On the principle probably that faith need not be kept with heretics the pledge was broken, and the invading army entered the town, put its defenders to the sword, filled up its trenches, demolished its ramparts and towers, and pulled down its strongholds. Moreover, the citizens of Avignon were heavily fined for their adherence to a heresy which they were solemnly sworn to abjure for the future; and, as if this were not enough, they were further compelled to maintain an armed and equipped body of thirty men in the Holy Land to assist in the recovery of the sacred tomb from the Saracens.
When Clement V., coerced by Philip the Fair, removed the Papal See from the Holy City and established his court in Avignon, he arrived in a town as unlike the existing one as it is possible to imagine, and took up his abode in the Monastery of the Dominican Friars. For Avignon was to him merely a stop-gap, and he never relinquished the idea of reinstating the Papal Chair in Rome.
His successor, John XXII., the shoemaker’s avaricious son, was not new to Avignon, having been its bishop before his elevation. He at once enlarged the small palace he had previously occupied; but this edifice was completely swept away by the building operations of Benedict XII., who succeeded him. This Pope it was who erected the greater part of the mass of buildings which to-day form the most conspicuous and enduring feature of the town. To call it a palace was a misnomer; it was a fortress, and one of the best examples of its period. It was a town within a town, and its designers were not so much concerned with creating a thing of beauty as in devising a refuge of irresistible strength. And yet its great plain walls have a beauty all their own, and the eye never tires of wandering over its various surfaces, unexpected, irregular, and vast. Its plan follows the irregular shape of the rock upon which it is founded, and was the work of succeeding Popes and their architects.
Of the seven exiled Popes, two, Benedict XII. and Clement VI., were most ambitious builders, and we are only to-day beginning to discover the true merit of the work carried out under their direction. For during the whole of the nineteenth century the buildings were in the hands of the military, who transformed and mutilated them in adapting them to their requirements, and it is only recently that the walls with which they blocked up doors, windows, and staircases have been removed, as also the floors and partitions with which they divided the vast chapel and audience chambers.
Most of the beautiful windows, specimens of early Gothic, which originally gave character to the whole building and more particularly to the courtyard into which they looked, disappeared when the place became a barracks, and were replaced by ugly square openings, totally out of keeping with the surrounding masonry.
The utilitarian engineer had but little regard for the architectural and archæological amenities of this monument, and with ruthless hands desecrated rich carvings and rare frescoes, timbered ceilings and vaulted roofs; therefore a large expenditure of money, time, and skill will be required to restore the Palace of the Popes to anything like its former splendour.
The work of restoration is being carried out under the auspices of a Government which is animated by a spirit very different from that of many of its predecessors, and already the imposing audience hall and the magnificent
