CHAPTER IV
The Papacy and England
1
The Reigns of Edward I and Edward II
A STATE of almost perfect understanding existed between Clement V and Edward I; doubtless the Pope remembered how, as archbishop of Bordeaux, he had been the king's vassal. His goodwill towards Edward even led the Pope to take his side against the English people: on 29 December 1305 he freed the king from all concessions previously granted to the great nobles, the barons and 'other persons,' concerning certain forest rights and royal prerogatives. Archbishop Winchelsey, the primate of the Church in England and one of the king's bitterest opponents, was summoned on 12 February 1306 to appear at the Papal court, and, on 6 April, was suspended from his duties. The Apostolic Camera seized his revenues. In August 1306 Clement helped Edward by granting him a tenth; later, he helped to strengthen the peace between France and England by encouraging the marriage between the prince of Wales and Isabella, daughter of Philip the Fair; and he solemnly excommunicated Robert Bruce, who was stirring up trouble in Scotland. 1
The English barons by no means approved of Clement V's interference in their country's affairs. At the Parliament of Carlisle, in January 1307, a pamphlet was read violently attacking him. He was accused of systematically excluding 'native Englishmen and learned clerks' from holding episcopal office, and consequently of depriving the king of the counsel of wise men who were concerned with the interests of the nation, and in this way of causing harm to the just government both of the Church in England and of the kingdom. 'The unbridled multitude of apostolic provisions' to strangers, especially to cardinals, had had, they alleged, disastrous consequences, such as the absenteeism of incumbents who nevertheless continued to draw the income from their benefices, the sending of capital
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1 Rymer, Foedera, VOL. I, pt 2, pp. 45, 49, 52, 53, 56, 61, 66.
See also Stubbs, Chronicles of the reigns of Edward I and II (Rolls Series), London 1882, VOL. I, p. 145.
outside English territory, the falling off of popular piety, the less frequent celebration of the divine office, the poor upkeep of sacred edifices which were falling into ruin for lack of repair, and the failure to distribute alms or to provide shelter for the needy, contrary to the express intention of the founders of churches. 1
Although exaggerated and partly unfair, the complaints voiced by the Parliament at Carlisle do none the less express English public opinion in the fourteenth century. Successive parliaments continue to reiterate them and chroniclers and kings to paraphrase them. The truth is that chapters could not forgive the Pope for the loss of their privileges of election, while laymen deplored the disappearance of rights that had entitled them to the patronage of religious foundations. Both clergy and laity were to point out with asperity that national usage was opposed to the growing tendency of the Papacy to monopolise presentations to benefices: according to English law and custom, did not all ecclesiastical property remain in the possession of the patron? Had not the Constitutions of Clarendon declared that the king was entitled to the revenues from any archbishopric, bishopric, abbey or priory falling vacant within the lands under his jurisdiction? Did not the king invest prelates with their temporalities? To admit the Popes' claims to the right to dispose of benefices as they pleased, or to burden them with taxes--England was the first country to pay annates -- was tantamount to conspiring 'to disinherit the Crown of its rights and to destroy the English Church.' 2
Edward I had too great a need of the Holy See's support against his barons to subscribe to the acrimonious declarations of the Parliament at Carlisle. He prudently manœuvred between the malcontents and Clement V.
His son, Edward II ( 1307-27), was less discreet. He issued ordinances decreeing that all bearers of documents or bulls in any way contrary to the interests of the Crown were to be seized and held. When the Pope reserved the see of Worcester, the king wrote haughtily to the cardinals: 'We cannot suffer such unprecedented and unheard-of reservation to take place within our kingdom.' The Parliament of 1309 in its turn sent a letter of protest to the Pope, in the name of all England. 3
Clement V returned like for like. In 1310 the bishop of Poitiers, Arnaud d'Aux, presented the English king with a long list of grievances. He complained of the tiresome measures taken against the
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1 Rotuli parliamentorum, VOL. I, pp. 217-23.
2 J. Haller, Papsttum und Kirchenreform, VOL. I, Berlin 1903, pp. 388-92.
3 Rymer, op. cit. VOL. I, pt 2, p. 109.
cardinals to prevent them from enjoying their benefices in England, the impediments which hindered papal provisions from taking effect and which debarred recourse to papal justice, the encroachments of royal officials on ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the maladministration of monasteries and churches during vacancies and the non-payment by the Crown of taxes due to the Holy See.
The English clergy supported the Pope's complaints. In the provincial synod of November 1309, Archbishop Winchelsey, the leader of the ultramontanists, who had been restored to favour and reinstated at Canterbury, had already posed as the champion of ecclesiastical liberty against the oppression of the king. Accompanied by several bishops, he read to Edward the remonstrances of Clement V. 1
The king changed his attitude, apologised and took under his protection the collectors charged with the levying of annates. It was politically inadvisable for him to offend the Pope, whose protection he needed more than ever, now that the royal favours lavished on Piers Gaveston had exasperated the barons.
There was a close friendship between Edward and this lord, the son of a gentle family of Guyenne, who had been in turn his childhood's playmate and his boon companion. Gaveston's influence on the young prince had been so pernicious that Edward I had banished him from England.
Immediately after his father's death, Edward recalled Gaveston from exile and loaded him with honours and riches. The disdain and the sarcastic tongue of the haughty favourite soon earned him the hatred of the barons, who shook off his detested yoke and in 1308 insisted on his dismissal.
This was a cruel separation for the king. He persuaded Clement V to annul Gaveston's oath promising not to return to England and, by a skilful distribution of favours, succeeded in breaking the opposition of his barons.
But the reconciliation was short-lived, for Gaveston's extravagant behaviour began again and civil war broke out. In an effort to avert the danger, the Pope sent his vice-chancellor Arnaud Nouvel and his camerarius, Arnaud d'Aux to England. 2 The murder of Gaveston on 19 June 1312 made the task of the two nuncios easier, and in 1313 they succeeded in settling the differences between Edward and his nobles. 3
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1 Stubbs, op. cit. VOL. I, pp. 161-7.
2 Regestum Clementis V, no. 8786 ( 14 May 1312); Appendix, VOL. I, nos. 699-708.
3 Lingard, Histoire d'Angleterre, VOL. I, Paris 1842, pp. 470-7.
But in sending help to Edward II, the Pope had every intention of reaping some benefit for himself. Indeed, the annates were now collected without difficulty; the taxes owed by the crown were henceforward regularly paid; Papal reservations were extended to include bishoprics and other benefices, both large and small; capitular elections hardly ever took place; after a preliminary agreement with the king, the Pope nominated bishops, abbots, canons, priors and parish priests; expectative graces were generously distributed even to ecclesiastics who were not English.
John XXII took advantage of the difficulties of the king's situation to follow exactly the same line of conduct as his predecessor, or rather to increase the number of reservations and Papal nominations. Far from protesting, Edward gave pensions to the cardinals and sought their favours. He did indeed owe a debt of gratitude to the supreme pontiff who placed the arms of the Church at the service of his throne. 1
While England was grieved by civil war, sometimes overt and sometimes concealed, Robert Bruce roused Scotland and made himself its king. His brilliant victory at Bannockburn on 23 June 1314 had ratified his act of usurpation. From that time, following Edward's refusal to recognise the kingship of Bruce, there was a constant state of hostility between the two countries. Drunk with power, the Scots made their way to Ireland, hoping to drive out the English. The campaign, at first successful, ended in a series of bloody defeats, caused by the lack of discipline of the Irish. To make good the disaster, Robert Bruce landed on the Ulster coast with a large army. John XXII opposed him resolutely, and the bishops of Cashel and Dublin and the dean of Dublin were ordered to excommunicate the invaders as well as the Irish clergy who were constantly inciting the people to rebel against England. 2 At about the same time, the Pope sent Cardinals Gaucelme de Jean and Luca Fieschi to impose peace on the belligerents. 3
This papal intervention caused much indignation among the Irish chieftains, who justified their conduct to the nuncios and begged the Holy See to protect them against persecution by the English. The memorandum that they sent to the Pope excited his interest. Cardinals de Jean and Fieschi, speaking in the name of John XXII, requested Edward II to see to it that the acts of oppression which his Irish subjects claimed to have suffered were discontinued. The king
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1 Haller, op. cit. pp. 400-02.
2 Rymer, op. cit. VOL. II, pt 1, p. 118 ( 29 March 1317), p. 122 ( 10 April 1317).
3 Many Bulls were issued, conferring full authority on them. See Mollat, nos. 51485223 ( 16 March 1317), 5208-23 (24 April), 5232-4 (1 May).
promised to heed their protests, and undertook to deal justly and leniently with the rebels. Shortly afterwards, on 5 October 1318, Edward, the brother of Robert Bruce and leader of the Scots army, died on the battlefield of Faughart. With his death, peace returned to Ireland. 1
In Scotland itself the Pope intervened with equal energy. As early as 16 March 1317, Gaucelme de Jean and Luca Fieschi had been empowered to take proceedings against Robert Bruce. The apostolic letters omitted the title of 'King' to which the pretender laid claim. Their superscription bore these significant words: Nobili viro Roberto de Brus impresentiarum regnum Scotie, ut dicitur, gubernanti. A Bull of 24 April gave the legates permission to take disciplinary action against Robert if he opposed a peace-settlement, and even to free his subjects from the oath of fealty that they had made to him. On 1 May another Bull invited them to arrange a truce, when the time seemed ripe, to last for two years. 2
The nuncios' mission was not carried out without incident. Between Rushyford and Ferryhill, six leagues from Darlington, a band of robbers stripped them of their possessions and the Pope had to send them in all haste 1,000 gold florins to make good their losses. When they tried to present their credentials to Robert Bruce, he refused to open them, because the address did not give him his title of 'King of Scotland.' In vain did the legates insist, pointing out that the supreme pontiff must not show any prejudice towards either side. Robert only replied: 'I cannot accept letters that are not addressed to me as king, nor reply to your request until I have consulted my parliament. You will hear from me after Michaelmas.' 3
Gaucelme de Jean and Luca Fieschi went back to London and awaited the promised note for a long time. When at length it reached them, they learned that Robert refused to enter into negotiations before he had been recognised as king of Scotland. Thereupon the legates promulgated a two-year truce. Bruce disregarded this completely, seized Berwick, Wark, Harbottle and Mitford, and set fire to other strongholds. Annoyed at his effrontery, the nuncios declared him and his followers excommunicate, and went back to the court at Avignon, which they reached on 5 November 1318. 4
Thereupon John XXII started proceedings against Robert and his supporters, the bishops of St Andrews, Dunkeld, Moray and
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1 Lingard, op. cit. pp. 466-70, 477-83. See also Fordoun, Scottichronicon, Bk XII, VOL. II, chaps. xxvi-xxxiii, pp. 259-68.
