I. The Hierarchy, Clergy, and Monks.

§ 110. The Papacy.[323]

From the time of Gelasius II. (§ [96, 11]) it had been the custom of the popes whenever Italy became too hot for them to fly to France, and from France they had obtained help to deliver Italy from the tyranny of the latest representatives of the Hohenstaufens. But when Boniface VIII. dared boldly to assert the universal sovereignty of the papacy even over France itself, this presumption wrought its own overthrow. The consequence was a seventy years’ exile of the papal chair to the banks of the Rhone, with complete subjugation under French authority. Under the protection of the French court, however, the popes found Avignon a safe asylum, and from thence they issued the most extravagant hierarchical claims, especially upon Germany. The return of the papal court to Rome was the occasion of a forty years’ schism, during which two popes, for a time even three, are seen hurling anathemas at one another. The reforming Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel sought to put an end to this scandal and bring about a reformation in the head and the members. The fathers in these councils, however, in accordance with the prevalent views of the age, maintained the need of one visible head for the government of the church, such as was afforded by the papacy. But the corruptions of the papal chair led them to adopt the old theory that the highest ecclesiastical authority is not the pope but the voice of the universal church expressed in the œcumenical councils, which had jurisdiction over even the popes. The successful carrying out of this view was possible only if the several national churches which had come now more decidedly than ever to regard themselves as independent branches of the great ecclesiastical organism, should heartily combine against the corrupt papacy. But this they did not do. They were contented with making separate attacks, in accordance with their several selfish interests. Hence papal craft found little difficulty in rendering the strong remonstrances of these councils fruitless and without result. The papacy came forth triumphant, and during the 15th century, the age of the Renaissance, reached a degree of corruption and moral turpitude which it had not approached since the 10th century. The vicars of God now used their spiritual rank only to further their ambitious worldly schemes, and by the most scandalous nepotism (the so-called nephews being often bastards of the popes, who were put into the highest and most lucrative offices) as well as by their own voluptuousness, luxury, revelry, and love of war, brought ruin upon the church and the States of the Church.

§ 110.1. Boniface VIII. and Benedict XI., A.D. 1294-1304.—Boniface VIII., A.D. 1294-1303 (§ [96, 22]), was not inferior to his great predecessor in political talents and strength of will, but was destitute of all spiritual qualities and without any appreciation of the spiritual functions of the papal chair, while passionately maintaining the most extravagant claims of the hierarchy. The opposition to the pope was headed by two cardinals of the powerful Colonna family, who maintained that the abdication of Cœlestine V. was invalid. In A.D. 1297 Boniface stripped them of all their dignities, and then they appealed to an œcumenical council as a court of higher jurisdiction. The pope now threatened them and their supporters with the ban, fitted out a crusade against them, and destroyed their castles. At last after a sore struggle Palæstrina, the old residence of their family, capitulated. Also the Colonnas themselves submitted. Nevertheless in A.D. 1299 he had the famous old city and all its churches and palaces levelled to the ground, and refused to restore to the outlawed family its confiscated estates. Then again the Colonnas took up arms, but were defeated and obliged to fly the country, while the pope forbade under threat of the ban any city or realm to give refuge or shelter to the fugitives. But neither his anathema nor his army was able to keep the rebellious Sicilians under papal dominion. Even