Once the Pope, the College of Cardinals, and all the administrative staff of the Curia left for Avignon, the heart went out of Rome. Medieval Rome showed little either of its previous classical glory or the Renaissance splendour that was to follow, being nothing much more than an extensive collection of ruins, together with many scattered fortified houses belonging to local magnates, a few fine churches, most of which have today been replaced by much grander structures and a great number of smaller, often derelict ecclesiastical buildings. Compared with much larger and more prosperous Tuscan towns such as Florence, or with the flourishing port of Pisa, Rome had no economic advantages. Its sole industry was the papal administration, which brought a constant stream of litigants and petitioners; and once the Curia had left, the task of governing the papal properties from distant Avignon was much more difficult.
Originally the former Byzantine territory known as the Exarchate of Ravenna, by the thirteenth century the Papal States consisted of a slice across northern and central Italy, from the Po valley to south of Rome, and from coast to coast. There was no effective central control; great families controlled large areas of technically papal land and many of the larger towns, such as Bologna or Ferrara, were almost international powers, and ruggedly independent. Much of the rest was splintered among dozens of municipalities and feudal estates. Rome itself was left to its feuding nobles and the rising power of the people themselves, which culminated in the extraordinary adventure of the innkeeper’s son Cola di Rienzo, who set himself the aim of restoring the classic Roman Republic and uniting Italy. For two brief periods it looked as if Cola might succeed, at least in Rome, but his own arbitrary behaviour brought about the inevitable reaction and his downfall.
The whole formed an irresistible target for the two foreign dynasties with Italian ambitions, the French in Naples and the German emperors.
Disappointed in Sicily and left with only the mainland, commonly known as the Regno, to misgovern and oppress, King Charles I of Naples died in 1295, leaving his heir a prisoner of the victorious Aragonese. Liberated three years later, Charles II (1295– 1309) was crowned King of Naples, still claiming Sicily and continuing the complex and generally sordid story of the Angevin monarchs. Since the Papal States cut off their territory from the rest of Italy the Angevins were dependent on an alliance with the popes and their Italian supporters, generally known as the Guelfs, and opposed by the Emperor’s allies, the Ghibellines. Under Charles II’s successor, King Robert (1309–43), who combined unlimited ambition with limited competence, the region’s descent into poverty and corruption began. Robert’s grandfather Charles I had also acquired the whole of Provence in 1274 and the County of Piedmont, in the north of Italy, which at first Robert was able to extend considerably. Acting also as Pope Clement’s representative in the whole of the Romagna, he should have been in a strong position to control all Italy, especially when Pope John XXII confirmed him as ruler of Genoa, a position he hung on to between 1318 and 1335. But repeated reverses in Sicily – five failed invasions between 1314 and 1338 – and rebellion in the Romagna forced Robert back into the distant boundaries of the Kingdom of Naples. His successor, Queen Joanna I (1343–82), a lively lady with an unfortunate taste in lovers, provoked a family feud with her cousin King Louis of Hungary. In 1348 a Hungarian army invaded Naples, and a long period of continuously bloody anarchy followed.
The major power on the northern borders of the papal territories had been for centuries the German kings with their claim to be Roman emperors, the heirs of Charlemagne. The German king was elected by his fellow-magnates – three prelates, the Archbishops of Cologne, Trier and Mainz, and four laymen, the Count Palatine, the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg and, since 1290, the King of Bohemia. Once elected, and crowned at Charlemagne’s capital of Aachen, he could also claim to be King of the Romans, and proceed to Italy, first to receive the Iron Crown of Lombardy at Milan, then to Rome for his coronation as emperor by the pope: if, that is, he was strong enough to do so. As with the pope, the theoretical powers of the emperor were extensive, but in practice his authority was both shakier and more intermittent. The fragmented northern Italian states acknowledged imperial authority when it suited them, or when an emperor could assert it by bringing German forces into Italy. The rest of Europe, while not accepting their authority, recognized successive emperors’ seniority. Even English kings, often allied with the empire against France, usually contesting the Burgundian and Flemish imperial possessions, were willing to grant the German emperor great respect, but it was on his own family’s German lands and those of his allies that any emperor relied on for his core support.
After the death of the last Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II in 1254, the whole idea of a Roman empire seemed to be sliding into obsolescence. Count Adolf of Nassau, elected in 1292, was killed in battle by his rival, Albert of Habsburg, six years later; in 1308 Albert was murdered by his nephew; neither succeeded in visiting Rome. King Philip of France manoeuvred to have his brother Charles of Valois chosen, but in November 1308 Count Henry of Luxembourg was elected, and a revival seemed possible. Unlike his predecessors Henry was personally agreeable, generous and peaceable, and a competent soldier – a necessity for any imperial hopeful. The Luxembourg counts were not magnates of the stature of Hohenstaufens or Habsburgs, and not entitled to participate in imperial elections; but any freeborn man, of any nation, was eligible to be elected as emperor. Henry relied almost entirely on support from his German and Italian allies, but an opportunity to bolster the family’s possessions came in 1310 when Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia was married to Henry’s son John, and fourteen-year-old John became King of Bohemia.
