the claims of this candidate, Clement transmitted to the electors a secret brief, in order to exclude him²⁵⁶ It is certain that there needed only this accession to assure to the house of France, already established at Naples, a universal preponderance, especially when Clement, despairing to reduce the Romans to a tranquil obedience, consented to fix at Avignon the pontifical court. Yet he served the king but too faithfully in the affair of the templars: inasmuch as sound policy required the suppression of this order, insomuch it was accordant, as it ever must be with justice and humanity, to dissuade from so many judicial assassinations.

When Clement V. cancelled a decision of Henry VII. against Robert, King of Naples; when he decreed to the same Robert the title of Vicar of the empire, he erected himself expressly into a sovereign, and placed the emperor in the number of his vassals.²⁵⁷

He maintained also that Ferrara belonged to the Holy See; and the Venetians having taken this place from the house of Este, he excommunicated them; declared the doge and all the citizens infamous, deprived of every right, incapable, they and their children, to the fourth generation, of all secular or ecclesiastical dignity²⁵⁸

But these anathemas were no longer formidable.²⁵⁹

Clement V. also published a crusade against the Venetians: this very Cardinal Pellagrue led an army against them; they were defeated, driven from Ferrara, and absolved.

The decretals of Clement V. united to the decrees of the general council of Vienna, held in 1313, form a canonic code which is designated “The Clementines.” The decretals of John XXII., the successor of Clement, are termed the “Extravagantes,” that is to say, supplementary to the preceding codes; and the name of “Extravagantes communes” is applied to a collection of the statutes of many popes, whether anterior or posterior to John. Thus the canon law of the middle age is composed of, the decretals forged by Isidore in the eighth century, the decree by Gratian in the twelfth, the decretals of Gregory IX., compiled by Raymond de Pennafort, in the thirteenth, of the “Sexte of Boniface VIII.,” of the “Clementines,” of the "Extravagantes” of John XXII., and of the “Extravagantes communes:” to which may be added the collections which comprize the bulls published by the popes of the latter ages. Such are the sources of the modern jurisprudence of the clergy: such the cause and the effect of the temporal power of the pontiff, and the unlimited extent of their spiritual authority: such the voluminous codes which have taken the place of the pure and simple rules of the primitive church; laws which, since the age of St. Louis to 1682, the Gallican Church has never ceased to re-assert.

A pontifical interregnum of two years, from Clement V. to John XXII., comprised the entire reign of the king of France, Louis X. or “le Hutin.” His brother and successor Philip the Long, received from John XXII. a pedantic and high flown epistle²⁶⁰ which will suffice to shew what this second Avignon pope would have dared under different circumstances. He created bishopricks in France: in authorizing the divorce of Charles the Handsome, who repudiated Blanche of Burgundy, he conceived a hope that he could subject by degrees a government which sought compliances of him. But Philip de Valois, who perceived his ambitious designs, threatened to have him burned,²⁶¹ and provoked a celebrated discussion on the bounds of the two powers. The king’s advocate, Peter de Cugnieres, supported the rights of the civil power by arguments, not always of the best description, though much less wretched than those made by the prelates to perpetuate the abuse of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It is, say they, by the exercise of this jurisdiction that the clergy are enriched; now the opulence of the clergy, the splendor of the bishops and archbishops is one of the prime interests of the king and of the kingdom. Philip de Valois, but little sensible to this interest, commanded that within the space of a year the abuses should be reformed, without the intervention of the Roman or Avignon court.

This discussion had not adequate effects; but it was from it appeals as of abuse or error sprung, that is to say, appeals from ecclesiastical decisions to secular tribunals.²⁶²

After the death of the emperor, Henry VII. Frederick the Handsome, duke of Austria, disputed the empire with Louis, duke of Bavaria, whose rights were established by victory. However, John XXII, cancelled the election of Louis; he maintained that it belonged to the sovereign pontiff, to examine and ratify the nomination of the emperors, and that, during the vacancy, the imperial government should immediately revert to the Holy See, from whence it emanated²⁶³ The pope reproached Louis with protecting the Visconti, excommunicated as heretics; their heresy, we have seen, was the supporting and directing the Ghibeline party. Louis resisted, he kept no bounds in the invectives with which he loaded John. While John was deposing the emperor, the emperor caused John to be deposed by the clergy, nobility, and citizens of Rome. A Franciscan took the name of Nicholas V., and seated himself on the pontifical throne; but the repentance and obedience of Nicholas, injured so materially the cause of Louis, that he consented to renounce the empire, when John died, leaving twenty-five million of florins in his coffers.²⁶⁴