2 Mollat, nos. 5155, 5162, 5174, 5216, 5232, 5233.
3 Rymer, op. cit. VOL. II, pt 1, p. 134 (letters dated 7 and 10 September 1317).
4 Lingard, op. cit. pp. 485-6; see also Coulon, no. 424.
Glasgow. All were summoned to appear before him on 1 May 1320. 1
On 6 April, before the expiry of this term, Robert sent a memorandum to Avignon, justifying his conduct and asking to be reconciled to the Church. The Pope consented to suspend proceedings for the time being. Robert's plenipotentiaries, in agreement with those of the king of France, were to arrange a final peace settlement with England. But the discussions dragged on, and war broke out afresh in 1322. On 14 October, the English army was routed. Despite this success, the victorious Bruce, worn out by military operations, which had lasted nearly twenty-three years, of his own accord offered to sign a thirteen-year truce; Edward II hastily agreed to this suggestion. 2
2
The Reign of Edward III 1327-77
The year 1327 was marked by tragic events. Revolution broke out, and Edward II was dethroned and his son put at the head of the government; on 21 September the fallen monarch was murdered in his prison by the order of his wife's lover, Mortimer. In 1330, Edward III overthrew the regency council which was keeping him in subjection, and exiled his mother to Castle Rising. Parliament condemned to death Mortimer and his accomplices in the late king's murder. It was only because John XXII pleaded on her behalf that the queen mother escaped the punishment she deserved. The Pope gave the young king some fatherly advice; he wrote: 'As king, you should take care not to entrust the government to the hands of one or two persons, nor permit the rise to power of one or two counsellors; but govern prudently with the collaboration of prelates, lords, gentles and commons alike.' 3
The relationship between Edward III and John XXII, which now and again was strained, was on the whole a friendly one. The king lavished gifts on the cardinals and the Pope's nephews, allowed the collectors to levy ecclesiastical taxes, and promised to preserve entire the freedom of the English church.
But this state of harmony was only superficial: the king, fearing opposition from the queen mother's party at the beginning of his
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1 Mollat, nos. 10674, 10675, 12040, 12041.
2 Lingard, op. cit. pp. 486-7, 492-3. See also G. Mollat, Études et Documents, pp. 125- 129.
3 Rinaldi, ad annum 1331, §35, 36. See also Lingard, op. cit pp. 494-510.
reign, was making a virtue of necessity. Slight differences were constantly arising with John XXII and Benedict XII. The king had no intention of abandoning the right of the Crown -- which the Papacy refused to recognise -- to appropriate the revenues of vacant bishopries. He created difficulties for those who appealed to the Roman Curia. Once he imprisoned an incumbent for having had recourse to Papal jurisdiction.
With Clement VI the conflict, which till then had been latent, became overt and bitter. The Pope's generosity in distributing expectative graces and exercising his right of grants in commendam, and the well-known anglophobia of his cardinals, especially Talleyrand de Périgord, had been the cause of violent incidents. On the other hand, English opposition to Papal pretentions which had been curbed by the agreement that had existed for some time between the king and the Roman Church, now manifested itself anew. There was ample opportunity, now that war between England and France was imminent, to cast some doubt on the impartiality of Clement VI, who had once been chancellor to Philip VI of Valois. The English could not remain blind to the fact that the subsidies levied on incumbents in England passed from the papal coffers to those of the enemy. To continue to pay them was equivalent to supplying France with arms. 1
In the Parliament of 1343, the nation's grievances were voiced with acrimony. It was expressly forbidden to introduce into the kingdom or to receive or to execute, letters, briefs, suits, reservations, provisions, instruments or other documents contrary to the rights of the king or his subjects. Offenders were to be handed over to the king's justice. 2
This decree was at once put into operation. The sheriff of London arrested the attorneys of Cardinals Adhémar Robert and Gérard de Garde and banished them from the country.
Clement VI was much annoyed when he learned of this assault, and wrote letters reproaching the king. The Pope even used the word 'rebellion' and threatened excommunication. His displeasure increased when, about the middle of October 1343, the jurist John Shoreditch brought him protests from Edward and the Lords and Commons. He decided, however, that it would be more prudent to conceal his resentment, and dismissed the ambassadors with the promise of a reply which was never sent. Knowing full well the power of court intrigues he began secret discussions and hampered
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1 Haller, op. cit. pp. 402-11.
2 Rotuli parliamentorum, VOL. II pp. 135-45, 172.
the execution of the king's will by means of the insidious schemes he fostered among members of the king's entourage.
This cunning policy was remarkably successful. The measures passed by Parliament in 1343 and reinforced by penal sanctions in 1344 were never implemented. In a famous letter, dated 11 July 1344, Clement declared the primacy, derived from God, of the Roman pontiff over all churches in the world and announced that, by virtue of this right, he possessed 'full authority to dispose of all churches and all ecclesiastical dignities, offices and benefices.' 1
The following spring, two nuncios made Edward promise that he would not give to the decisions of the censorious Parliaments of 1343 and 1344 the status of laws. The collectors carried out their duties as usual and the Holy See made appointments to bishoprics, abbeys and other lesser benefices.
After a very brief lull, hostilities began again in 1346, when the king confiscated all benefices held by foreigners. In 1347, Parliament made many bitter complaints against the Papacy. On 9 February 1351 the Statute of Provisors was published. This declared that if the Pope, by provision or reservation, opposed an election or the presentation to a benefice in the normal manner, and if the patrons and bishops did not within six months exercise their respective rights, the collation was to revert to the king, or to the nobles who had originally been entitled to nominate the holders of such benefices. Anyone contravening this statute was liable to imprisonment and fines. 2
This measure did not only abolish papal prerogatives; it also aimed a still more formidable blow at the principle of election and at the freedom of the Church, by giving its blessing to the seizure of Church property by the state.
Oddly enough, Edward III did not put this legislation into effect. He seems to have kept it in reserve, as an effective weapon to use against the Papacy. Clement seems to have been unaware of the Statute, or at least he pretended to be. When he threatened to excommunicate the king and to place his lands under an interdict, it was in the vain hope of obtaining the revenues made available by the sequestration of benefices held by cardinals, courtiers and prelates who were not English. 3
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1 Rinaldi, ad annum 1344, §55-9.
2 Rotuli parliamentorum, VOL. II p. 232. See also Statutes of the Realm, VOL. II, p. 316.
3 Rome, Vatican Archives, Regesta Vaticana, 138, epistles 323, 324, 378, 468, 704, 939; 139, epistles 1177, 1178, 1189; 140, epistles 1139, 1160; 141, epistle 596; 142, epistle 916; 143, fol. 44 v ; 145, fol. 87 r ; 146, fol. 70 r ; 212, fol. 354 r.
The Holy See continued to be attacked by the English in the time of Innocent VI. In January 1353, the apostolic collectors were informed that they were forbidden to collect the annates in cases where incumbents appointed in defiance of Papal reservations had not taken possession. The Statute of Praemunire, 23 September 1353, laid down very strict rules: 'Whosoever shall arraign the king's subjects in a foreign court, in matters whose cognizance belongs to the king's courts, or shall seek by the same means to annul the judgment made by these courts, shall have two months to answer for the reasons for his defiance; at the expiry of which term, his procurators, advocates, executors and notaries, and he himself and his abbettors, shall be out of the king's protection, his lands, merchandise and chattels shall be forfeit to the king and if he is seized, he shall be imprisoned until the payment of a ransom fixed by the king.' 1 This legislation, so prejudicial to the Papacy, remained for the time being merely theoretical. Edward III was the first to contravene the regulations that he himself had approved. The queen and her lords continued to beg the Curia to grant expectative graces to their protégés. Elections now scarcely ever took place. Apostolic provisions were sought as eagerly as they had been in the past. In 1365 Parliament vainly renewed the regulations made in 1351 and 1353.
At this juncture Urban V's untimely demand for the realm's quota of taxes now in arrear for some thirty-three years, caused the Parliament of 1366 to pass a very serious measure. 2 The Lords and Commons, after consulting the clergy, freed Edward III from any obligation to pay these taxes to the Roman pontiff, under the pretext that the grant formerly made by King John had been without the people's consent and contrary, to the king's oath at his coronation. If the Pope instituted canonical proceedings against Edward, the Lords and Commons would oppose them to the utmost. This was tantamount to abolishing the sovereignty of the Roman Church over England.
The promulgation of a caritative subsidy, made necessary by the costly wars in Italy and fixed in 1372 at 100,000 florins, caused renewed conflict between the Papacy and Edward III. The king of England forbade his clergy to make any payment at a moment when he himself was about to ask for their financial help. Moreover, an embassy led by the bishop of Bangor went to Avignon and made a violent protest against the way that papal tribunals had treated Englishmen, and against reservation of benefices, expectative graces
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1 Rymer, op. cit. VOL. III, pt 1, p. 81; Statutes of the Realm, VOL. I, p. 329.
2 Rotuli parliamentorum, VOL. II, pp. 289-90.
and apostolic provisions. 1 On 21 December 1373, Gregory XI granted certain concessions, such as the suspension until the following 24 June of suits pending before the two courts concerning the exercise of the right of provision to benefices, and the adjournment for one year of summonses to appear before his judges. For his part, the king of England agreed to leave in possession the clergy who had been appointed to benefices by the Holy See, and not to dispose of those benefices which were already affected by Papal reservation or which already had a titular holder furnished with a Bull to this effect and whose vacancy would raise the question of the right to present. It was at length agreed that discussions should begin either at Bruges or Calais in an attempt to reach a satisfactory agreement on this thorny question of benefices. In order to prove his goodwill, Gregory XI made a verbal undertaking in December 1373, to restrict the number of expectative graces, apostolic provisions and Bulls of reservation; to take more account of the wishes of the chapters and of the king in the choice of bishops, abbots, priors and those elected to office in cathedrals; and to reduce the amount of the taxes levied by the Holy See. 2
The agreed negotiations proceeded slowly at Bruges during the years 1374-5. The results were made known in six Bulls dated 1 September 1375. 3 Gregory annulled all the reservations and expectative graces not yet utilised by the beneficiaries. He legalised the granting of benefices by the king contrary to Apostolic reservations, and annulled legal proceedings on this and other accounts in progress at the Curia. He gave up his claim to the annates which illegal holders of benefices and litigants ought to have paid to the Apostolic Camera. For the next three years, provided that a peace settlement had not meanwhile been made with France, no Englishman was to be summoned to appear at Avignon, and cases were to be heard either at Bruges or in some other safe place. The archbishops of York and Canterbury were to see to it that buildings and religious foundations held in commendam were maintained and repaired at the expense of the commendatory cardinals.