Count Henry, now King Henry VII of the Germans, was free to make his bid for the imperial crown. He arrived in northern Italy in December 1310 with a relatively small force, not as a conqueror, but as a rightful ruler taking possession of his inheritance, and received his second coronation with the iron crown of the Lombard kingdom; there now remained only the final ceremony in St Peter’s. His journey was welcomed with surprisingly unanimous enthusiasm, even by Pope Clement V, who promised to perform the coronation personally in Rome and in the meantime instructed all Italian clerics to welcome this king ‘exalted by Divine favour who … seated on the throne of majesty will dispel every evil by a single glance’. But Clement also took the precaution of authorizing the belligerent King Robert of Naples to take over the government of Rome. Dante was overjoyed, dating letters from ‘Year One of the most happy coming of Emperor Henry’ and reserving a special throne in Paradise for ‘Alto Arrigo’ – Tall Harry.
His excitement was, however, not unanimous, for many cities, especially Florence, saw a revived empire as threatening their own independence. When Henry arrived in Rome in May 1312, after having spent a year dealing with opponents in the north, he was welcomed by the people, but he found St Peter’s occupied by Neapolitan troops. Pope Clement had refused to move from Avignon and delegated three cardinals to perform the coronation in his name, but insisted that it must take place only in the basilica of St Peter. Weeks of hard street fighting concluded without the King being able to get to St Peter’s, and the reluctant cardinals had to be threatened by the population before agreeing to perform Henry’s coronation in the Lateran.
Dante’s new era had not lasted long, but had proved that the imperial ideal was still resilient. Henry died while waiting for a real army, Germans and Bohemians led by his son John, reinforced by powerful forces from Pisa, Genoa and Sicily, which was about to descend on Rome, where a popular welcome was guaranteed. On Henry’s death in Pisa – where his tomb is another fine memorial – the prospect collapsed, but ‘Alto Arrigo’ left a reputation for romantic chivalry and a core of support in Italy. The Luxembourg family had become one of Europe’s foremost dynasties, able to call upon general popular backing and eventually able to restore something of the old imperial prestige.
In the meantime the conflict between Guelfs and Ghibellines continued, and the earlier hopes of peace and unity were disappointed. Without the presence of a pope in Rome all the rites and titles that had once seemed glorious were tarnished. What might be called Greater Germany, since it included Bohemia and Austria, was clearly the real seat of imperial power; and German princes began to lose interest in Roman titles. Once this happened, then the continued claim of popes to be superior to emperors became irrelevant; the popes’ divisions began to evaporate as the Teutonic Knights, and many of the Hospitallers, allied with the German king. Without a pope, Rome was diminished; lacking Rome, papal authority declined and Naples became the leading Italian power.
On Henry’s death Pope Clement immediately claimed the right to act as an arbitrator in the succession. This privilege had previously been asserted by Boniface VIII, who had refused to recognize Albert of Austria because ‘an ugly one-eyed man is not fit to be Emperor’ – but Albert won nevertheless, and Clement’s claim to intervene was similarly ignored. A confused period of civil wars, a Polish invasion and the Swiss revolt against the Habsburg dukes followed. Duke Ludwig Wittelsbach of Bavaria finally emerged as Ludwig IV, the accepted German King, and attempted to validate this by an expedition to Rome, where in January 1328 he had himself solemnly crowned by the local magistrates.
In a fine piece of historical irony, the Roman official who placed the crown on Ludwig’s head was the same Sciarra Colonna who twenty-five years before had led the raid on Anagni. An emperor elected by the Roman population and crowned by the town mayor could not expect much added prestige, and the rest of Europe stood by while Pope John XXXII in Avignon furiously excommunicated Ludwig, who responded by sentencing the Pope to death as a heretic and encouraging the Roman people to elect an anti-pope. King Robert of Naples, authorized to lead a crusade, had no difficulty in chasing Ludwig out of Rome. All that his Italian adventure had proved was that an Avignon pope could exercise some control in Italy, and on the other hand that a German king’s authority did not depend on papal approval.
In 1338 King Ludwig assembled the other electoral princes in a Reichstag at Rhense, near Coblenz, where it was asserted that ‘Certain persons, blinded by avarice and ambition and totally ignorant of the Scriptures …’ – successive popes – ‘… have attacked the imperial authority …’ The members of the Diet clearly stated that their decision alone created the German emperor; the formal papal coronation was gilding on the gingerbread. Imperial dignity and power, it was asserted, came immediately and only from God. Since the French and English monarchs were able, if they wished, to make the same claim, it was a decisive moment in the series of protests against papal power that culminated in the Reformation and the Thirty Years War, and the first step to what was defined a century later as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
The principle of a German emperor entirely independent of the papacy, and indeed superior to it, was reinforced by an unusual collection of radical intellectuals gathered at Ludwig’s Munich court. Dante had already in 1312 produced his De Monarchia in defence of Emperor Henry VII, but more radical works followed. The philosopher William of Ockham was joined by Marsiglio of Padua (anathematized by the Pope as ‘bestia de abysso Sathanae’) who produced the most fundamental assertion of imperial independence and denunciation of papal pretensions in his famous work Defensor Pacis. Fascinating as their ideas have been to later generations of historians, the influence of the radicals at the time was limited, but when a crisis of confidence came the opponents of papal claims were furnished with both political and philosophical ammunition.