in his first contest with the French king, Philip IV. the Fair, A.D. 1285-1314, he had the worst of it. The pope had vainly sought to mediate between Philip and Edward I. of England, when both were using church property in carrying on war with one another, and in A.D. 1295 he issued the bull Clericis laicos, releasing subjects from their allegiance and anathematizing all laymen who should appropriate ecclesiastical revenues and all priests who should put them to uses not sanctioned by the pope. Philip then forbade all payment of church dues, and the pope finding his revenues from France withheld, made important concessions in A.D. 1297 and canonized Philip’s grandfather, Louis IX. His hierarchical assumptions in Germany gave promise of greater success. After the first Hapsburger’s death in A.D. 1291, his son Albert was set aside, and Adolf, Count of Nassau, elected king; but he again was overthrown and Albert I. crowned in A.D. 1298. Boniface summoned Albert to his tribunal as a traitor and murderer of the king, and released the German princes from their oaths of allegiance to him. Meanwhile, during A.D. 1301, Boniface and Philip were quarrelling over vacant benefices in France. The king haughtily repudiated the pretensions of the papal legate and imprisoned him as a traitor. Boniface demanded his immediate liberation, summoned the French bishops to a council at Rome, and in the bull Ausculta fili showed the king how foolish, sinful, and heretical it was for him not to be subject to the pope. The bull torn from the messenger’s hands was publicly burnt, and a version of it probably falsified published throughout the kingdom along with the king’s reply. All France rose in revolt against the papal pretensions, and a parliament at Notre Dame in Paris A.D. 1302, at which the king assembled the three estates of the empire, the nobles, the clergy, and (for the first time) the citizens, it was unanimously resolved to support Philip and to write in that spirit to Rome, the bishops undertaking to pacify the pope, the nobles and citizens making their complaint to the cardinals. The king expressly forbade his clergy taking any part in the council that had been summoned, which, however, met in the Lateran, in Nov., 1302. From it Boniface issued the famous bull Unam Sanctam, in which, after the example of Innocent III. and Gregory IX., he set forth the doctrine of the two swords, the spiritual wielded by the church and the temporal for the church, by kings and warriors indeed, but only according to the will and by the permission of the spiritual ruler. That the temporal power is independent was pronounced a Manichæan heresy; and finally it was declared that no human being could be saved unless he were subject to the Roman pontiff. King and parliament now accused the pope of heresy, simony, blasphemy, sorcery, tyranny, immorality, etc., and insisted that he should answer these charges before an œcumenical council. Meanwhile, in A.D. 1303, Boniface was negotiating with king Albert, and got him not only to break his league with Philip, but also to acknowledge himself a vassal of the papal see. The pope had all his plans laid for launching his anathema against Philip, but their execution was anticipated by the king’s assassins. His chancellor Nogaret and Sciarra, one of the exiled Colonnas, who, with the help of French gold, had hatched a conspiracy among the barons, attacked the papal palace and took the pope prisoner while he sat in full state upon his throne. The people indeed rescued him, but he died some weeks after in a raging fever in his 80th year.Dante assigns him a place in hell. In the mouth of his predecessor Cœlestine V. have been put the prophetic words, Ascendisti ut vulpes, regnatis ut leo, morieris ut canis.[324] His successor Benedict XI., A.D. 1303, 1304, would have willingly avenged the wrongs of Boniface, but weak and unsupported as he was he soon found himself obliged, not only to withdraw all imputations against Philip, who always maintained his innocence, but also to absolve those of the Colonnas who were less seriously implicated.