All in all, the agreements of 1374-5 were not so much a concordat as a settlement of accounts and an amnesty. Both parties preserved their rights intact, and consequently the causes of conflict were not removed.
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1 For the mission of the bishop of Bangor, see E. Perroy, L'Angleterre et le Grand Schisme d'Occident, Paris 1933, pp. 32-3.
2 M. Perroy has put forward good reasons for suggesting 1373 and not 1377, the date which used to be generally accepted. Gregory's verbal promises are not in fact dated, and appear in Rymer Foedera after the royal decrees of 15 February 1377. See Perroy, op. cit. pp. 45-6.
3 Rymer, op. cit. VOL. III, pt 2, pp. 34-6.
The English were well aware that they were being deceived, and in 1376 many complaints were made at the Parliament in London. The Papacy was considered to be responsible for all the ills that beset England: this was the time of English reverses on French soil. 'What the Curia levies in taxes for vacant benefices,' it was said, 'amounts to a sum five times greater than the king's revenues. In return for financial gain, the courtiers at Avignon thrust ignorant good-fornothings into high office. English benefices are in the hands of strangers, and even of enemies of the country, who have never even seen their flock. Every year the Papal collector sends up to 20,000 marks to the Pope. In all Christendom there is not one prince whose riches amount to even one quarter of the sums criminally extorted in this country. The Pope levies taxes and subsidies on the English clergy to pay the ransoms of Frenchmen who are prisoners of war in England, or to carry on the war in Lombardy.' 1 But neither Gregory nor Edward would heed such protests, which sounded in their ears like old familiar oft-heard repetitions.
Nevertheless, the king, recalling perhaps the grudging concessions made by the Pope on 1 September 1375, did give some satisfaction both to the Curia and to the ordinary patrons. Two decrees, dated 15 February 1377, settled the future of benefices which, since 15 February 1376, had become subject to the royal prerogative of regale and were still without incumbents: the sovereign renounced his right of presentation, annulled all favours granted to those of his candidates who had not taken possession and broke off any proceedings in progress between claimants at English courts. 2
By a strange irony of fate, the Bruges discussions, which were never put into effect, eventually proved detrimental to the Papacy. Public opinion in England was by no means grateful for the Papacy's conciliatory attitude: there were attempts to take advantage of even the verbal promises made in 1373, and demands for their implementation in toto, whereas Gregory XI had in fact only made a retrospective undertaking. When annates were claimed, when reservations affected certain benefices, when lawsuits began at the Curia between clergy appointed by the king and those provided by an apostolic grace, there were cries that 'the aforementioned treaty' had been violated, though in fact no agreement had been signed. The Holy See was thus placed in a humiliating position: unless the alleged agreements were interpreted 'in the sense most favourable to the temporal power,' there was serious risk that the full force of the 'anticlerical
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1 Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste, Freiburg 1885-1933, VOL. I, p. vii.
2 Rymer, op. cit. VOL. III, pt 2, pp. 55-6.
legislation' symbolised by the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire would be unleashed. 1
The perpetual complaints of the representatives of the English people were to increase and at length to pervade the mass of the populace and there to give rise to an opposition highly dangerous to the Papacy. 2. The unrest of a whole nation cannot be stifled indefinitely. If it is perhaps too much to assert that a national church was already beginning to form, it is at least true that men's minds were ready to listen to Wycliffe's violent attacks on the constitution of the Church of Rome, and that England was gradually becoming ripe for schism.
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1 Perroy, op. cit. pp. 48-50.
2 See especially the 'Brocours de bénéfices demorantz en la pecherouse cité d'Avenon, in Rotuli Parliamentorum', VOL. III, p. 337, no. 96
CHAPTER V
The Papacy and Spain
1
The Kingdoms of Aragon and Majorca
OF the various states formed in Spain as the Moslems were gradually driven back, the Kingdom of Aragon, by the beginning of the fourteenth century, showed the most signs of increasing in size and strength. One branch of the royal house had been reigning over the island of Sicily, now known as the kingdom of Trinacria, since 1282. The Balearic Islands, Roussillon and Cerdaña had, like Sicily, their own dynasty, and formed the kingdom of Majorca.
The death of King Sancho on 4 September 1324 raised the thorny question of the succession to the throne of Majorca. Sancho, who died without issue, had bequeathed his crown to his own nephew James and had established a regency council, which was to choose a tutor for this child of ten. On 4 September, the people enthusiastically acclaimed the young prince as their rightful sovereign.
But, in defiance of all right, a rival immediately rose in opposition to him: James II of Aragon claimed the kingdom of Majorca. As his claims were coldly received at Roussillon, he commanded the Infante Alfonso to mobilise an army. John XXII determined to support the cause of the little James, and, without wasting words, pointed out to his rival how ill-founded were his claims, and urged him to abandon his projects.
In these circumstances, it was essential that the regency council, laid down in Sancho's will, should shortly provide the young king of Majorca with a tutor well able to defend his interests which were threatened. Their choice fell on Don Philip of Majorca. Unfortunately this choice displeased certain turbulent nobles, and roused considerable discontent in the country. At Perpignan and in the Balearic Islands, Philip was sharply criticised for having lived for many years in France, for his close relations with the court in Paris, and for his sympathies with a country which had given Roussillon cause for complaint. Conditions were imposed upon him, his actions were closely supervised and care was taken that he should not influence his pupil in favour of France. The King of Aragon had a hand in these intrigues. His policy was to prevent the alliance of James of Majorca with France. After isolating the young king, he might hope to crush him more surely. Meanwhile, he encouraged anarchy in Majorcan territory and tried to find some pretext for occupying part of the little kingdom. His principal interest, therefore, was to thwart the policy of Philip of Majorca and to raise a party in opposition to him.
On this occasion, John XXII's intervention was sufficient to avert the danger. He sent letters reproving his subjects in Majorca so emphatically that they accepted Philip as royal tutor, made an oath of fealty to him and even paid him liege homage.
But danger threatened again in January 1325. The municipal officers and people of Majorca, Cerdaña, Conflent, Perpignan and Collioure renounced their oath of fealty, refused to obey the regent and set to work to impede his government in every possible way. Civil war, for which Gaston de Foix and the king of Aragon had been secretly preparing, was now imminent. John XXII hurriedly sent to the unhappy kingdom two nuncios, the bishops of Bazas and Agde, charged with bringing to a speedy end the growing discord between James's tutor and his subjects. They had powers to put down, if necessary, any association contrary to the public good, to pronounce excommunication upon disturbers of the peace and to impose an interdict on rebellious cities and districts.
These Papal threats only served to excite the insurgents still further. The inhabitants of Perpignan even made their way into the royal palace of their city, seized hold of the young prince and put his tutor to flight. Regardless of the Pope's warnings, they even had the effrontery to make a seal, bearing the likeness of the king, now their prisoner, and affix it to the letters they sent to the regent's counsellors, telling them to leave the kingdom of Majorca with all speed.
The nuncios from the Holy See took decisive action. Despite the public excitement, they issued summonses in the normal manner, and then declared the organisers of the revolt excommunicate, and Perpignan and the other towns involved under an interdict.
The suspension of all religious offices at Roussillon resulted in a temporary slackening of tension. At the beginning of May 1325, representatives of the rebel towns went to Avignon to confer with the regent, whom John XXII had summoned there. But, as agreement was not reached, the interdict, which had been lifted for a short while, once again lay on the rebellious country.
Thanks to France, which had been approached through diplomatic channels by Naples and the Pope, the conflict was resolved. On 11 July, Charles the Fair told Gaston de Foix that he must cease all intrigue in the town of Perpignan, and ordered the seneschals of Beaucaire, Carcassonne and Toulouse as well as the rector of Montpellier to compel the rebels to recognise Philip of Majorca as James's tutor.
While John XXII was busy on his behalf, the regent was discussing with the representatives of James II of Aragon the question of who should succeed the late King Sancho. The discussions, though they bristled with difficulties, resulted in an agreement on 24 Septem-v ber 1325: James gave up all claims to the kingdom of Majorca, on condition that the little Majorcan prince married Constance, daughter of the Infante Alfonso. This clause eliminated the much-feared contingency of an alliance between the king of Majorca and France, and provided the successors of the king of Aragon with the possibility of seizing a kingdom which for the moment had eluded his jealous grasp.
But Constance and James were closely related, and could not marry without a papal dispensation. John XXII, realising the ultimate intentions of the king of Aragon, refused to grant the indulgence, and resisted all attempts to make him change his mind. At last he did yield, but only after the king of Aragon had, in 1326, brought troops into Perpignan, pacified the town, and handed over the person of the young king to Philip of Majorca. 1
John XXII's skilful policy had proved brilliantly successful. He had succeeded in thwarting the plans of the house of Aragon, disarmed the insurrection at Perpignan, suggested a wise line of conduct to the regent, taken advantage of the goodwill of the queen of Naples, caused France to intervene tactfully, and, finally, ensured that James of Majorca would keep his throne. Later Avignon Popes were to show equal solicitude in protecting the young king against enemies determined to bring about his downfall.
Unfortunately James II of Majorca, overbold, inexperienced, surrounded by bad advisers, contributed more than anyone else to his own downfall. Instead of strengthening the alliance with France, he made the mistake of quarrelling with her. While Aragon kept a watchful eye on his actions and prepared to engulf his states, he foolishly wasted his resources in extravagant living, and exasperated his cousin, Peter the Ceremonious, 2 by his ill-timed recriminations.
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1 G. Mollat, Jean XXII et la succession de Sanche, roi de Majorque (1324-1326), Paris 1905.