The Dance of Death
The Jubilee of 1300 had been too great a financial success not to warrant a repeat performance. Stretching a point as to what might be held to constitute a Jubilee, Pope Clement, still firmly seated on the Avignon throne and avoiding the unpleasantness of Rome, declared that 1350 should also be celebrated, with the usual indulgences granted. Pilgrims once again came flocking to the city, without the presence of the Holy Father, but still the sacred city of St Peter and St Paul, housing many marvellous relics
It was a very different Rome from that of the previous Jubilee. The three great basilicas were in near ruins – St Paul’s destroyed by an earthquake, the Lateran roofless, and St Peter’s abandoned and neglected, with the houses of the dead crumbling among the weeds. In place of a pope, Cardinal Annibale di Ceccano – who had given that magnificent banquet seven years before – occupied the Vatican, where wolves were seen to prowl in the gardens. Clement, it was said, had commanded the angels (in the Bull Cum natura humana) to receive the souls of dead pilgrims directly into Paradise, avoiding the delays of Purgatory. The Bull was probably spurious, but widely believed, and thousands of the better-off pilgrims sought personal interviews with the Cardinal or his officials to make certain of their own place in heaven. Roman merchants and innkeepers did well out of the pilgrims, but the people objected to the Cardinal, whose sins included keeping a camel in the Vatican, and Annibale fled the town in July after a would-be assassin had shot an arrow through his hat.
Pope Clement had chosen a good time to launch his new product, for the pilgrims seeking absolution in the 1350 Jubilee had been spurred on by a vivid fear of imminent mortality as the Black Death was ravaging Christendom. In the early years of the fourteenth century a climate change, which continued more than twenty years, brought cold winters and three successive years of poor harvests. Food stores had been accumulated in the previous good years, but could not be maintained. Between 1314 and 1316 famine spread throughout Europe. The death rate was high – 10 per cent in the town of Ypres – but the gravest effect was longer term, as exhausted and depressed peoples were left with little resistance in the face of the next disaster, the greatest to be visited on medieval Europe.
Thirty years later the Black Death erupted with shocking suddenness. Nothing so devastating had been seen for 800 years, since the reign of Emperor Justinian. Almost certainly the first disease to strike was bubonic plague, although others equally deadly were to follow. Mortality was horrifyingly high; whole villages were wiped out, and towns depopulated. Florence lost three-fifths of its citizens, Paris perhaps a third, while 80,000 were said to have died in Siena. The damage was long lasting; the population of the Île de France was halved between 1318 and 1444; that of Toulouse fell from 30,000 to 8,000 in 1430.
Blame was attributed to the people’s sins, inspiring the Flagellant movement to new zeal, as tens of thousands of dedicated and disciplined men and women processed through towns to perform their ritual of self-torture. As always, Jews formed convenient scapegoats, and many thousands were burned, especially in German-speaking lands, and their property looted. Lombard bankers, whose riches made them also an attractive target, were expelled; their loans to kings and magnates remained conveniently outstanding. In the towns work on the great projects came to a sharp halt. The new Duomo in Florence was left roofless; at Siena plans for a great cathedral were abandoned, and a patched-up transept made to serve. Fields were left uncultivated and forests recovered their former dominion.
Images of corruption and mortality seized the survivors’ imaginations. The horrifying paintings of decaying corpses joined in a macabre dance appeared in churches throughout Europe – one of the finest is in Tallinn Cathedral, the easternmost outlier of Catholic Europe. Social nexuses dissolved as God seemed to have deserted the faithful, manifesting themselves first in the towns, where municipal organizations were entrenched and where personal liberty was more common than in the countryside. In Flanders and the Rhineland, the most intensively urbanized regions of Europe, prosperous and literate burghers formed communities such as the Brethren of the Common Life and the Friends of God, to seek salvation in their own way. Death and destruction on such a scale drove people to look for spiritual comfort, but not always to the established Church order. Such comforting pastors as Chaucer’s ‘poor parson’, ‘a shepherd, not a hireling … holy and virtuous, but not condescending to sinful men’, certainly existed, but others ‘left their sheep stuck in the mire while they ran to London’ – to look for better opportunities.
Devastation and distress stimulated visionaries to emotional appeals; the fourteenth century was a vintage time for saints such as St Birgitta (1303–73), a practically minded Swedish princess, and St Catherine of Siena (1347–80), a militant mystic. Perhaps unfairly, the clergy were blamed for neglecting their responsibilities. St Bernadino of Siena (1360–1444), founder of the Observant Franciscans, advised preachers faced with a sleepy congregation to criticize the clergy: ‘Everybody instantly becomes attentive and cheerful.’ Certainly neither Pope Clement VI, the guest at the famous ‘magnificent banquet’, nor Innocent VI (1352–62) offered any comfort or enlightenment: Clement was an ecclesiastical politician through and through, a doctor of both theology and law, thrice archbishop and for eight years from 1330 King Philip VI’s chief minister, the most variously talented of the Avignon popes. With a politician’s keen sense of the possible, he appreciated the merits of Avignon, and began to build another palace of great magnificence.
