14th-Century Crises in the Church: Part II

Gregory XI is anointed as pope while the Hundred Years' War rages outside

When we left off, the papacy had been moved to the town of Avignon, near French territory, resulting in the perception that the popes were under the control of the French crown and a disastrous loss of prestige for the Church. The corruption caused by the need to raise funds for the establishment of the papal curia in Avignon and to offset the loss of income from the Papal States only lowered the opinions Europeans held of the organization responsible for the salvation of their souls. The cries for the papacy to return to Rome only grew louder as the 14th century ground on. The most direct call came from a young nun from Tuscany, Catherine of Siena (c. 1347-1380). Instead of locking herself away in the convent, Catherine very adeptly involved herself in the political world of 14th century Italy, claiming to have been inspired to do this by a vision of Christ. In 1346 the city of Florence decided to utilize her talents to persuade Pope Gregory XI (1370-1378) to move the papacy back to Rome. In 1377, Pope Gregory, in order to avoid a further decline in prestige, returned to Rome. Unfortunately, the city had experienced further decline during the decades that the popes had been absent. The loss of commerce associated with pilgrimages and the business generated by the presence of the great households of the cardinals had a disastrous effect upon the economy of the city. Now that the papacy was back in Rome, the citizens of Rome were determined to keep it there.

Catherine of Siena persuades Gregory XI to return the papacy to Rome

Gregory XI died in 1378, less than a year after returning to Rome. The cardinals met, as usual, in conclave to elect a new pope. However, this was the first time they had met in Rome since 1305. This time they were at the mercy of the citizens of Rome. The Romans were afraid that the cardinals, most of whom were French, would elect another Frenchman, as they had done in 1305, and the papacy would move back to Avignon. They made it very clear to the cardinals that they would not leave the city alive if the next pope was not either a Roman or an Italian (no pressure). The cardinals took the threat very seriously (a very wise decision), and elected the archbishop of Bari, who took the name Urban VI (1378-1389). In order to secure a future Italian succession to the papacy, Urban VI immediately began the process of packing the college of cardinals with enough new Italian cardinals to negate the French majority. The French cardinals, fearing the Roman population, left Rome as soon as they possibly could. Once they were clear of Rome, they declared that the election of Urban VI was illegitimate because they had been forced to elect an Italian under a threat of death. They wasted no time in holding a second conclave, where they elected one of their own as pope. This Frenchman took the name Clement VII (1378-1394) and returned to Avignon. There were now two popes; Urban VI in Rome and Clement VII in Avignon. This situation is called the Great Schism of the Western Church, and would last until 1417 (almost 40 years!).

This split in the Church only served to accelerate the decline of papal prestige. Both popes found that they were in desperate need of money and had only half of the revenues of the church available. Each pope increased the practice of simony, the selling of benefices and offices to the highest bidder. The popes added to the already heavy tax burden of many European commoners by increasing taxation. The ongoing war between the French and English at this time ensured that this religious rift would also become part of a growing political rift as well. France and its allies, Spain, Scotland, and the Kingdom of Naples (southern Italy), naturally supported Clement VII and the Avignon popes. England and its allies, Germany, Scandinavia, and most of the northern Italian states, supported Urban VI and the Roman popes. Each pope condemned the other as Antichrist. The king of France, whose protection of the Avignon popes guaranteed the continuation of the schism, even sent the duke of Anjou and his army to Italy in an attempt to drive the Roman pope out. Christianity, which had served as a unifying force in European civilization, had now become a source of further discord.

The Council of Constance (1414-1418) works to repair the Great Schism

The Great Schism was not easily created and it was not easily repaired. The question of authority within the Church, which had caused the problems at the beginning of the 14th century, now became more important than ever. The question now revolved around the question of who had the authority to depose both popes and fix the Church. The answer came from the theologians at the University of Paris. Earlier in the century, Marsiglio da Padova, rector of the university, wrote Defensor Pacis (Defender of the Peace), a neat little treatise that was intended as a logical argument that would deny the authority of the popes over temporal rulers. Not only did Marsiglio claim that temporal authority was independent of spiritual authority, he argued that the church should only be concerned with spiritual matters. This was a major theological victory for the secular authorities in Europe that would speed the separation of church and state in the modern era. Marsiglio's argument turned the clergy (priests) into the administrators of the Church, and, indeed, he argued that final authority rested on their shoulders, not on the popes. Based upon this interpretation of spiritual authority, large numbers of the clergy began to call for the formation of general church council to repair the schism.

This conciliar movement hoped that either the church hierarchy (cardinals, archbishops, bishops...) or the Holy Roman Emperor would call for a council. When the Emperor failed to do this, cardinals from both sides decided to meet in council at Pisa in 1409. The Council of Pisa, unfortunately, made the schism much worse. They elected a new pope, Alexander V (1409-1410), and deposed the other two popes. While they officially deposed the popes in Avignon and Rome, they failed to back this decision up with force. Both popes remained. Now there were three popes! Alexander V died shortly thereafter and was succeeded by Cardinal Baldassare Cossa, a former pirate and soldier of questionable morals who used money from the Medici Bank in Florence to win election as Pope John XXIII. The prestige of the Church had hit rock bottom. The Holy Roman Emperor called for another council at Constance to do what the Council of Pisa had failed to do. The Council of Constance (1414-1418), backed by the authority and the army of the Holy Roman Emperor, finally succeeded in deposing all three popes and securing the election of a Roman pope, Martin V. The Great Schism and the Avignon papacy had finally come to an end. All of the popes who ruled from Avignon between 1378 and 1417 are now known as Antipopes in the Catholic Church.

Jan Hus burns at the stake in Constance

The damage done to the Church was much more than political and financial. The prestige of the Church and the confidence of the faithful had been severely damaged by the century of crises and controversy. Europe experience a crisis of faith that would continue into the early modern period European history. In an attempt to take their salvation into their own hands and to have a personal experience of God, many European turned to mysticism. Groups like the Brothers and Sisters of the Common life attempted to live simple lives in imitation of Christ in their own semi-monastic communities. The important thing to remember is that they did this outside of the structure of institutional church. Other theologians directly attacked the authority and necessity of the Church and its clergy. John Wyclif (c. 1328-1384), an English theologian, argued that Bible should be the sole authority in the spiritual life of Christians. He encouraged the translation of the Bible from Latin into vernacular languages so that it could be read by all Christians, not just the clergy. He also argued that there was absolutely no basis in Scripture for the papal claim of temporal authority, that the popes should be stripped of all authority and have all of their property confiscated. This made him very popular with the English kings, who kept him from being burned at the stake. Jan Hus (1374-1415), a Bohemian (Czech) who had been influenced by the doctrine of Wyclif, was not so lucky. The movement he inspired, known as Hussites, combined dissatisfaction with the Church with a resentment of German domination into a strong political and religious movement. Hus did not have the advantage of royal protection or distance from Rome like Wyclif. He was summoned to the Council of Constance in 1415 by Emperor Sigismund in order do "defend" his ideas. When he reached Constance, Hus was arrested, condemned as a heretic, and burned at the stake. Wyclif and Hus planted the ideological seeds that would bloom in the Protestant Reformation a century later.

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

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