2 James II of Aragon had been succeeded by Alfonso IV in 1328 and by Peter IV, 'the Ceremonious' in 1336.
The crisis had for long been quietly threatening, and though Benedict XII succeeded by his wise intervention in 1338-9 in averting it for the time, it broke out suddenly in 1342. The king of Aragon instigated proceedings against James II for having struck an illicit coinage in the province of the County of Roussillon. Clement VI, realising what danger the prince was in, sent a nuncio, Armand de Narsès, to the spot, and he persuaded the two rivals to agree to a meeting. In August 1342 James went to Barcelona, suspecting nothing. To his great surprise he was not admitted to his cousin's presence to converse with him, and learned that he was summoned to appear before a court of justice in Aragon. Full of indignation at this trap that had been set for him, and loudly protesting that it was his firm intention to submit only to the arbitration of the Pope, he escaped from Barcelona. This act constituted the final rupture.
Armand de Narsès was replaced as nuncio by Cardinal Andrea Ghini di Malpighi, but he was no more successful in securing peace than his predecessor. Then events followed rapidly one on the other: on 23 February 1343, the king of Aragon announced that Majorca, Roussillon and Cerdaña were to be confiscated and made over to him; in the same year the Aragonese army invaded the Balearic Islands.
Andrea Ghini di Malpighi died in office and was succeeded as legate by Cardinal Bernard of Albi, who went to Barcelona on 11 July 1343 in an attempt to make Peter IV relent. The king refused to listen to his advice and hurriedly left to take command of his troops, who were ready to advance on Roussillon. The legate followed him to the walls of Perpignan and with great difficulty succeeded, in August, in making him sign, under those very walls, a truce to last until 1 May 1344. The conditions of the truce were harsh ones for James of Majorca: the king of Aragon was allowed to keep the places his soldiers had captured, and the legal proceedings which had been begun against James II were to take their normal course.
Shortly before the truce was due to expire, Clement VI attempted to have it extended until the following Michaelmas. The archbishop of Aix, who brought the Pope's exhortations, was given a cold reception by Peter IV, who had renewed his campaign in Roussillon in May 1344. When Cardinal Bertrand de Déaulx called for the ending of hostilities, the king of Aragon declared that he was bound by no ties of vassalage to the Holy See.
Having exhausted his powers of persuasion, the nuncio was driven to advise James II to submit to Aragon. Scarcely had the prince handed over his person and his lands to Peter IV on 15 July 1344, than it was announced, on 22 July, that Roussillon and Cerdaña were now annexed to Aragon. In October, the Cortes, in session at Barcelona, deprived James of his throne, and, in mockery, allowed him to keep Montpellier and the County of Aumelas and Carlat, which had been in the hands of Philip VI of Valois for the past three years.
Despairing, James II had no alternative but to take refuge at the Avignon court where Clement VI received him kindly. There it was arranged that Montpellier and the port of Lattes should be sold to France for 120,000 gold crowns. This money, together with what the Pope and the cardinals lent him, enabled James II to hire mercenaries and charter a fleet. He succeeded in landing on the island of Majorca, but died in battle on 25 October 1349.
His son, James III, had been captured in the thick of battle, and, for thirteen years, despite the repeated demands of Innocent VI for his release, the unfortunate prince was imprisoned in an iron cage. Finally, in May 1362, he escaped and married Queen Joanna of Naples. Being of a very adventurous disposition, he later fought in Castile under the banner of Pedro the Cruel. In 1374 he obtained permission from Gregory XI to prepare an expedition to recapture his father's kingdom. He began to campaign in Roussillon, but died in the following year. He was succeeded by his sister Isabella, who realised that any efforts she might make to win back her ancestral states were doomed to failure. Accordingly, on 30 August 1375, she sold them to Duke Louis of Anjou, who was on the look-out for a throne. The king of Aragon though much displeased dared not make war on Louis, who could count on valuable support from the papal court and the alliance with Castile. He was indeed bold enough to sound Charles V on the subject but Charles, not wishing to be involved, advised recourse to the judgment of the Holy See. The two rivals accepted the compromise. Gregory XI acting with complete impartiality, gave Cardinal Gilles Aycelin full authority, in 1376, to draw up an agreement on a friendly basis, without legal formalities. The arbitrator went to Catalonia, but Peter IV would have nothing to do with any idea of appeasement. He tried every method of evasion, and finally refused to accept the arbitration of the Holy See, which he accused of prejudice. He demanded a tribunal of guaranteed impartiality, and suggested as such his own court of justice! Cardinal Aycelin did not despair even at this evidence of bad faith. He went tirelessly to and fro between Perpignan and Narbonne, doing his utmost to wring concessions now from the king of Aragon's representative, the duke of Gerona, and now from Louis of Anjou. But his efforts were not crowned with success; Gregory XI died without having reconciled the two opponents. 1
2
Castile
Throughout the fourteenth century the policy of the Holy See towards Castile remained consistent: it combated English influence and promoted that of France. As early as 1337 the legate, Bernard of Albi, had been working with Jean de Vienne, the French ambassador, to bring to a peaceful end the hostilities which had broken out between Alfonso XI and his Portuguese neighbour Alfonso IV. Later, plans for a marriage between an English princess and the heir presumptive to the Castilian throne caused considerable anxiety to Clement VI, who wished to bring about an alliance between France and Castile. His activities were so successful that, in 1345, the youthful Pedro was betrothed to Blanche of Navarre. But English diplomacy undismayed pursued its intrigues, and despite the angry protests of Clement VI, Alfonso XI abandoned his earlier plan and in 1346 decided to marry his son to Joanna, daughter of Edward III. But in 1348 when the princess was crossing the Bordelais on her way to Castile she died of a sudden sickness.
Immediately Clement VI set to work to arrange a French marriage. First he offered to Pedro the daughter of Philip of Évreux and then the daughter of Philip of Valois. Finally, on 3 June 1353 at Valladolid, the young prince was married to Blanche of Bourbon.
Pedro was a man of a revengeful and passionate nature who was completely dominated by his mistress, Doña Maria de Padilla. He took a violent dislike to his wife and subjected her to many indignities. The bishops of Salamanca and Avila, on some trifling pretext, declared the marriage to be null, and even dared to bless their sovereign's new union with an attractive widow, Doña Juana de Castro.
Innocent VI, a rigorous disciplinarian, could not condone such flouting of morality and justice. Bertrand, bishop of Senez, was ordered to annul the marriage authorised by the bishops of Salamanca and Avila, to begin proceedings against the two prelates and to summon the king of Castile to appear before the court at Avignon.
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1 A. Lecoy de la Marche, Les Relations politiques de la France et du Royaume de Majorque, Paris 1892, VOL. II.
As if in support of this action of the Pope, Alfonso XI's bastard sons, Don Enrico and Don Tello, helped by Don Juan Alfonso Albuquerque, revolted against their brother and besieged him in the town of Toro. The legate was in no hurry to reach Castile. He feared the reception he would get from the king, who was notorious for his cruelty, and Innocent VI had to quicken his zeal. When at last Bertrand ventured to appear in Pedro's presence, he heard all his demands rejected. In accordance with the terms of his mandate, he bided his time for a while and fixed a date before which the king was to recall Blanche of Bourbon; but, when the date has passed, he laid the kingdom under an interdict, and declared Pedro excommunicate ( 1354).
The league formed by Don Enrico and Don Tello could not profit by its advantages. Thanks to disagreements which he skilfully fomented, Pedro overcame his enemies, recaptured Toledo in May 1355 and imprisoned Blanche of Bourbon at Sigüenza.
Innocent VI, hearing of the fate that had befallen the wretched queen, decided to send to Castile a new legate, Cardinal Guillaume de la Jugie. Pedro knew that the Pope sympathised with his enemies and he feared lest the papal envoy should thwart his plans, and lend support to the insurgents, who were still in arms. Resorting to artifice, Pedro ceased to consort openly with Maria de Padilla, made a series of overtures to the court at Avignon, announced his reconciliation with his legitimate wife, and, in consequence, asked for the lifting of the interdict from his kingdom, and did his best to show that there was no point in sending a legate. But the Pope was not deceived. On 24 November 1355, Guillaume de la Jugie arrived before the walls of Toro where, in their turn, Don Enrico and Don Tello were then being besieged, and tried to persuade both sides to lay down their arms. But the king was not to be moved. He would neither agree to make peace with his opponents, nor to take back Blanche of Bourbon.
Discouraged by his lack of success, which was made complete by the capture of Toro on 5 January 1356, Cardinal de la Jugie fell ill and asked to be recalled. His request was granted on condition that he tried to end the war that had begun on 26 September between Castile and Aragon. Bertrand de Cosnac came to help him in this arduous task; but all the efforts to mediate made by the two nuncios were of no avail.
On 10 March 1357, the truce of Tudela was signed. For some time Pedro's envoy, Juan Fernandez de Henestrosa, a past-master in double-dealing, had succeeded in deceiving Innocent VI, but the Pope soon saw the error into which he had fallen, and in August told
Guillaume de la Jugie that he was definitely recalled. The legate obeyed, but not without first excommunicating the king.
In April 1359, the papal court resumed relations with Castile. Cardinal Guy de Boulogne left Avignon and persuaded the king of Aragon to sign a peace treaty with Pedro in May 1361. But his efforts to bring the king of Castile and Blanche of Bourbon together were uncompromisingly rejected, and the princess, forsaken by France, died of grief at Jerez in 1361.
The succession of Henry of Trastamara to the throne of Castile must have caused rejoicing at the court of Avignon, for this king was a faithful ally of France, and there was every prospect that relations with him would be cordial. And so, when the king of Portugal threatened to seize Castile in 1371, the Holy See hastened to avert the danger and, through the intermediacy of the papal legates, restored peace between the two countries. 1
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1 G. Daumet, Étude sur l'Alliance de la France et de la Castille au XIVe et au XVe siècle, Paris 1898; Innocent VI et Blanche de Bourbon. Lettres du Pape publiées d'après les registres du Vatican, Paris 1899.
For the relations of the Papacy at Avignon with the Scandinavian states, see: J. Moltesen, De Avignonske Pavers forhold til Danmark, Copenhagen 1896; Brilioth, Den pafliga bes Kattningen of Sverige intill den Stora Schisma, Upsala 1915.