His successor Innocent, an earnest, worried seventy-two-year-old man, was faced with problems on all sides. France was being ruined by peasant revolts and the English invasion, Rome was in turmoil, both crises that Innocent managed to alleviate, helping to negotiate a peace settlement with the English in 1360 and despatching the experienced Cardinal Gil Albornoz to Italy. Sixty years at Avignon had created an efficient papacy, but, separated from the ancient authority of imperial Rome, one that was spiritually meagre. Innocent called a halt to his predecessor’s extravagance, and pressed ahead with reforms allowing only one benefice to each cleric, and demanding that they live there. Monasteries were reformed, and the cardinals required to cut back on expenses. The Pope would doubtless have congratulated himself on suppressing the heresy of the Spiritual Franciscans, who insisted that Christ and the Apostles had lived in poverty, thereby setting an example to their followers; burning two friars at the stake discouraged that particular heresy, but caused St Birgitta to welcome the news of Innocent’s death: ‘Now at last for all his crimes, God has thrown him into the pit.’
After 1361 Avignon no longer seemed so safe a retreat, as in that year one of the free companies of fighting men, unemployed after the 1360 peace between France and England, harried the countryside right up to the city’s walls, defeated a papal army sent out against them, and left only after extorting a large ransom. Conditions in Rome, however, were at last improving. Avignon’s largest expense had been financing war, since isolation did not mean disengagement from Italian politics, and all the Avignon popes vigorously attempted to restore order in their Italian possessions. Clement V began on Good Friday 1309 by proclaiming a formal crusade against the Venetians, following their capture of Ferrara, a papal possession. Venice was declared no longer a Christian state, any captured Venetian subject could be sold as a slave, and their lands could be taken over by the papacy, their possessions kept by the victors. The war ended with the Venetian survivors of the last battle being sent home blinded.
Further crusades against various Italian opponents of the papacy, with all the privileges appropriate to wars against the infidel Turks, were authorized in 1321, 1324, 1328, 1355, 1357, 1363 and 1369, together with many others against the roving bands of organized raiders who roamed through France and Italy during intervals of peace. Most of the Italian crusades were against the Visconti of Milan, rulers of central Lombardy and their allies. The first series, under Cardinal Bertrand du Pouget, a nephew of John XXII, was indecisive. He remained in Italy for fifteen years, making his headquarters in Bologna, but was unable to consolidate papal rule. His successor Cardinal Albornoz, who combined military and diplomatic skills to an unusual extent, was more successful. The expense had been very great, but by the early 1360s the Papal States were unusually tranquil.
Moreover Urban V, elected in September 1362, during his absence from the conclave, was a Benedictine monk, who had never been a cardinal, and was scandalized by the extravagance of the Sacred College, believing that real reforms could be effected only if the papacy returned to Rome. In September 1366, therefore, Urban announced his intention to move the Curia back to the Holy City, a proposal that horrified those cardinals who did not share his devotion to poverty and restraint, and were reported to have moaned, ‘Oh, wicked Pope, oh, Godless Brother! Whither is he dragging his sons?’ They were comforted by the patriotic poet Petrarch, who insisted on the excellence of Italian wine, every bit as good as the Beaune to which the cardinals were partial. Some cardinals, their staff and the papal household, accompanied Urban, but most of the employees remained at Avignon, together with the Treasurer and all the financial personnel: options were being kept open. The papal cortège, including only five cardinals, but a great quantity of baggage, left Avignon on 30 April 1367, but after a difficult voyage and a four months’ halt in Viterbo it was not until 16 October that Urban was able to enter Rome, accompanied by the cardinals ‘who looked gloomily and suspiciously around’. He was the first Pope to occupy the chair of St Peter for sixty-three years.
He found Rome almost deserted and ruinous. Almost all the basilicas and convents were deserted; St Paul’s was in ruins and the Lateran still uninhabitable; swamps and rubbish took the place of squares and streets. For three years, under Urban’s strict government, repairs to the badly damaged structure of the city were begun. For the first time in many years kings and emperors visited the Holy City. Charles IV of Germany came in 1368 for the second time, and had his wife – the fourth, Elizabeth of Pomerania – crowned as Empress. The next year brought another Emperor, John V of Byzantium, begging for help against the Turks, who were encircling what remained of his empire. Solemnly forswearing his beliefs on behalf of his people, John was received into the Catholic Church in St Peter’s itself. The Pope was willing to help, although confusing the Mamluks in Egypt and Syria with the Turks, now in Europe, but there was little enthusiasm among the national leaders. Even those directly affected, such as King Louis of Hungary, ignored the Pope’s pleas; for the rest, Byzantium was way outside their geographical span of attention.