§ 110.2. The Papacy during the Babylonian Exile, A.D. 1305-1377.—After a year’s vacancy the papal chair was filled by Bertrand de Got, Archbishop of Bordeaux, a determined supporter of Boniface, who took the name of Clement V., A.D. 1305-1314. He refused to go to be enthroned at Rome, and forced the cardinals to come to Lyons, and finally, in A.D. 1309, formally removed the papal court to Avignon, which then belonged to the king of Naples as Count of Provence. At this time, too, Clement so far yielded to Philip’s wish to have Boniface condemned and struck out of the list of popes, as to appoint two commissions to consider charges against Boniface, one in France and the other in Italy. Most credible witnesses accused the deceased pope of heresies, crimes, and immoralities committed in word and deed mostly in their presence, while the rebutting evidence was singularly weak. A compromise was effected by Clement surrendering the Templars to the greedy and revengeful king. In the bull Rex gloriæ of A.D. 1311 he expressly declares that Philip’s proceeding against Boniface was bona fide, occasioned by zeal for church and country, cancels all Boniface’s decrees and censures upon the French king and his servants, and orders them to be erased from the archives.The 15th œcumenical Council of Vienne in A.D. 1311 was mainly occupied with the affairs of the Templars, and also with the consideration of the controversies in the Franciscan order (§ [112, 2]).—Henry VII. of Luxemburg was raised to the German throne on Albert’s death in A.D. 1208 in opposition to Philip’s brother Charles. Clement supported him and crowned him emperor, hoping to be protected by him from Philip’s tyranny. At Milan in A.D. 1311 Henry received the iron crown of Lombardy; but at Rome the imperial coronation was effected in A.D. 1312, not in St. Peter’s, the inner city being held by Robert of Naples, papal vassal and governor of Italy, but only in the Lateran at the hands of the cardinals commissioned to do so. The emperor now, in spite of all papal threats, pronounced the ban of the empire against Robert, and in concert with Frederick of Sicily entered on a campaign against Naples, but his sudden death in A.D. 1313 (according to an unsupported legend caused by a poisoned host) put an end to the expedition. Clement also died in the following year; and to him likewise has Dante assigned a place in hell.

§ 110.3. After two years’ murderous strife between the Italian and French cardinals, the French were again victorious, and elected at Lyons John XXII., A.D. 1316-1334, son of a shoemaker of Cahors in Gascony, who was already seventy-two years old. He is said to have sworn to the Italians never to use a horse or mule but to ride to Rome, and then to have taken ship on the Rhone for Avignon, where during his eighteen years’ pontificate he never went out of his palace except to go into the neighbouring cathedral. Working far into the night, this seemingly weak old man was wont to devote all his time to his studies and his business. The weight of his official duties will be seen from the fact that 60,000 minutes, filling 59 vols. in the papal archives, belong to his reign.—In Germany, after the death of Henry VII. there were two rivals for the throne, Louis IV. the Bavarian, A.D. 1314-1347, and Frederick III. of Austria. The pope, maintaining the closest relations with Robert of Anjou, his feudatory as king of Naples and his protector as Count of Provence, and esteeming his wish as a command, refused to acknowledge either, declared the German throne still vacant, and assumed to himself the administration of the realm during the vacancy. At Mühldorf in A.D. 1322 Louis conquered his opponent and took him prisoner. He sent a detachment of Ghibellines over the Alps, while he made himself master of Milan and put an end to the papal administration in Northern Italy. The pope in A.D. 1323 ordered him within three months to cease discharging all functions of government till his election as German king should be acknowledged and confirmed by the papal chair. Louis first endeavoured to come to an understanding with the pope, but soon employed the sharp pens of the Minorites, who in May, 1324, drew up a solemn protest in which the king, basing his claims to royalty solely on the election of the princes and treating the pope as one who had forfeited his chair in consequence of his heresies (§ [112, 2]), appealed from this false pope to an œcumenical council and a future legitimate pope. John now thundered an anathema against him, declared that he was deprived of all his dignities, freed his subjects from their allegiance, forbade them, under pain of anathema, to obey him, and summoned all European potentates to war against the excommunicated monarch. Louis now sought Frederick’s favour, and in A.D. 1325 shared with him the royal dignity. In Milan in A.D. 1327 he was crowned king of Lombardy, and in A.D. 1328 in Rome he received the imperial crown from the Roman democracy. Two bishops of the Ghibelline party gave him consecration, and the crown was laid on his head by Sciarra Colonna in the