BOOK THREE: PAPAL INSTITUTIONS
CHAPTER I
Avignon and the Papal Court
1
Avignon
NOBODY who has ever read it can have forgotten Daudet's charming story in which he describes the Papal city in the time of Benedict XII and still less the poem of Mistral in which in rapturous tones he sings of ' Avignon! Avignon on her mighty rock! Avignon, the joyful ringer of bells, whose stone-carved belfries, side by side, point heavenwards; St Peter's god-child, Avignon, who saw the saint's bark ride at anchor in her haven and who bears his keys at her battlemented girdle; Avignon, that lovely city, tumbled and dishevelled by the mistral. . . ." 1
And yet the picture of Avignon that is usually foremost in our minds is the sombre one drawn by Petrarch in his characteristically figurative style of that city in his own day: 'Unholy Babylon, thou Hell on earth, thou sink of iniquity, thou cess-pool of the world! There is neither faith, nor charity, nor religion, nor fear of God, no shame, no truth, no holiness, albeit the residence within its walls of the supreme pontiff should have made of it a shrine and the very stronghold of religion. . . . Of all cities that I know, its stench is the worst. . . . What dishonour to see it suddenly become the capital of the world, when it should be but the least of all cities!' 2
For St Bridget the court of Avignon was 'like a field full of tares, that must first be rooted out with a sharp steel, then purified with fire, and finally levelled with the plough.' These tares she boldly enumerated: pride, avarice, luxury and simony. 3
Like most towns in the south of France in the fourteenth century, Avignon was not at all attractive inside the city walls. Its narrow muddy streets, from which the filth was not cleared, gave off foetid smells which so incommoded an ambassador from Aragon as to make
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1 A. Hallays, Avignon et le Comtat-Venaissin, Paris 1909, p. 2.
2 De Sade, Mémoires pour la vie de François Pétrarque, Amsterdam 1764-7, VOL. I, pp. 25-7.
3 St Bridget of Sweden, Revelationes, Bk IV, ch. lvii; Bk V, ch. cxlii.
him ill. 1 Few of the houses were two stories high. The dwellings were usually low, and were badly arranged, ill-ventilated and ill-lit. Rents were comparatively high: a small lodging consisting of three rooms, a store-room, a kitchen, a loft and a privy, cost one florin per month; a single room with use of kitchen, five sous of Vienne; a two-storied house with stabling for four horses, a courtyard, three bedrooms, a hall, a kitchen and a paddock, was four florins. 2
It was not easy to find lodgings. In 1316, the ambassadors from Aragon had to go outside Avignon to find somewhere to stay. From the time of Benedict XII, when it seemed that the return to Rome was indefinitely postponed, the cardinals built themselves palaces on the right bank of the Rhône, at Villeneuve on French soil. 'In every direction the Papal city overflows the confines of the ancient city.' Outside the thirteenth-century ramparts, now mostly derelict, new quarters and suburbs were being rapidly constructed. The old town was changing too. On the Rocher des Doms rose the immense towers of the papal palace, while the cardinals took delight in adding new beauties to monasteries and ancient churches, or in building such monuments as the clock-tower, the little palace, St Didier, St Martial's college and the church and cloister, now no longer in existence, of the Dominican friars. The fourteenth-century visitor, however, had great difficulty in seeing these wonders of Avignon, for he had no space to step back and admire them at leisure: there was scarcely an alley's width between the papal palace and the neighbouring houses.
In 1366, the appearance of the city changed again. Gone were the happy days of Clement VI. The incursions of the Great Companies into the Comtat-Venaissin caused general terror, and the inhabitants of Avignon, with the help of papal subsidies, hastened to enclose both the old and the new town within a common circle of massive ramparts, from whose shelter they could defy the attacks of the mercenaries. 3 Once Avignon had become the centre of the Catholic world, an extraordinary crowd of foreigners gathered within its walls. There were enough Germans to form a confraternity. Italian bankinghouses, famed for their credit, opened branches there: in 1327-8 there were known to be forty-three money-changers ( campsores Camerae ). Tuscan painters rubbed shoulders with French architects. Lawyers of every sort--attorneys, advocates and notaries--went
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1 Finke, Acta Aragonensia, VOL. I, p. 225.
2 K. H. Schäfer, "'Deutsche in Avignon und ihre Wohnungen zur Zeit Johanns XXII,'" Römische Quartalschrift, VOL. XX, 1906, pp. 162-4.
3 R. Michel, "' La Construction des remparts d'Avignon au XIVe siècle,'" Congrès archéologique de France, session LXXIII, VOL. II, Paris 1910, pp. 341-60.
about their business. In another part of the city, all kinds of merchants and craftsmen had their shops--embroiderers, furriers, illuminators, bookbinders and booksellers, goldsmiths, bakers, butchers and a host of others.
All these people, who had some kind of link with the papal court, if only that of supplying goods, were generically termed courtiers ( cortesani ) and citizens of the Roman court ( cives Romanae curiae ). After Gregory XI had left for Rome, 2,359 courtiers and 1,1471 citizens of the Roman court were counted in the parishes of St Pierre, St Symphorien, St Didier, St Agricol, St Étienne, St Geniès, and Notre-Dame-la-Principale. It must be remembered, however, that this count included children, women and domestic servants. 1
The language spoken in Avignon was not French, but Provençal. Latin was used for the administration of Church affairs.
As the papal palace was much too small to accommodate all the administrative departments of the Curia, the Apostolic Camera hired premises in the town for the Almonry (known as la Pignotte ), for the headquarters of the marshal, for the cook and the cellarer, and for the office of the bullatores, as well as for lodgings for the Pope's servants and for the cardinals and their retinue, known as their liveried retainers ( librata ). It was the duty of commissioners ( taxatores dornorum ) approved by the Curia and the civic magistrates, to decide the amount of rent to be paid by members of the Curia, to give each one the dwelling that was his due, and to settle the differences between landlords and tenants. 2
Like all cosmopolitan towns, Avignon became the haunt of adventurers of every kind--professional thieves, usurers and prostitutes. For that reason, the marshal of the Curia, 3. whose duties included the supervision of the police and the prison, was a very busy man. Under him he had a judge for civil and criminal cases, a captain in command of thirty or forty sergeants at arms, and a treasurer. Crimes and offences were severely punished. Men-at-arms conviczed of complicity in the attempt made on 13 April 1340 on the person of the ambassador to England, Nicolino Fieschi, were hanged on gibbets from the windows of Fieschi's lodging. In the time of Innocent VI, a gang of robbers, who worked only at night, were cast into the Rhône. 4
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1 H. Denifle, "' Liber divisionis Cortesianorum et civium Romanae Curiae et civitatis Avinionis,'" Archiv, VOL. I, 1885, pp. 627-30.
2 P. M. Baumgarten, Aus Kanzlei und Kammer, Freiburg 1907, pp. 47-78.
3 E. Göller, "' Zur Entstehung der Supplikenregister,'" Romische Quartalschrift, VOL. XIX, 1905, pp. 190-3
4 Baluze, Vitae, VOL. 1, col. 353.
2
The Papal Court
Foremost among those surrounding the supreme pontiff were his kinsmen: brothers, nephews, cousins and more distant relatives. His sisters, sisters-in-law and nieces assumed the title of 'Ladies of the Pope's family'; like the wives and daughters of the marshal of the Curia and of the provost, like the baronesses and great ladies of Avignon, they enjoyed the exclusive privilege of wearing ermine or miniver, and 'things made of gold, silver or silk.' 1
In attendance on the Pope were knights and squires from noble families. In 1320 there were one hundred and eight squires.
At the Pope's own door, first-class or master-porters ( hostarii or porterii majores ) were on guard, to announce and introduce visitors. Second-class porters ( hostarii minores ) stood at lesser doorways; and prepared the necessary carpets and chairs when the supreme pontiff appeared in Consistory or in the aula. Those who opened and closed the outside doors were known as hostarii exteriores.
The sergeants-at-arms ( servientes armorum ), whose number varied during the fourteenth century from twenty-three to seventy-two, guarded the inside of the apostolic palace. At night, they lodged in barracks, in three guard-rooms lit by oil-lamps. They had to hold themselves in constant readiness to ride out in search of delinquent clergy, to arrest them and bring them to the Curia. They also had the duty of guarding the Papal prison.
Thirty chaplains officiated in the Pope's private chapel. Every night the resident chaplains ( capellani commensales ) were roused by a bell to sing matins. At daybreak they celebrated mass and recited vespers. If the Holy Father took part in a procession or rode on horseback, they bore the cross before him. A priest handed the psalter to the Pope for the reciting of vespers. A subdeacon read to him at mealtimes. Those chaplains more especially concerned with the offices of the Church were called capellani capellae, capellani capellae intrinsecae or capellani intrinseci, though their duties were very similar to those of the capellani comenensales. Indeed, the chief difference between them was that the capellani cornmensales had a salary of 200 florins, whereas the others had only 100. 2
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1 De Sade, Mémoires pour la vie de François Pétrarque, VOL. II, p. 91.
2 K. H. Schäfer, "' Päpstliche Ehrenkapläne aus deutschen Diözesen im vierzehnten Jahrhundert,'" Rörnische Quartalschrift, VOL. XXI, 1907, pp. 97-113.
Chamberlains ( cubicularii, camerarii, or cambrerii ) were those servants who vested the Pope in his mantle, placed the stole about his neck and the mitre on his head when he went to Consistory or to a solemn ceremony, or when he received distinguished visitors. The chamberlains had duties to perform also at ordinary receptions: they uncovered the papal slipper that the visitor was to kiss, and stood in rows on either side of their master. On solemn occasions they carried the flabelli.
Inside the palace teaching was done by a master of theology chosen from the Dominican Order. In Clement VI's day his pulpit stood in a rectangular room, in the easternmost alcove of the Audience Chamber. In the time of John XXII a master of languages taught oriental tongues.
There were many grades in the kitchen staff. An official, known as the emptor coquinae or administrator expensarum coquinae, bought meat, game, and fish and the wood required for the fires. The chief cooks ( supracoci or magistri coquinae ) arranged the bills of fare and provided the members of the Pope's household with their commons. They served the Pope after they had tasted the dishes. Scribes or notaries ( scriptores or notarii coquinae ) kept a note of all purchases and of the distribution of the food. There were two kitchens, a large and a small, where cooks, assisted by scullions ( brodarii ) exercised their culinary arts.