Considering that he had left behind in Avignon almost all the Curial archives and most of the secretariat, and that of the seven cardinals he created while in Rome, six were French and only one Italian, it was clear that Urban was not committed to remaining permanently in the Holy City. Both he and the cardinals were at best uncomfortable in Rome, and hankered after the comforts of Avignon. More seriously, it was nearly impossible to exercise the international authority of the papacy from Rome, isolated from the real centres of power north of the Alps. Moreover, the practical difficulties of living in permanently turbulent Rome, in what was now a series of building sites, with most of the administration still in Avignon, were intolerable. On 17 April the Pope and the Curia left Rome for Montefiascone ‘as readily as though it had been the Babylonian desert’. St Birgitta rushed to warn the Pope that she had experienced a vision of the Virgin who had warned her – in Swedish – that Urban would meet a sudden death if he returned to Avignon. Undeterred, the papal party finally embarked in September, and on 13 December St Birgitta’s prophecy was proved correct.
Urban’s reluctant successor, and the last French pope, Pierre Roger de Beaufort, had been appointed a cardinal by his uncle, Pope Clement VI (at the age of eighteen, an example of the Avignon Curia’s customs), although he did not even become a priest until his election to the papacy as Pope Gregory XI in January 1371. He began his pontificate with the intention of eventually returning to Italy, since it had become clear that in the absence of a pope, or so able a substitute as Albornoz had been – the Cardinal had lived just long enough to welcome Pope Urban – the Patrimony of St Peter would dissolve. The Papal States were governed by legates, almost invariably French, and frequently tyrannical, one of the worst being Gerard de Puy, Abbot of Montmajeur and Governor of Perugia. By the summer of 1375 no fewer than eighty cities had formed what was almost a national league of defiance to papal authority, at least as exercised by the French: in Florence the newly elected governors declaimed against ‘those barbarians who are sent by the papacy to fatten on our blood and treasure’ and the headquarters of the Inquisition was destroyed by a mob; in Perugia Abbot de Puy had to surrender to shouts of ‘Death to the Abbot and the priests’. In March 1376 Pope Gregory issued a horrifying interdict against Florence, inviting all Christendom to plunder and enslave its citizens wherever they might be found. Since many Florentines were bankers the opportunity was seized in France and England, but in Italy the papal threats only stimulated the revolt. More practically, the Pope also despatched an impressive mercenary army, mainly of Bretons and Gascons led by Cardinal Robert of Geneva, across the Alps. Cardinal Robert was ordered to quell the rebellion and prepare for the Pope’s return to Rome.
Pope Gregory’s departure was speeded by the insistence of those two formidable women, St Birgitta and St Catherine of Siena, who had come herself to Avignon in pursuit, insisting that he must return to Rome. The Avignon papacy was unprecedentedly efficient, but removed from the Holy City and become predominantly French it had lost international support. And Rome, even in decay, was crowded with relics of classical antiquity as well as those (less well authenticated but carrying a much higher emotional charge) of the Apostles and the saints.
Once more leaving an important nucleus at Avignon, including some of the cardinals – and this was to prove a great mistake – the papal party left on 13 September 1376, but it was not until January the following year that Gregory was able to enter Rome, after a difficult voyage and a month spent negotiating the terms of his return with the city authorities. Again, it was a disconsolate group that left the comforts of France: ‘God! If only the mountains would move and stop our journey!’ the Bishop of Senigallia prayed. On 13 January 1377, entering by the gate of St Paul, the Pope’s party was welcomed by music and dancing – although the dancers were said to be decrepit and bald. It was to be the final restoration of the papacy to Italy, but Gregory remained in the city for only three months before retiring to Anagni, where he was able to superintend negotiations not only with the rebellious cities but with Rome itself. Once the Bolognese and the Romans had made terms, Florence remained the centre of resistance. Gregory’s letter to the city in July 1377 recounted how the Pope had left ‘his beautiful native country, a grateful and pious people’, out of a sense of obligation, only to find himself ‘bitterly deceived’, and on his deathbed in March the following year, he was miserably aware that the choice of a successor would be impossible.
There were sixteen cardinals in Rome, one absent in the provinces and six left in Avignon. The sixteen divided between eleven French, four Italians and one Spaniard – Pedro de Luna, who was to become a key figure for the next half-century. It should have been easy enough for the French cardinals to insist on electing their chosen man, but they in turn were divided between the Limousin party, which had long been in power, and the northerners, six to four, with one waverer. Had the six left in Avignon been present, a majority would have been much easier to assemble. Elections had been known to drag on for months, but this election was forced through at unprecedented speed. Rome had been neglected for long enough, and when at last the people had a chance to ensure that a pope would stay in the city, they took to the streets.