name of the Roman people. In vain did the pope pronounce all these proceedings null and void. The king began a process against the pope, deposed him as a heretic and antichrist, and finally condemned him to death as guilty of high treason, while the mob carried out this sentence by burning the pope in effigy upon the streets. The people and clergy of Rome, in accordance with an old canon, elected a new pope in the person of a pious Minorite of the sect of the Spirituales (§ [112, 2]), who took the name of Nicholas V. Louis with his own hand placed the tiara on his head, and was then himself crowned by him. All this glory, however, was but short lived. An unsuccessful and inglorious war against Robert of Naples and a consequent revolt in Rome caused the emperor in A.D. 1328, with his army and his pope, amid the stonethrowing of the mob, to quit the eternal city, which immediately became subject to the curia. He did not fare much better in Tuscany or Lombardy; and thus the Roman expedition ended in failure. Returning to Munich, Louis endeavoured in vain amid many humiliations to move the determined old man at Avignon. But Nicholas V., the most wretched of all the anti-popes, went to Avignon with a rope about his neck in A.D. 1328, cast himself at the pope’s feet, was absolved, and died a prisoner in the papal palace in A.D. 1333. Next year John died. Notwithstanding the expensive Italian wars 25,000,000 gold guldens was found in the papal treasury at his death.—Roused by his opposition to the stricter party among the Franciscans (§ [112, 2]), its leaders lent all their influence to the Bavarian and supported the charge of heresy against the pope. Against John’s favourite doctrine that the souls of departed saints attain to the vision of God only after the last judgment, these zealots cited the opinions of the learned world (§ [113, 3]), with the University of Paris at its head. Philip VI. of France was also in the controversy one of his bitterest opponents, and even threatened him with the stake. Pressed on all sides the pope at last in A.D. 1333 convened a commission of scholars to decide the question, but died before its judgment was given. His successor hasted to still the tumult by issuing the story of a deathbed recantation, and gave ecclesiastical sanction to the opposing view.

§ 110.4. Benedict XII., A.D. 1334-1342, would probably have yielded to the urgent entreaties of the Romans to return to Rome had not his cardinals been so keenly opposed. He then built a palace at Avignon of imposing magnitude, as though the papacy were to have an eternal residence there. Louis the Bavarian retracted his heretical sentiments in order to get the ban removed and to obtain an orderly coronation. The first diet of the electoral union was held at Rhense near Mainz, in A.D. 1338, where it was declared that the election of a German king and emperor was, by God’s appointment, the sole privilege of the elector-princes, and needed not the confirmation or approval of the pope. This encouraged Louis to assert anew his imperial pretensions. Benedict’s successor Clement VI., A.D. 1342-1352, added by purchase in A.D. 1348 the city of Avignon to the county of Venaissin, which Philip III. had gifted to the papal chair in A.D. 1273.Both continued in the possession of the Roman court till A.D. 1791 (§ 165, 13). Louis, now at feud with some of the powerful German nobles, sought to make terms of peace with the new pope. But Clement was not conciliatory, and made the unheard of demand that Louis should not only annul all his previous ordinances, but also should in future issue no enactment in the empire without permission of the papal see; and on Maunday Thursday, A.D. 1346, he pronounced him without title or dignity and called upon the electors to make a new choice, which, if they failed to do, he would proceed to do himself. As fittest candidate he recommended Charles of Bohemia, who was actually chosen by the five electors who answered the summons, under the title of Charles IV., A.D. 1346-1378, and had his election confirmed by the pope. The new emperor solemnly promised never to set foot on the domains of the Roman church without express papal permission, and to remain in Rome only so long as was required for his coronation. Louis died before he was able to engage in war with his rival, and when, six months later, the next choice of Louis’ party also died, Charles was acknowledged without a dissentient voice. He was crowned emperor in Rome by a cardinal appointed by Innocent VI., in A.D. 1355. Without doing anything to restore the imperial prestige in Italy, Charles went back like a fugitive to Germany, despised by Guelphs and Ghibellines. But in the following year, at the Diet of Nuremberg, he passed a new imperial law in the so called Golden Bull of A.D. 1356, according to which the election of emperor was to be made at Frankfort, by three clerical electors (Mainz, Cologne, and Treves) and four temporal princes (Bohemia, the Palatine of the Rhine, Saxony, and Brandenburg), and he appeased the pope’s wrath by various concessions to the curia and the clergy.