Two masters of the buttery bought corn or bread, salt, cheese, certain fruits, tables and table-knives, gave every member of the household the helping he was entitled to, arranged the seats and tables at mealtimes, and offered the Pope the napkins with which he wiped his hands before dinner and luncheon.
The butlers ( buticularii ) tasted the wine before pouring it into the supreme pontiff's cup. Two, three or four of them saw that the cellars, of which they had charge, were filled with wines from Burgundy, Bédarrides, Lunel and Carpentras, and distributed an allowance to those who lived in the palace. One of them, the 'fruiterer', supplied the papal table with apples, pears, grapes, nuts, figs and oranges.
Two or three masters of the stable ( magistri marescatle, marescalli ) were concerned with the fodder for the horses and mules, and with the care of the harness, carriages and carts. They had a staff of grooms, stable-boys, mule-drivers and carters.
A furrier ( furrerius ) distributed summer and winter garments to court officials and saw to the furnishings of the palace.
The papal prison was supervised by a gaoler, the soldanus, with sergeants under him. He himself was subordinate to a prison governor ( custos or magister carceris ).
Couriers, 1 either on foot (cursores pedestres) or on horseback (cursores equitatores), carried the Pope's commands within Avignon and to distant parts. No distinction was made between them until after 1378. A master-courier (magister cursorum)--this title is occasionally used for the first time in 1362 -- acted as intermediary between the couriers and the Apostolic Camera, organised the despatch of messages and collected the wages of those who were away. In the course of their journeys the couriers had the right to demand a lodging for themselves and their horses, whersoever they went; but they were expressly forbidden to ask for or to accept gratuities. Their task was to carry the Pope's letters to their destination, to affix proclamations made by the Holy See to church doors, to call and summon all persons cited to appear at the Court, and to give to the auditors powers to enquire into cases under litigation. Sometimes they carried out police duties, seeking out culprits, arresting them and bringing them back under safe escort to appear before the Court tribunals. The Apostolic Camera also commissioned them to buy commodities of all kinds, and to bring back any available funds from the tax-collectors.
The list of the Pope's household also included a certain number of other officials whose titles are sufficient indication of the kind of work they did; among these were the keeper of the plate, the keeper of the arms, the keeper of the wax, the keeper of the deer, of the camel and of the other animals; sweepers, water-bearers, bell-ringers, launderers and washerwomen, the barber, the physicians, the master of works and many others. From the time of Benedict XII there was also the private almoner. 2
In all, the papal court included from three to four hundred persons, and perhaps more.
All these people, of course, had their clothing and board and lodging provided, and received a fairly high salary. Members of the Curia also frequently received presents. They also received part of the servitia minuta. 3 Those who were clerks became incumbents and received the income from their benefices. The available documents make it possible to calculate that, in the year 1329-30, John XXII
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1 Y. Renouard, "' Comment les papes d'Avignon expédiaient leur courtier,'" Revue historique, VOL. CLXXX, 1937, pp. 1-29. (The delivery of papal letters was sometimes entrusted to the messengers of those corresponding with the Curia, or to casual visitors or to employees of Merchant Companies.) See also Baumgarten, op. cit. pp. 223-47.
2 J. Haller, "' Zwei Aufzeichnungen über die Beamte der Kürie im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert,'" Quellen, VOL. I, 1898, pp. 1-38. K. H. Schäffer, Die Ausgaben der apostolischen Kammer unter den Päpsten Urban V. und Gregor XI. , Paderborn 1937 (VOL. VI, Görres-Gesellschaft).
3 See below, pp. 319 - 20.
spent almost three million gold francs on the maintenance and payment of members of his staff. 1
3 The Central Administration of the Roman Church
During the Avignon Papacy, the central administration of the Roman Church was divided between four chief institutions: the Apostolic Camera, the Chancery, the administration of justice and the Penitentiary.
A. The Apostolic Camera
The various departments dealing with the financial business of the Holy See were collectively known as the Apostolic Camera ( Camera apostolica ). Two high officials were in charge of these departments: the Camerarius and the Treasurer ( thesaurarius ).
The camerarius was in effect the minister of finances and he was chosen by the Pope. Always a bishop or an archbishop, he generally received a cardinal's hat at the end of his period of office as a reward for his services.
The camerarius supervised all officials under his administration, whether or not they were resident at the Curia. He appointed the Collectors and also the commissioners charged with carrying out temporary missions; he supervised their activities and had authority to suspend or recall them. Every regulation, report and order had to be scrutinised by him and authenticated by his seal, mark or signature. The camerarius gave receipts to the collectors for the money coming into the Camera, and signed acknowledgment of sums paid into the Treasury through the banks. His most important duty was to check the accounts of receipts and expenditure submitted by the various departments of the Curia, and in particular to supervise the accounts periodically submitted by the collectors. A clerk of the Camera had the task of compiling a report on these accounts, but the camerarius usually presided at the meetings when they were examined.
Through the day-to-day practice of this exacting discipline, the camerarius acquired a profound knowledge of the rights of the
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1 In the same year, the household expenses of the king of France, the queen, the duke of Normandy and the duke of Orleans together amounted to 265,873 livres, 5 sous, deniers parisis. J. Viard ( "' L'Hôtel de Philippe VI de Valois," B.E.C. VOL. LV, pp. 465-87, 598-626) gives a list of the officers of the king's household.
Roman Church. Consequently he became the Pope's most intimate and most heeded adviser, consulted by him not only on financial matters, but also on political affairs affecting the Holy See. It was he who sometimes drew up the instructions for the nuncios, and conveyed his master's intentions direct to the various sovereigns. Under his direction, scribes--known from 1341 as secretaries--dealt with political correspondence and secret letters. 1
As a result of these manifold duties, the camerarius was the most important personage at the papal court. Almost all the palace officials had to take an oath of loyalty and obedience to him.
Subject to his authority the treasurer, appointed by the Pope, administered the treasure and funds of the Roman church. He was usually a bishop, more rarely an abbot. Although he was subordinate to the camerarius, he also approved accounts, issued receipts and acknowledgments and gave orders to the collectors. But he had, nevertheless, to be careful to mention the approval of his superior in the hierarchy.
In the offices of the Camera there were two distinct grades of staff: some, of a very inferior status, were no more than copyists ( scriptores ) and couriers ( cursores ); others, known as clerks of the Camera, were really lawyers who drew up contracts and acts in due form, made out inventories, checked the books, audited the accounts and wrote the letters called litterae camerales because they emanated from the camerarius. These clerks were sometimes sent on a special mission to supervise on the spot the activities of the collectors. They lived at Avignon and, together with the camerarius and the treasurer, formed the Upper Council of the Camera. About the middle of the fourteenth century they were given the title of Counsellors. There were seven of them in the days of Clement V, but only three or four from the time of John XXII.
Financial transactions often gave rise to litigation: if a dispute occurred between the tax-payers and the collectors, or an incumbent refused to pay his due, or a collector became over-zealous or guilty of embezzlement or extortion, the judicial court of the Camera had to settle these affairs. The auditor and vice-auditor were judges in the first instance, both in civil and criminal cases. A procurator fiscal represented in his official capacity the temporal interests of the Holy See, and led the prosecution; advocates fiscal pleaded in his name and gave legal opinions to the camerarius on request; there was a keeper of the auditors' seal; and notaries enrolled the proceedings
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1 E. Göller, "' Zur Geschichte des päpstlichen Sekretariats,'" Quellen, VOL. XI, 1909, pp. 360-4; Mitteilungen und Untersuchungen, Rome 1904, pp. 42-60.
and despatched the various documents required for the case and for the judicial sentence.
Appeal could be made from this first court to that of the camerarius, who either pronounced judgment in person or through proxies. His sentences were final and without appeal. He was, moreover, entitled to demand that financial suits should be brought directly to his court, and to make a summary decision from which there was no appeal, summarie, simpliciter et de plano, sine strepitu et forma judicii. 1
The court of the Camera had its own prison, where the sentences it imposed were served. Various penalties, including confiscation of property, were imposed on those found guilty.
The camerarius was in charge of the mint, which until 1354 was set up in the papal castle at Sorgues, and was subsequently transferred to Avignon after that town had been given to the Holy See.
There were five chief officers of the papal mint: the master of the mint, the warden, the provost, the cuneator and the assayer. Under them were moneyers and workmen.
All these officials, except the provost, made an oath of fealty to the camerarius or the treasurer within a month of their appointment; then, and not till then, they were given permission to bear the titles corresponding to the nature of their office. All these employees, including the master of the mint, were justiciable to the provost, who received his authority from the Pope himself, or from the camerarius or treasurer.
Their appointments carried with them certain hereditary privileges: exemption from various taxes ( 1 July 1342); exemption from all judicial authority, except that of the provost, their normal judge, or of ordinary judges whom the Holy See had entrusted with cases in which they were involved ( 1 July 1352).
Those who enjoyed these privileges had to fulfil certain obligations. They must never have made any attempt to falsify the weight or the standard of monies entrusted to them, or to have forged money, or been guilty of murder, arson, rape or treason. This last crime had reference to the persons of the Pope, the cardinals, the camerarius, the treasurer and the clerks of the Apostolic Camera. Finally, they must have made an oath of loyalty. There was a special clause affecting the moneyers and workmen, who were obliged, after taking their oath, to write their surnames and Christian names in two registers, one of which remained in the possession of the treasurer or
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1 C. Samaran-- G. Mollat, La Fiscalité Pontificale en France au XIVe Siècle. Période d'Avignon et Grand Schisme d'Occident, Paris 1905, pp. 1-10, 132-41.
camerarius, while the other was given to the provost. This regulation has enabled us to know exactly how many people of the inferior grades were employed at the mint at Sorgues in July 1352. At that time the moneyers included five clerks and twenty-eight citizens of Avignon.
When the Pope decreed that a certain coinage should be issued, he entered into an agreement with those who were to make it and who were accordingly known as 'Masters of this coinage'; 1 he then notified the warden by Bull of the value and denomination of the specie that were to be made. More Bulls were sent appointing by name persons skilled in the manufacture of the tools needed to strike the coinage, at the same time warning them not to start work without previous instruction from the warden acting during the pontificate of John XXII in conjunction with the masters of the coinage to be struck, and from the warden alone in the time of Clement VI. They were also forbidden to engrave certain letters except in the presence of the camerarius or the treasurer. A deed, drawn up by a notary, laid down, moreover, the various conditions to be observed in the manufacture of the tools. When these were ready, they had to be given to the warden and the masters of the coinage to be issued, in the presence of the camerarius and the treasurer. Finally, by means of still more Bulls, the Pope appointed assayers, usually Italian merchants, whom he put in charge of assaying the specie delivered by the said masters of the coinage.