The conclave began on 7 April. An agitated populace demanded an Italian pope, preferably a Roman. As the crowd became noisier, looting the cellars, thrusting lances through the floor of the conclave hall and piling up bundles of brushwood, the nervous cardinals elected a compromise candidate, the Neapolitan Bartoleomeo Prignano, Archbishop of Bari; but rumour circulated outside that a Roman cardinal had been elected. An excited crowd burst in, and the by now hysterical cardinals retreated. Hoping to avoid the worst, they pushed out old Cardinal Tibaldeschi, claiming that he was the new Pope, a veritable Roman. Taking advantage of the enthusiasm the cardinals slipped out. When, however, the truth came out, the Romans accepted Archbishop Prignano as Pope Urban VI, who, after all, had the outstanding merit of not being French. It took ten days after the election for the frightened cardinals to assemble for Urban’s coronation on 18 April; on the next day they wrote to their Avignon brothers to announce the election, assuring them that their votes had been given ‘freely and unanimously’.
Within days they began to regret their decision. Urban had been a good servant to the College of Cardinals, but now their master, he treated them, French and Italians alike, like stable-boys, cutting down their rations, calling one a fool, attempting to strike another. Worse, he refused to return to Avignon, and announced his intention of swamping the college with new creations. All the French cardinals, soon joined by the surviving Italians (Tibaldeschi was now dead), recovered their nerve and at the end of May retreated to the summer palace at Anagni, where Boniface had been attacked seventy-three years earlier. Since Urban had not availed himself of the opportunity of electing new cardinals – presumably believing himself unchallengeable – the French cardinals represented a great majority of the sacred college – thirteen at Anagni, plus six still in Avignon, against only three Italian cardinals left in Rome. By that time all the college, French and Italians together, recognized that they had made a great error in electing Pope Urban.
He had appeared as an acceptable compromise, not a cardinal, and not therefore complicit in the internal jealousies; an Italian, but a protégé of the French Cardinal Pierre de Monterac, and an administrator who had proved his competence both as Archbishop of Bari and vice-chancellor of the Avignon Curia. He was, however, also tactless, arrogant, personally violent and unbalanced to the point of clinical insanity.
Confident in the support of France, the cardinals at Anagni attempted to unseat Urban. On 20 July, three months after they had declared that Urban had been elected ‘freely and unanimously’, the Anagni cardinals denounced his appointment as illegal, since it had been made under the threat of deadly violence, a claim reinforced by a massacre of suspect foreigners in Rome, provoked by an attack perpetrated by a band of Breton mercenaries. The fact that in the interval they had continued to address Urban with all suitable respect, sometimes begging for benefices and promotions, was conveniently brushed aside. Urban offered a meeting, which was (probably prudently) declined, and on 9 August the cardinals issued an encyclical, calling upon all Catholics to renounce the new Pope. Refusing a proposed conference, they went on to elect Cardinal Robert of Geneva, a kinsman of the French King, as Clement VII. Young, aristocratic, a man of quick decisions, Robert had made himself hated by the Italians during the previous three years, when he had acted as legate for Gregory XI, and ordered the massacre of the townspeople of Cesena in 1377. After a brief civil war, in which Urban’s forces got the upper hand, Clement and the cardinals left Italy for Avignon in May 1378. The contest was now fought out on a much wider stage.
Europe now had two popes from which to chose. Which of the two, Urban or Clement, was the legitimate pope was a matter of concerned debate. On the face of it Urban had much the stronger case: he had been legally and unanimously elected; he held the city of Rome, the relics and tombs of the Apostles; and if he had been elected by terrified cardinals coerced by a furious mob, why had they waited for three months before objecting?
Not only countries were forced to choose; whole provinces and bishoprics were divided, with two claimants, each anathematizing the other, especially in Germany; individuals, such as St Colette, wavered. For the first time in its history the whole authority of the papacy was brought into the currency of daily debate as Urbanists and Clementists argued it out.
Europe Divided
One inevitable division was that between England and France. In the hundred years after 1340 the histories of the two countries were inextricably linked. Edward III of England and his successors had a good claim to inherit the crown of France – Henry VI was actually crowned as King of France in December 1430 – and for the whole of the period a varyingly large portion of French territory was occupied by the English. Very much in contrast, the internal boundaries of Britain in 1350 have continued unchanged to the present day, a situation nearly unique in Europe (those of France were finally settled only in the 1850s). Wales had been incorporated in the English realm, and Scotland recognized, after the decisive battle of Bannockburn, as an independent kingdom. Moreover, England was becoming a nation in the modern sense, secure behind these frontiers, with a common language. Edward III was the first English king to understand English, which was becoming the court language as it was that of the people: English schoolchildren had to be encouraged to learn French, which would help them in the wars.
Culturally, England had been nearly as much a French province as Scotland was an English, but this was changing. Geoffrey Chaucer, the first universal figure in northern European vernacular literature, was born in 1345; Oxford was rivalling Paris as a centre of original thought, although Cambridge was a long way behind. But England in 1350 was no longer the prosperous land described a century earlier by Friar Bartholomew: ‘England is a strong land and a sturdy, and the plenteousest corner of the world; so rich a land that it scarcely needeth help of any land … England is full of mirth and game … free men of heart and with tongue, but the hand is more better and more free than the tongue.’ ‘Merry England’ – the phrase, Anglia plena jocis, was first used in 1150 – might well have existed a century later, when Bartholomew wrote, but by 1350 merriment was rare.