§ 110.5. The famous Rienzi was made apostolic notary by Clement VI. in A.D. 1343, and as tribune of the people headed the revolt against the barons in A.D. 1347. Losing his popularity through his own extravagances he was obliged to flee, and being taken prisoner by Charles at Prague, he was sent to Avignon in A.D. 1350. Instead of the stake with which Clement had threatened him, Innocent VI., A.D. 1352-1362, bestowed senatorial rank upon him, and sent him to Rome, hoping that his demagogical talent would succeed in furthering the interests of the papacy. He now once more, amid loud acclamations, entered the eternal city, but after two months, hated and cursed as a tyrant, he was murdered in A.D. 1354, while attempting flight.—By A.D. 1367 things had so improved in Rome that, notwithstanding the opposition of king and court and the objections of luxurious cardinals unwilling to quit Avignon, Urban V., A.D. 1362-1370, in October of that year made a triumphal entrance into Rome amid the jubilations of the Romans. Charles’ Italian expedition of the following year was inglorious and without result. The disquiet and party strifes prevailing through the country made the position of the pope so uncomfortable, that notwithstanding the earnest entreaty of St. Bridget (§ [112, 8]), who threatened him with the Divine judgment of an early death in France, he returned in A.D. 1370 to Avignon, where in ten weeks the words of the northern prophetess were fulfilled. His successor was Gregory XI., A.D. 1370-1378. Rome and the States of the Church had now again become the scene of the wildest anarchy, which Gregory could only hope to quell by his personal presence. The exhortations of the two prophetesses of the age, St. Bridget and St. Catherine (§ [112, 4]), had a powerful influence upon him, but what finally determined him was the threat of the exasperated Romans to elect an anti-pope. And so in spite of the renewed opposition of the cardinals and the French court, the curia again returned to Rome in A.D. 1377; but though the rejoicing at the event throughout the city was great, the results were by no means what had been expected. Sick and disheartened, the pope was already beginning to speak of going back to Avignon, when his death in A.D. 1378 put an end to his cares and sufferings.

§ 110.6. The Papal Schism and the Council of Pisa.—Under pressure from the people the cardinals present in Rome almost unanimously chose the Neapolitan archbishop of Bari, who took the name of Urban VI., A.D. 1378-1389. His energies were mainly directed to the emancipating of the papal chair from French interference and checking the abuses introduced into the papal court during the Avignon residence; but the impatience and bitterness which he showed in dealing with the greed, pomp, and luxury of the cardinals roused them to choose another pope. After four months, they met at Fundi, declared that the choice of Urban had been made under compulsion, and was therefore invalid. In his place they elected a Frenchman, Robert, cardinal of Geneva, who was enthroned under the name of Clement VII., A.D. 1378-1394. The three Italians present protested against this proceeding and demanded, but in vain, the decision of a council. Thus began the greatest and most mischievous papal schism, A.D. 1378-1417. France, Naples, and Savoy at once, and Spain and Scotland somewhat later, declared in favour of Clement; while the rest of Western Europe acknowledged Urban. The two most famous saints of the age, St. Catherine and St. Vincent Ferrér (§ [115, 2]), though both disciples of Dominic, took different sides, the former as an Italian favouring Urban, the latter as a Spaniard favouring Clement. Failing to secure a footing in Italy, Clement took possession of the papal castle at Avignon in A.D. 1379. The schism lasted for forty years, during which time Boniface IX., A.D. 1389-1404, Innocent VII., A.D. 1404-1406, and Gregory XII., A.D. 1406-1415, elected by the cardinals in Rome, held sway there in succession, while at Avignon on Clement’s death his place was taken by the Spanish cardinal Pedro de Luna as Benedict XIII., A.D. 1394-1424. The Council of Paris of A.D. 1395 recommended the withdrawal of both popes and a new election, but Benedict insisted upon a decision by a two-thirds majority in favour of one or other of the two rivals. An œcumenical council at Pisa, in A.D. 1409, dominated mainly by the influence of Gerson (§ [118, 4]), who maintained that the authority of the councils is superior to that of the pope, made short work with both contesting popes, whom it pronounced contumacious and deposed. After the cardinals present had bound themselves by an oath that whosoever of them might be chosen should not dissolve the council until a reform of the church in its head and members should be carried out, they elected a Greek of Candia in his seventieth year, Cardinal Philangi, who was consecrated as Alexander V., A.D. 1409-1410, and for three years the council continued to sit without effecting any considerable reforms. The consequence was that the world had the edifying spectacle of three contemporary popes anathematizing one another.