In 1338, Benedict XII. having refused to absolve Louis of Bavaria, the Diets of Rensee and of Frankfort declared, that ancient custom conferred the vicariate of the vacant empire on the count Palatine of the Rhine; that the pretensions of the pope to replace the emperor during an interregnum were untenable; that the pope had over the German empire no sort of superiority; that it was not his province to regulate, nor confirm the elections of the emperors; that the plurality of suffrages of the electoral college conferred the empire without the consent of the Holy See, and, that to assert the contrary would be a crime of high treason.²⁶⁵ The Germans gave to their decree, the name of “Pragmatic Sanction,” and, at the same time, it was forbidden to pay any respect to the censures fulminated against the head of the empire, to receive bulls from Avignon, or keep up any correspondence with the pontifical court.²⁶⁶ Four years after the publication of this decree arose Clement VI. who demanded of the emperor a perpetual edict, in which the empire should be declared a fief of the Holy See, a benefice that none could possess without the authority of the sovereign pontiff. This Clement said, that none of his predecessors knew how to be a pope; Benedict XII. more modest, said to the cardinals his electors: You have elected an ass.²⁶⁷

Clement renewed the anathemas of John XXII. against Louis of Bavaria; he added thereto more solemn imprecations:

But Clement, aware that cursing no longer availed, excited a civil war in the heart of Germany, leagued the nobles against Louis, deposed him anew, nominated a vicar of the empire in Lombardy, and caused to be elected emperor in 1340, the Margrave of Moravia, who took the name of Charles IV. Louis of Bavaria, everywhere conqueror, died in 1347, and Clement VI. triumphed. About this time a horrible plague ravaged Italy: the sovereign pontiff who had founded great hopes on this scourge, watched the moment in which the petty princes of Italy, reduced to the last degree of weakness, and having no longer an army to oppose to his anathemas, would be brought to acknowledge and sue to the pontifical authority. To accelerate this event, and second the plague, Clement employed money, stratagem, and force, in order to conquer the insubordination of the cities and nobles of Romagna; in particular, he menaced the Visconti, cited them before the consistory of cardinals, and summoned them to restore Bologna to the church; but, when he heard speak of twelve thousand horse, and six thousand infantry, who were to make their appearance at the court of Avignon with the lords of Milan, he took the course of negociation with this powerful house, and for one hundred thousand florins, sold it the investiture of Bologna. Avignon he had purchased: Joan, queen of Naples, had ceded this place to him for eighty thousand florins, which, it is said, were never paid. But Clement declared Joan innocent of the murder of her first husband, Andrew; he acknowledged the second; he placed difficulties in the way of the projects of Louis, king of Hungary, who in order to avenge his brother Andrew was about to invade the kingdom of Naples. It was thus that Clement VI. paid for Avignon; and, as this city was a fief of the empire, the sale was confirmed by Charles IV., who, indebted for his crown to the sovereign pontiff could refuse him nothing.

This Pope died in 1352; the picture of his manners, has been drawn by Matteo Villani, a contemporary historian, whose expressions Fleury²⁶⁸ thus translates and softens:

A short time before his death, Clement received a letter written, they say, by the archbishop of Milan, John Visconti, and of which the following are lines:²⁶⁹

It was during this pontificate that the Romans saw a man of low rank, Cola Rienzi, raise himself to a high degree of power. Deputed to Clement VI., to invite him to return to Rome, and not being able to prevail on him, Rienzi returned to plant the standard of liberty on the capitol, proclaimed himself tribune, and governed for several months the ancient capital of the universe.

The emperor Charles IV. had promised to renounce all claim of sovereignty over Rome and the ecclesiastical domains; these were the conditions on which Clement VI. had raised him to the empire; Charles kept his word. When in 1355 he resumed the imperial crown, he acknowledged the absolute independence of the temporal power of the popes, and swore never to put his foot in Rome, nor on any spot belonging to the Holy See, without the permission of the holy father, annulling all the contrary acts of his predecessors, and obliging his successors, under penalty of deposition, to the maintenance of the engagement entered into by him. This is the first authenticated act which elevated the pope into a temporal sovereign, an independent monarch: till this period he had been but a vassal of the empire. Innocent VI., who reigned in 1355, profited by this event to enrich his family.²⁷⁰

Charles IV., a prince as weak as he was ambitious, was commonly surnamed the emperor of the priests.:

This Petrarch, who beheld too nearly the court of Avignon, compares it to²⁷¹

Although the weakness of the emperor Charles IV. had opened a new career to pontifical ambition, yet the return of some degree of light, and the perpetual commotions in the city of Rome, which kept innocent VI. at Avignon, which compelled Urban V. to return to it²⁷² and which would have sent Gregory XI. back, when he died; finally, the schism with which this pope’s death was followed; all these causes concurred in depriving the Holy See of the fruits of the policy and enterprises of Clement VI.