The plague had taken its toll, even higher in Britain than in France, but its demographic effects were not yet apparent. Illness always strikes the old and very young first, and the adult population was less affected. It was another generation before the working population contracted sharply, and in the meantime, since England’s previous prosperity had led to an excess population and shortage of land, there was manpower enough to spare for foreign wars. There was too a sense of solidarity between king, Church and people, expressed in the comparative success in raising taxes to fund the constant expeditions to France.
The situation was very different on the other side of the Channel. Philip the Fair and his sons’ successors consistently failed in their efforts to expand the royal domain – that part of France ruled directly by the king – which included parts of Normandy, the Île de France, Champagne and the southern province of Roussillon. Some three-quarters of the eastern frontier later fell into the hands of the Duke of Burgundy, who had also acquired the Country of Flanders, which included the great quasi-independent cities of Ghent, Bruges and Lille. The Duchy of Brittany was less independent, but the Duchy of Guienne was claimed by Edward III. Although the Flemish wars were ruinously expensive and only occasionally successful, they were at least fought outside France; the quarrel begun with Edward III in 1337 was much more devastating. Philip VI (1328–50), a chivalrous and incompetent monarch, led his magnificent army to be slaughtered by the English and Welsh at Crécy in 1346. His son, Jean le Bon – the Genial – (1350– 64), even more chivalrous, was defeated at Poitiers ten years later and ended his life a prisoner in London. The defeats had smashed the chivalry of France and with it something of the pretence of noble leadership.
After the battle of Poitiers, France, discouraged and defeated, fragmented. The Estates General of the south, the Langue D’Oc, ignored demands for support from the capital. First in Bordeaux and then in London, King John, in comfortable captivity, attempted to negotiate a peace. When this was finally agreed in 1360 both sides, to different degrees, ignored it. Unofficial companies of English adventurers raided Normandy, Anjou, Maine and the Vexin. The Dauphin, acting as his father’s viceroy and later as King Charles V (1364–80) began a successful fight back, but his death left another under-age Dauphin, who reigned as Charles VI (1380– 1422). From 1392 the King began to be affected by intermittent madness, and the French monarchy was fought over by the royal family.
The English decision to support Urban was taken without question, almost automatically, by the Gloucester Parliament which met in October 1378, following the Pope’s election in April. The decision was inevitable since it was only on 20 September that the cardinals changed their minds and elected Robert of Geneva, but it would have been highly unlikely that yet another French pope would have been acceptable in England at a time when a succession of French victories had left only the Gascon coast from Bordeaux to Bayonne and the impregnable port of Calais in English hands. It seemed that the King of France would automatically support Clement, but Charles V, serious-minded and devout, made extensive inquiries before electing to support the Avignon Pope, which he did only in November 1378.
The most important factor in the choice of popes ought to have been the attitude of the German king, with his ancient if fading authority as the senior of European monarchs, but the empire, like the papacy, was divided. Young John of Luxembourg’s coronation as King of Bohemia had been welcomed by the country’s nobles, who perceived the French-speaking Luxembourgers as likely to hold the balance between Czechs and Germans. Once crowned, however, King John paid little attention to his nation, preferring adventures abroad to the duties of administration. John was a man who lived at high speed. He once rode from Prague to Frankfurt in only four days, and became famous during his reign (1313–46) as a chivalrous warrior, fighting crusades against the Lithuanians, leading armies into Italy and, best known of all, being killed at the battle of Crécy, fighting with his son Charles against the English, and, it seems, giving the Prince of Wales the opportunity to acquire King John’s insignia of the ostrich feathers and the motto ‘Ich Dien’. Some of King John’s adventures were more practical and resulted in Bohemia acquiring the greater part of Silesia, extending the country’s eastern boundaries almost as far as Krakow.
Sensibly enough, the electors preferred the patient and reliable Ludwig of Bavaria as Emperor, but on his death in 1347 the crown reverted to the House of Luxembourg. It did not pass without some difficulty, since Prince Charles, released after the battle of Crécy, was opposed by some electors, who would have preferred Edward III of England. Charles had little of his father’s panache but proved an outstandingly able ruler both of Bohemia from 1346 and the empire as Charles IV (1347–78). To be King of Germany and Emperor of Rome was a glorious title, but brought little wealth or power. Earlier attempts to enforce the imperial writ in Italy, or indeed in Germany itself, were abandoned and in 1356 Charles IV promulgated his ‘Golden Bull’, defining the future imperial structure. There were to be no more impressive expeditions to secure Italian claims, and the authority of the pope was conceded (although the condition of the papacy, secluded in Avignon, was still unsettled). Above all, the seven electors were recognized as sovereign in their own right, lords of indivisible states, which descended according to the rights of primogeniture – and no subject was allowed to appeal to any court outside his sovereign’s territory. Europe was to be neither imperial nor federal, but a collection of sovereign states that elected a leader much more resembling a president than an emperor.