§ 110.7. The Council of Constance and Martin V.—Alexander V. died after a reign of ten months by poison administered, as was supposed, by Balthasar Cossa, resident cardinal legate and absolute military despot, suspected of having been in youth engaged in piracy. Cossa succeeded, as John XXIII., A.D. 1410-1415. He was acknowledged by the new Roman king, Sigismund, A.D. 1411-1437, and soon afterwards, in A.D. 1412, by Ladislas [Ladislaus] of Naples, so that Gregory XII. was thus deprived of his last support. The University of Paris continued to demand the holding of a council to effect reforms. Sigismund, supported by the princes, insisted on its being held in a German city. Meanwhile Ladislas [Ladislaus] had quarrelled with the pope, and had overrun the States of the Church and plundered Rome in A.D. 1413, and John was obliged to submit to Sigismund’s demands, He now summoned the 16th œcumenical Council of Constance, A.D. 1414-1418 (§ [119, 5]). It was the most brilliant and the most numerously attended council ever held. More than 18,000 priests and vast numbers of princes, counts, and knights, with an immense following; in all about 100,000 strangers, including thousands of harlots from all countries, and hordes of merchants, artisans, showmen, and players of every sort. Gerson and D’Ailly, the one representing European learning, the other the claims of the Gallican church (§ [118, 4]), were the principal advisers of the council. The decision to vote not individually but by nations (Italian, German, French, and English) destroyed the predominance of the Italian prelates, who as John’s creatures were present in great numbers. Terrified by an anonymous accusation, which charged the pope with the most heinous crimes, he declared himself ready to withdraw if the other two popes would also resign, but took advantage of the excitement of a tournament to make his escape disguised as an ostler. Sigismund could with difficulty keep the now popeless council together. John, however, was captured, seventy-two serious charges formulated against him, and on 26th July, A.D. 1415, he was deposed and condemned to imprisonment for life. He was given up to the Count Palatine Louis of Baden, who kept him prisoner in Mannheim, and afterwards in Heidelberg. Meanwhile the leader of an Italian band making use of the name of Martin V. purchased his release with 3,000 ducats. He now submitted himself to that pope, and was appointed by him cardinal-bishop of Tuscoli, and dean of the sacred college, but soon afterwards died in Florence, in A.D. 1419. Gregory XII. also submitted in A.D. 1415, and was made cardinal-bishop of Porto. Benedict, however, retired to Spain and refused to come to terms, but even the Spanish princes withdrew their allegiance from him as pope. The cardinals in conclave elected the crafty Oddo Colonna, who was consecrated as Martin V., A.D. 1417-1431. There was no more word of reformation. With great pomp the council was closed, and indulgence granted to its members. As the whole West now recognised Martin as the true pope the schism may be said to end with his accession, though Benedict continued to thunder anathemas from his strong Spanish castle till his death in A.D. 1424, and three of his four cardinals elected as his successor Clement VIII. and the fourth another Benedict XIV. Of the latter no notice was taken, but Clement submitted in A.D. 1429, and received the bishopric of Majorca.—Martin V. on entering Rome in A.D. 1420 found everything in confusion and desolate.By his able administration a change was soon effected, and the Rome of the Renaissance rose on the ruins of the mediæval city.[325]