In 1378, the cardinals, assembled to give a successor to Gregory XI. proclaimed Barthelemi Pregnano, who took the name of Urban VI., and they a few months after withdrew to Fondi, where they elected Robert of Geneva, or Clement VII.: they pretended that the election of Urban was but a formality to appease the fury of a people which wished to control their choice. Clement was installed in Avignon: France, Spain, Scotland and Sicily acknowledged him: the rest of Europe supported Urban, who resided at Rome, and published in England a crusade against France. Urban died in 1389, and the cardinals of his party supplied his place by Peter Tomacelli or Boniface IX. On the other hand, Clement being deceased in 1394, the French cardinals raised to the pontificate Peter de Lune, a Spaniard, who was called Benedict XIII. Modes of reconciliation were proposed from all quarters; France especially evinced her anxiety to extinguish the schism: but neither of the pontiffs would lis-ten to relinquishing the tiara; and the spiritual arms directed by each pope against the other became harmless in their hands. What one did against the supporters of the other; what dangers they encountered; what cardinals, what kings, what cities, they excommunicated; how many threats, how many bulls, how many censures they published, we will not undertake to relate here: we shall only remark, that the Church of France, after useless efforts to reestablish concord, ended by withdrawing, in the year 1298, from obedience to either one or the other pontiff.:

Villaret²⁷³ adds, that Benedict having caused a report to be spread, that the French were desirous to withdraw from obedience to him in order to substitute a pope of their own nation, the king to do away such suspicions, declared, in his letters, that any pope would be agreeable to him, whether African, Arab or Indian, provided he did not dishonour by his passions the chair of St. Peter.

The French profited by these events to repress the exactions of the pontifical court. The churches were restored the right of freely electing their prelates, and collators the disposal of other benefices. Boniface IX. had perfected the art of enriching the Holy See; he had, as Fleury observed,²⁷⁴ doubly need of money, for himself, and, to support Ladislaus at Naples against the house of Anjou. We may read in Fleury,²⁷⁵ how the clergy, who possessed benefices at Rome, paid for the favour of being examined; how Boniface in the second and third year of his pontificate, dated as of the first the bulls for benefices; how he exacted compensation for this antedate; how he extended to prelacies the right of first fruits, that is, the reservation of the revenue of each benefice for the first year; how he kept couriers throughout Italy, to be apprised, without delay, of the sickness or death of prelates or other dignitaries, and in order to sell twice, or thrice, the same abbey or church; how, by clauses of preference, he revoked the reservation, and the survivorship, the price of which he had received: how he would even annul the preferences which paid a higher price; how in fine, this traffick, combining with the plague, and the consequent rapid mortality of the incumbents, brought into the treasury of the apostolic see, the innumerable contributions of all those who obtained, hoped for, or coveted, a rich or a poor ecclesiastical benefice.

It was, without doubt, impossible but that these scandalous abuses, multiplied and extended through the lapse of time from Hildebrand to Boniface IX. and Benedict XIII., should excite the indignation of upright minds and honest hearts. The French, much more christianized in the fourteenth century than the people of Italy or Germany, evinced, by this alone, more zeal in repressing the irregularities and excesses of the clergy. They had seconded Philip the Fair against Boniface VIII.; under Philip of Valois, Peter de Cugnieres had expressed their honourable wishes; and more than twenty years before their renunciation of Benedict XIII. as of Boniface IX. they had, under Charles V. enquired into the limits of ecclesiastical authority. A monument of this discussion has been preserved to us under the title of “The Verger’s dream, or Disputation between the clerk and the squire:”²⁷⁶ a work the author of which is not well known; but which we would attribute to John de Lignano, or to Charles de Louvieres, rather than to any other. The clerk in it claims for the successor of St. Peter, the title of Vicar-General of Jesus Christ upon earth.—The squire distinguishes two eras in our Saviour’s history, one of preaching and humility before his death, the other of power and of glory after his resurrection. St Peter, according to the squire and the pope as well as St. Peter, can represent but the poor and the modest: Jesus, preaching the gospel, and affecting over thrones and temporal things, no sort of pretension, acknowledging that his kingdom is not of this world, submitting himself to the civil power, and, in fine, rendering to Cesar, that which to Cesar belongs.