About this time the St. Vitus' dance began to decline, so that milder forms of it appeared more frequently, while the severer cases became more rare; and even in these, some of the important symptoms gradually disappeared. Paracelsus makes no mention of the tympanites as taking place after the attacks, although it may occasionally have occurred; and Schenck von Graffenberg, a celebrated physician of the latter half of the sixteenth century, speaks of this disease as having been frequent only in the time of his forefathers.
ELECTION OF ANTIPOPE CLEMENT VII
BEGINNING OF THE GREAT SCHISM
A.D. 1378
HENRY HART MILMAN
In 1308 Pope Clement V, a Frenchman, under the influence of King Philip the Fair, of France, transferred the papal chair from Rome to Avignon, a possession of the holy see beyond the Alps, in Philip's dominions. The sojourn there of Clement and his successors, which continued until 1376, is known as the "Babylonish captivity" of the popes.
Rome, from the first, was angry at this loss of supremacy, and aimed at recovering her prestige; and throughout the Christian world—France alone excepted—it was regarded as a scandal that the chair of St. Peter should rest on any soil but that of the Eternal City; but the French kings, and the cardinals of France—outnumbering all others in the sacred college—were determined to retain the pontifical seat in their own territory.
During the pontificate of Gregory XI (1371-1378) Italy was torn by civil dissensions; the "free companies"—bands of organized marauders—ravaged the country with fire and sword, plundering Guelf and Ghibelline alike. Gregory's legates in the government of the ecclesiastical states rendered themselves so odious to the people by their immorality and rapacity that a league of the more powerful political factions was formed for throwing off the yoke of the "absentee" papal rulers. This was the beginning of the War of Liberation (1375) that was to shake the papal power in Italy to its very foundations.