Then the master of the Papal mint and the provost summoned the moneyers and the workmen to come and strike the coinage in whatever place had been appointed: if they refused after being offered a good wage, the master and the provost were entitled to punish them by imposing a fine proportionate to the wages they would have been paid if they had carried out the required work. If they refused three times, the case having been submitted to the camerarius and the treasurer, and their defiance duly noted, these subordinate employees forfeited the privileges attached to their duties. 2
B. The Chancery
The chancery consisted of the various departments dealing with the despatch of papal letters, and had at its head the Vice-Chancellor. At the time of his appointment he might be an abbot, a bishop or an
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1 The duties of these officers, as distinct from those of the master of the papal mint, were temporary and lasted only for the time required to strike the particular coinage which the Pope had entrusted to them.
2 G. Mollat, Les Papes d'Avignon et leur hôtel des monnaies à Sorgues (Comtat Venaissin), Paris 1908.
auditor of apostolic causes, but he was usually made a cardinal, a status which was compatible with his duties.
He could act only upon a special mandate from the Pope and did not enjoy the freedom of action of the camerarius. He was not even allowed to appoint his own staff; or at least there is no document granting him this privilege. His very title of vice-chancellor indicates in itself how subordinate the Pope considered him to be.
He took an oath not to commit, directly or indirectly, any injustice or fraud in the despatch of Papal letters, to accept no gratuity, and to confer no benefice upon himself, his subordinates or any other person without the consent of the Supreme Pontiff. 1
If he were absent from the Curia, he was provided with a deputy, known as his vice-regent, or 'lieutenant.'
From the time of Clement V, with certain exceptions, the chancellor was by right the examiner resident at the court for all candidates for the office of Apostolic notary. He it was who issued them with certificates of proficiency and received their oath. 2
When there was doubt about the despatch of a Papal document, he presided over the committee which discussed and elucidated the matter.
Seven departments were under the control of the vice-chancellor: the office of petitions, the office of examinations, the abbreviators' office, the engrossers' office, the corrector's office, the office of the bullatores and the registry.
1. The Office of Petitions. To obtain a letter of pardon or redress, it was always necessary first to present a petition to the Pope, drawn up in correct chancery style, according to formulae that had been in use since the beginning of the thirteenth century.
The cardinals, the camerarius or the notaries delivered the petitions of the supplicants to the Pope, who would make a note of his reply on the original itself, thus: Fiat, fiat ut petitur, fiat si ita est. This was followed by a conventional initial, used without variation throughout the pontificate. Experts in diplomatic have been unable to discover the significance of these initials: John XXII signed 'B', as did Benedict XII; Clement VI used 'R', Innocent VI 'G', Urban V 'B' and Gregory XI 'R'.
A verbal consent might be given, in which case the vice-chancellor was authorised to write on the petition the word Concessum. No doubt he was responsible for the mandates beginning with the formula: De mandato domini nostri papae.
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1 Tangl, Die Päpstlichen Kanzleiordnungen (1200-1500), Innsbruck 1894, p. 34. See also P. M. Baumgarten, Von der apostolischen Kanzlei, Cologne 1908, p. 147.
2 Baumgarten, op. cit. pp. 9-68.
At the bottom of the petitions, an official --the datarius-- added the date of the Pope's decision. On 22 June 1371, for example, he would write, Datum apud Villamnovam, Avinionensis dyocesis, decimo kalendas julii, anno primo.
When they had been dated, the petitions were sent to the office of petitions, where a note was made in a book called the Liber de vacantibus of the name of petitioner, the date on which his request had reached the Curia, and the order in which it was filed, probably by being strung up on a cord by means of a metal tag. When the person concerned or his representative arrived to claim his petition, in order to have it registered, he would look first in the Liber de vacantibus to see if the petition had been signed, and on what date, and in which division of the file it had been placed. He would then make the request to a clerk specially delegated for this task, in the following terms: 'Please look for the petition for X, on such and such a date, first division.' Then the clerk would look for it in the file, take it from the string and write the name of the person concerned in the Liber distributionum. After this, the registration of the document was carried out. A capital R, on the reverse side, indicated that this had been done. The register into which the originals had been transcribed was called the Registrum supplicationum. 1
A sworn clerk then put the petition into a bag which he sealed and took to the Chancery.
2. The Office of Examinations. Unless he were a doctor, or a bachelor or master of arts, every beneficed clerk was obliged to have his competency tested by examination. A porter would show him into the examiners' office, where he would be examined in reading, singing and rhetorical style. The result was given in marks of bene, competenter or male, and was put down in a register by a notary. In the time of Benedict XII the examiners endorsed the petition itself with their signature, but under his successors they issued certificates which had to be presented at the Chancery. 2
3. The Abbreviators' Office. The vice-chancellor provided the abbreviators
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1 In order to elucidate the highly controversial question of the origin of the registers of petitions, distinction should be made between (a) the actual registration of the petitions, and (b) the systematisation of this registration as it appears in the registers available to us. There is no basis for the supposition that Benedict XII introduced the actual registration of petitions, and every reason to believe that it was in use before his reign (see J. Schwalm, Das Formelbuch des Heinrich Bucglant, Hamburg 1910, pp. xxxiv-xxxviii). The only innovation that can be attributed to Benedict XII is the transcription of the petitions in their entirety, as has been suggested by one of his biographers (see Baluze, Vitae, VOL. I, p. 228). Nevertheless, as no register of the time of Benedict XII is in existence, it must be supposed that the reform promulgated before the end of his pontificate was not implemented until the reign of his successor (see Bulletin Critique, ser. 2, VOL. XII, 1906, pp. 381-3).
2 U. Berlière, Epaves d' Drchives Pontificales au XIVe Siècle, Bruges 1908, p. 50.
( abbreviatores )with the work which they had to do, namely changing petitions from the form of requests to rescripts. On each document he would write the name of the clerk responsible for the work, thus: 'R[ ecipe ] G[ uilleme ] Baronis -- Take this, Guillaume Baron'--and would sign it 'P[ etrus ] Pampil [ onensis ] --Pierre de Pampelune.' 1
Then, basing their work upon the content of the signed petition, the abbreviators would summarise in a few lines the substance of the Bull to be issued. This summary was called a minute ( minuta or nota ).
After being checked by the corrector, the minute was handed on to the engrossers' office.
4. The Engrossers' Office. The engrossment ( grossa, littera grossata, or littera redacta in grossam ) was merely the writing out on parchment of the final version of the Bull, complete with all the formulae and legal phraseology in full.
The office where this work was done was open every day, except on feast-days that were holidays, from nones until suppertime. The scribes ( scriptores litterarum apostolicarum, or grossatores ) who worked there in the time of Clement V numbered at first one hundred and ten then, from 27 October 1310, ninety. Under John XXII there were seventy and one hundred and one under Urban V. A distributor of minutes to be engrossed ( distributor notarum grossandarum ) shared out amongst these scribes the work which had to be completed within six days. 2
5. The Corrector's Office. From the engrossing office, the papal rescript was passed to that of the corrector ( correctorius ).
He was a very important official, receiving a salary of as much as 200 florins a year, who revised the engrossed version, examined the privileges and the legal documents produced by those begging indulgences, and made sure that the letters of execution agreed with the favour actually granted. The auscultator checked the engrossed version against the minute. The rescribendarius handed it back to the engrossers, with a rebuke if necessary, if for any reason a new version had to be prepared. If a scribe had made a mistake so that a second version had to be made, he was deprived of his wages.
When the work of revising the letters of grace and justice was completed, the corrector divided them according to the content of the document, the rank of the person for whom it was intended, and the
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1 Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 1908, no. 19, cols. 1209-11.
2 J. M. Vidal, Benoît XII (1334-1342). Lettres communes etc. , VOL. III, Paris 1911, pp. viii-ix; Tangl, op. cit. pp. 115-17.
circumstances in which it was issued into two categories, namely the litterae legendae, which before being given to the parties concerned, were read to the Pope, and the litterae communes or simplices, which were read to the auditores litterarum contradictarum. 1
6. The Office of the Bullatores. Two officials called bullatores or fratres de bulla (or, occasionally, between 1338 and 1342, three) were responsible for affixing the seals to the original copies of Bulls.
They were lay brothers from the Cistercian abbey at Fontfroide in the diocese of Narbonne, and before taking up their duties had, for the most part, held responsible posts in the papal court, such as master of the stable, butler or head gardener.
Unlike the other Papal officials, they were not appointed either by the camerarius or by the treasurer; they did not take an oath to them nor were they invested by either of them. The Pope was directly responsible for their appointment.
They were appointed for life, and if they were prevented by sickness or old age from carrying out their duties, they supervised their deputies, and received an allowance. If they proved incapable or unworthy, they were retired with a small pension. If they had committed serious misdemeanours, they lost their right to a pension or retirement, and had to return to the monastery from which they came.
The bullatores who were deliberately chosen from lay-brethren who could neither read nor write nor speak Latin, employed lettered clerks as scribes, as well as a considerable staff, including a cook, squires whose task was to fetch the lead from the merchants, office boys and personal servants.
Three times a week, one of the bullatores went to the chancery after his own office had closed, collected the documents to be sealed, and put them into a bag which a servant, under his supervision, carried back to the office of the bulla. This office was outside the papal palace at Avignon, in the parish of St Symphorien; after Urban V and Gregory XI had gone back to Rome, it was set up in the Lateran.
When the Bulls reached the office of the bulla, they were locked up in a chest, and taken out to be sealed only as the occasion arose. The manner of their ensealing varied according as to whether they were letters close, patent or of grace. So that the illiterate sealers could tell which had to be sealed on silken strings and which on hempen, the scribes of the chancery filled in with red or left unilluminated the initial letter of the reigning Pope's name. The leaden seal, or bulla, which gave its name to certain documents issued by
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1 W. von Hofman, in Römische Quartalschrift, VOL. XX, 1906, pp. 91-6; Tangl, op. cit. p. 36.
the Holy See, was attached to the rescript. A pair of pincers, both sides of which bore a matrix, was used to imprint on one side of the seal the name of the reigning Pope, and the other the heads of the apostles Peter and Paul. 1
7. The Registry. The registering of ordinary letters or of those emanating from the Curia does not appear to have been, in principle, compulsory. Nevertheless, incumbents of benefices preferred to incur this expense, so that they might have a double authentication of documents emanating from the chancery, to provide documentary proof if any doubt arose. The Holy See set the example, for the Pope was careful to keep up to date the copying of his diplomatic correspondence.