Charles had already acted as regent during his father’s frequent absences and added a command of both Czech and German to his native French. With a keen understanding of the realities of power, his priority was to secure his heritage of Bohemia. During the long rule of the Premysl family, the best known of whom was ‘good King Wenceslas’ the kingdom of Bohemia-Moravia had become a united state, on its way to becoming one of the most advanced and centralized of Europe. Its historic boundaries, which are very much those of the present Czech Republic, had been maintained through the turbulent thirteenth century. They were greatly increased by both King John and Charles IV to include the German province of Brandenburg, together with Silesia and Lusatia, the last two having a mixed Polish and German population. During the thirteenth century technical advances had transformed the rural economy of northern Europe. Three- and four-field systems had replaced the wasteful old methods of alternating crop and fallow and the iron plough enabled previously waste land to be cultivated; the ploughman, that ‘grey-haired enemy of the wood’, steadily encroached upon the forest. New techniques of land drainage had enabled vast stretches of land on the North Sea coasts to be recovered; Dante admired the great new canal that joined Bruges to the sea, making it one of the wealthiest towns of Europe, with some 50,000 citizens, but a surplus rural population nevertheless developed. Seeing the opportunity to increase their incomes, landowners in the east offered attractive conditions to Saxon, Bavarian, Dutch and Flemish settlers, and a flood of skilled and industrious farmers moved eastwards. Recruited and organized by professional agents responsible for allocating land, the newcomers paid an agreed rent for farms, which were held on a perpetual lease. Based on the consequent agricultural prosperity new towns were founded as far east as Breslau, Krakow and Tallinn, all with a dominant German-speaking population, German churches and guildhalls, schools and colleges. It was the most important movement of population in the Middle Ages, as Silesia, Bohemia and Moravia were integrated into the empire, while Poland, Hungary and even Transylvania became part of Latin Christendom. The effects of the change have been durable: the eastern borders of the European Union as defined in May 2004 were very much those of 1300.
All the Luxembourg lands had benefited economically from the German immigration: agriculture had improved and with the application of German land law, farmers, who hitherto had enjoyed only very limited rights, often as little more than serfs, became almost a yeoman class, with hereditary rights to their land. At the same time city dwellers had gained substantial privileges and German skills had developed metallurgical industries, especially (as they later did in England) bringing new techniques of mining; the silver mines of Kutná Hora alone made Bohemia one of the richer European states. The native Slav populations were, however, alienated by the arrogance and the prosperity of the newcomers, and Charles, who spent most of his time in Prague, worked to reinforce Czech rights and to encourage Bohemian integration into European culture. Having the king of a mainly Slavonic country as German Emperor was unprecedented, and illustrated the geographical shift of power that was beginning to effect Europe. The geographical centre of Charlemagne’s empire was Chalonsur-Saône; that of Charles IV the Bohemian border town of Chleb, with the imperial court administration moved to Prague – a great distance from those former capitals of Aachen and Mainz.
Charles, who had been a constant friend of Pope Gregory, had ensured that his eldest son would be acknowledged as his successor to the German and Bohemian thrones from 1363, but Václav (Wenceslas) IV was barely eighteen when his father died. Amiable and indolent, he preferred Bohemia to Germany – he possessed the two Bohemian qualities, essential, according to Pope Pius II: the ability to speak Czech and drink beer. He hankered from time to time after the grander title of Emperor, but procrastinated about the necessary visit to Rome, which would have been expensive. His attention to German affairs was intermittent, carried out from Prague, and neglected the tedious work of smoothing over the numerous German quarrels between nobles and towns that could only be settled by the German king. Václav would never be an energetic supporter of the Roman pope, but no German state was likely to accept an Avignon pope.
The Iberian countries shifted uncomfortably between the two. Spain was divided into three Christian realms, Castile, Aragon and Navarre, with the Muslim Kingdom of Granada hanging on the south-east tip. Aragon now included the French Duchy of Roussillon, Majorca, Sardinia, Sicily and parts of southern Greece, filched from the moribund Byzantine Empire. With the great maritime city of Barcelona as its centre, Aragonese sea power extended across the western Mediterranean. Aragon was more or less permanently at odds with the sprawling and disorganized Kingdom of Castile, while to the north west Navarre straddled the French border. On the Atlantic, Portugal, like its new ally England, was one of the very few European states to have settled into undisputed borders.
Castile began warily neutral in the papal competition, sending embassies to both Avignon and Rome to gather evidence. Their report was heard at a national council held at Medina del Campo, near Salamanca, begun in November 1380. It was a serious business, with lengthy depositions, backed by voluminous dossiers and much discussion, during which Pope Clement’s case was ably presented by the only Spanish Cardinal, Pedro de Luna; in May the following year Castile declared for Clement. Aragon deliberated for even longer, and only after two careful inquiries were held also decided to commit to Clement in 1386. Navarre held out for yet another four years before doing the same, while Portugal, which had originally supported Clement, changed its policy to follow England and Pope Urban.