14th-Century Crises in the Church: Part I

Pope Boniface VIII and the College of Cardinals

The third major disaster of the 14th century in Europe was comprised of a series of crises within the Western, or Roman Church (We call it the Roman Catholic Church these days.). The Catholic church had its origins in the final centuries of the western Roman Empire, and, through the course of the middle ages, became one of the most powerful entities in western Europe. As it christianized the various barbarian nations that settled in Europe, the Catholic Church provided a source of unity in the Western world that was key to the emergence of a distinctly Western and European civilization. The bishop of Rome, eventually referring to himself as Pope (from the Latin word for father), claimed primacy in the church as both the spiritual and temporal leader of Europe. Technically, kings were granted their power by God through his representative on Earth, the Pope. The Church was represented as the instrument through which God granted salvation. It dominated the daily lives of medieval Europeans.

The failure of harvests, the tragic scale of the Black Death, and the death and destruction wrought by the pillaging and raping mercenary companies during the Hundred Years' War, served to weaken the faith of Europeans in a church that was already reeling from a series of crises that began at the turn of the 14th century. The problems of the Church had their origins in the struggle of kings to centralize power in the monarchies of their realms. In order to accomplish this kings needed to eliminate real and potential challenges to their authority. This meant the eventual rounding up and controlling of the rowdy nobility. But first, it meant asserting royal control over the affairs of the Church within their territories. This was not a new struggle, by any stretch of the imagination. However, it did come to a head at this time.

Philip IV and family

The quarrel, this time, began with Philip IV of France (r. 1285-1314), also known as Philip the Fair (Apparently, he was a good-looking dude.). Like many of the monarchs we will study, Philip had a cash-flow problem. In his quest to increase his royal revenues at the least possible expense to royal power, Philip made the claim that, as king of France, he had the right to tax the clergy of France as royal subjects. This clashed with the pope's claim of authority over both the church and the secular state. Pope Boniface VIII (r. 1294-1303) responded by issuing the Papal Bull (Not that kind of bull! It's an official letter of policy from the pope) called Claricis Laicos which expressly forbid the French monarchy from collecting taxes from the French clergy or seizing church property. Unmoved by this Bull, Philip continued to collect taxes (one half of their annual incomes) from the clergy of France.

His Holiness brought out the theological big guns in response to this upstart king's refusal to submit to papal authority. In the Bull Unam Sanctam (1302), Boniface made the strongest theological case for the supremacy of the spiritual authority (the pope) over the temporal authority (kings, princes, dukes, etc.);

"We are told by the word of the gospel that in this His fold there are two swords - a spiritual, namely, and a temporal... Both swords, the spiritual and the material, therefore, are in the power of the church; the one, indeed, to be wielded for the church, the other by the church; the one by the hand of the priest, the other by the hand of kings and knights, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. One sword, moreover, ought to be under the other, and the temporal authority to be subjected to the spiritual....

Indeed, we declare, announce and define, that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff." 

Since the king of France refused to be "subject to the Roman pontiff" in all affairs, Boniface VIII excommunicated him, denying him access to salvation. Philip sent troops into Italy to arrest Boniface. The plan was to bring him back to France to face trial. Boniface was rescued by Italian nobles, but soon died from the shock of this ordeal. Philip won; popes would never make these kind of outrageous claims at absolute authority over church and state. The power and prestige of the Church had taken a big hit. It was about to get much worse.

Pope Clement V, the first Avignon pope

In order to avoid the kind of challenge to royal authority he had under Boniface VIII, Philip IV arranged for the election of Frenchman to the office of pope. This new pope, Clement V, was much more cooperative with Philip's ambitions. He essential got rid of the most restrictive elements of Clericis Laicos and did away with Unam Sanctam. His biggest decision, however, involved the holy city of Rome. By 1300, Rome had become less than a shadow of its ancient glory. The former capital of the Roman Empire, which had housed over a million citizens within its walls, now contained only 40,000 people. Only one third of the space within the walls was occupied, and forests grew over the ruins of the ancient city. Wolves hunted and killed the cattle that grazed in the old forum at night. The city, and the Church, were at the mercy of the warring Colonna and Orsini families. Boniface used this turmoil in the city of Rome as an excuse to move the papacy to the city of Avignon, a territory of the Holy Roman Empire. Although it was not a subject of France, Avignon was across the Rhône River from French territory. This, paired with the apparently pro-French position of Clement V, led to the impression that the papacy was essentially a captive of the French monarchy. The papacy remained in Avignon for seventy-two years, a period of time known as the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1305-1377).

So what? What's the big deal? People and organizations move all the time.

The first major with this problem with this move was rooted in the theological and biblical basis for the primacy of the bishop of Rome in the Catholic Church. The very first bishop of Rome was St. Peter, the apostle of Christ, who was martyred in Rome and buried on the nearby Vatican Hill. The popes claim their authority as the heirs of St. Peter. This authority was derived from a passage in the Bible that was interpreted as giving primacy to Peter, and hence to the popes.

“And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter (Greek, Petros, rock, a nick name given to Simon Peter), and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

These words now adorn the inside of the dome of the Basilica of St. Peter at the Vatican. For many Europeans, the Pope derived his authority from the residence of the papacy in Rome. Since the pope no longer resided in the holy city, the office lost much of the prestige it had once enjoyed. The perception of the pope as being the captive of the French monarchy didn't do much to improve this loss of prestige, nor did the creation of several new French cardinals at Avignon.

The Papal Palace in Avignon

The second problem with this move had to do with the finances of the papacy. Running the Catholic Church was expensive; in fact it was becoming more expensive every day. Once the papacy had resided in Avignon for over 25 years, the pope decided that it was time to construct a palace worthy of the head of the Church. Unfortunately, when the Clement V moved away from Rome, he also gave up direct control of the Papal States, a collection of small states in northern Italy. This meant that he also gave up the revenues associated with control of those states. The pope needed money to pay for his palace and the day-to-day operation of the church. One answer to this financial problem came in the form of the increasing size of the papal bureaucracy. In order to compete with the increasing size and complexity of the monarchical states (especially France and England) and exert more control over the church, the papacy developed one of the most complex bureaucracies in the world. The sale of offices within this administrative system became a way for the popes of Avignon to raise the cash they desperately needed. The imposition of new church taxes also helped to increase papal revenues. The popes and the cardinals who took up residence in Avignon turned the stinky little backwater village into a thriving metropolis of grand palaces. The common people of Europe began to feel disconnected from the clergy and the institution of the Church. The inability of the Church to explain or to deal with the Black Death only increased this sense of alienation. The pope and the cardinals lived in splendor while most of Europe lived in squalor. As the 14th century progressed, Avignon became a symbol of everything that was wrong in the Catholic Church.

As the criticism of the papacy grew louder, many people began to call for the popes to return to Rome. Ironically, it was the attempt to effect that return that led to an even greater crisis for the Catholic Church, the Great Schism. This is where we will pick up in the next blog post.

Sources

Merriman, John, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present, 2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 2004

Palmer, R. R., Colton, Joel, A History of the Modern World, 8th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995

Spielvogel, Jackson, Western Civilization, 6th ed., Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth, 2006