The employees, called registrars ( registratores ) entrusted the writing to scribes ( scriptores registri ), who copied the documents in the order in which they were handed over to them into paper registers, which are known today as the Avignon Registers. The long super scription of the original bull ( N. episcopus, servus servorum Dei, dilecto filio N. ) was there reduced to the shorter formula Dilecto filio. The words Pontificatus nostri were almost always omitted from the Datum. The text of the Bull itself appeared in full in the register.
Underneath this there appeared the formula In eundem modum, followed by the names and styles of the executors, and then the summary, where necessary, of a so-called letter of execution, which was in fact sent in triplicate.
In the early part of the fourteenth century, no attempt was made at methodical classification in the registering of Bulls. An experimental method, started under John XXII and continued under Benedict XII, seems to have proved satisfactory to the chancery. From the time of Clement VI, however, the documents were arranged under headings showing their subject-matter. In this way Bulls making appointments to episcopal sees were put together in a section called De provisionibus praelatorum, and indulgences for those at the point of death in one entitled De absolutione in articulo mortis, and so forth.
A corrector made sure that the transcript was true to the original. The auscultator checked the original against the copy. Both of these have left evidence of their activity in the alterations, erasures, words written in, and marginal additions which are to be found in such profusion in the Avignon Registers.
Rubricatores made very brief summaries of the registered documents. These summaries appear at the beginning of the registers,
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1 Baumgarten, op. cit. pp. 1-154, 247-78.
and serve as a table of contents. Thus, summarising a mandate addressed to the bishop-elect of Ravenna, they would write: Francisco electo Ravennatensi mandatur ut infra duorum mensium spatium apostolico conspectui se presentet.
In the spaces separating one document from another was written the number given to the Bull and the amount paid for its registration in Roman figures placed vertically. The sign § indicated that the sum to be paid was fourteen sous tournois ; § that it was seventeen sous tournois.
During the Avignon Papacy, the chancery had the Bulls that were entered in the paper registers recopied for its own use and in a different order into luxurious parchment ones. These parchment registers were transferred to the Vatican in the time of Eugenius IV and, to differentiate them from the paper registers, which remained at Avignon until 1784, were known as the Vatican Registers. 1
C. The Administration of Justice
During the fourteenth century, the number of cases submitted to the Holy See, either in the first instance or on appeal, rose to such proportions that it became essential to subdivide the power of the judiciary. Until that time, the judges delegated by the Pope had had only restricted prerogatives. Their duties consisted simply in pursuing enquiries and hearing pleas. With a few exceptions, the supreme pontiff reserved to himself the right to pronounce judgment. But in the time of Clement V, John XXII and Benedict XII, real courts of justice were set up, such as the Court of the Apostolic Palace, which gave sentence without the possibility of appeal.
Nevertheless, there still existed, as there had done in the past, three other kinds of tribunal at the papal court: the Consistory, the Cardinals' tribunals and the Audientia Litterarum Contradictarum.
1. The Consistory. The Pope and his cardinals, assembled in Consistory, received 'every complaint, denunciation, accusation and other cases of litigation' ( querele, denuntiatio, accusatio et alie jurgantium cause ). 2
The consistorial advocates, duly registered at the chancery, put forward their clients' requests. Behind them stood the principal parties concerned, and the attorneys and solicitors, ready, if need arose, to refresh their memory, or to ask them to insist upon some particular point of law. While the advocates were speaking, the op-
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1 Vidal, op. cit. VOL. III, pp. lvii ff.
2 Tangl, op. cit. p. 197.
posing party was obliged to listen to them in silence without noisy interruptions. 1
With the Pope's permission, the chief party concerned could himself present his plea or his defence. When, in 1348, Queen Joanna of Naples was accused of having plotted the death of her first husband, Andrew of Hungary, she defended herself in tones of such sincerity that Clement VI and the Sacred College then and there declared themselves convinced of her innocence.
The procedure in cases submitted to the judgment of the Consistory differed according as to whether the case was heard in the papal see itself, or in the place where the dispute had arisen.
When the dispute was not very important, the Holy See issued Bulls authorising local judges--usually three in number--to take cognizance of the affair ( vocatis qui fuerint evocandi ), hear what the two parties had to say ( auditis hinc inde propositis ) and make a just decision, against which no appeal could be made ( quod justum fuerit, appellatione remota, decernatis ). In order to obtain accurate depositions and make sure that their judgments were carried out, the commissiaries were authorised to employ ecclesiastical censure ( facientes quod decreveritis per censuram ecclesiasticam firmiter observari: testes autem, qui fuerint nominati, si se gratia, odio vel timore subtraxerint censura simili, appellatione cessante, cogatis veritati testimonium perhibere ). 2
In criminal cases, the procedure was more complicated. In 1339, Benedict XII, being informed that four monks of the abbey of Boulbonne had secretly practised sorcery and alchemy, requested the abbot, Durand, to set up a secret enquiry, to seize the books, papers and effects of the accused, and to prevent their escape. He declared, moreover, that anyone impeding the action of the apostolic commissiary would be liable to ecclesiastical censure, and stated in advance that any appeal would be null. The records of the enquiry carried out by Abbot Durand convinced the Pope that the monks were guilty. The abbot of Boulbonne, together with the abbot of Berdoues, was instructed to pronounce sentence on the guilty with the Pope's authority, and without possibility of appeal. 3
When a case was tried in Avignon, apostolic commissiaries carried out an enquiry on the spot in the first instance. If this enquiry made it clear that the complaint was well-founded, the Pope either issued Bulls summoning the offending party to appear at his court within a
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1 Ibid. pp. 118-24, Constitution Decens et necessarium, 27 October 1340.
2 J. Berthelé, Plaquettes montpelliéraines et languedociennes, VOL. V, 1909, pp. 203-08.
3 J. M. Vidal, "' Moines alchimistes à l'abbaye de Boulbonne (1399),'" Bulletin périodique de la Société ariégeoise des sciences, lettres et arts, VOL. IX, 1903, pp. 133-40.
stated time on pain of censure, or else he gave to specially appointed magistrates the task of bringing the summons to the notice of the person concerned. In that case, if the magistrates feared reprisals, they would make clear their authority for issuing the summons by affixing the letters patent in which it was given, to the doors of the churches in the dioceses in which the persons summoned possessed lands or had their chief domicile.
If the summons were not heeded, other commissiaries, also appointed by Bull, carried out a summary enquiry and then declared the contumacious party excommunicate and placed his lands under an interdict. If he proved recalcitrant and persisted in his defiance, he was first punished by the aggrave, which deprived him of spiritual benefits and excluded him from public life, and then by the reaggrave, which isolated him still further by forbidding him either to eat or drink with his fellow-men.
Excommunication, in the fourteenth century, brought with it as its civil consequences loss of all legal existence and, after a year and a day, confiscation of property and seizure of the person. Through lack of co-operation of the part of public authorities, however, the law was seldom rigorously applied in the civil courts. But this was not so in the ecclesiastical tribunals. There the excommunicate lost many rights; he could neither administer nor receive the sacraments, nor even be present at the divine office; he could not be buried according to the rites of the Church, neither elect nor be elected to any benefice or office, nor exercise any temporal jurisdiction. Moreover, if a prelate celebrated the divine office in defiance of the excommunication, he was ipso facto guilty of irregularity. So it was that the contumacious rarely persisted in their defiance. They would generally mend their ways in a very short time, and appear in Consistory either in person or by proxy, as soon as the Pope admitted the validity of their excuses.
If the parties agreed to sign a compromise, the Supreme Pontiff confirmed it by Bull, freed the contumacious person from the sentence of excommunication he had incurred and his lands from the interdict and, lastly, appointed local commissiaries to carry out the final award. 1 But only when one of the litigants had a very weak case indeed would he agree to a friendly arrangement. Men of the Middle Ages were fond of litigation, and were in no way daunted by the loss of time and money that a trial involved. For this reason, law-suits would go on from the Consistory to the cardinals' tribunals, or to the Court of the Apostolic Palace.
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1 G. Mollat, Études et Documents sur l'Histoire de Bretagne, pp. 3-21, 157-67.
2. The Cardinals' Tribunals. The number of people employed in the cardinals' tribunals was limited. They consisted of an auditor, a duly sworn doorkeeper, one or more notaries and a keeper of the seals.
The auditor took the place of the cardinal, carried out the duties of an examining magistrate, summoned the litigants to appear before him, and listened to the pleading. There his activities ended. Judgement was given by the cardinal for whom he deputised.
The notary or clerk of the court drew up the summonses and the documents of the trial. It was he who placed on the final sentence the seal of the cardinal who had pronounced it.
The sworn doorkeeper gave notice of summonses, and saw to the execution of the awards of which he was informed by the notary.
The carrying out of sentences was surrounded by more or less symbolic formalities. A curious document, dated 28 January 1378, describes in minute detail those that took place after Cardinal Jean de Blandiac had pronounced judgment in favour of the bishop of Avignon, who had been dispossessed of a garden as a result of an illicit grant made by Gregory XI. The bishop had to be repossessed of his property. In the presence of the cardinal's sworn doorkeeper, the bishop's proxy turned the key in the lock, opened the door into the garden and, having closed it behind him, prodded the earth with his stick and walked up and down within the walls. Then, in the name of Jean de Blandiac, the doorkeeper forbade Jeannette de Bourgogne, the caretaker, and all persons present and absent, to deliver to anyone but the bishop of Avignon the fruits and the rent of the garden. 1
The function of the cardinals' tribunals was not so much to deliver final judgments, as to institute summary legal proceedings and refer them to the Pope, who pronounced judgment.
The summary procedure, which was introduced by Clement V, seems to have been highly esteemed at the court of Avignon because it dealt rapidly with litigation. 'It did not open,' says Paul Fournier, 'with the delivery of the libellus (a written document in which the suppliant briefly set forth his plea) but with an oral account of the case. This account was summarised by the notary in the acta causae, so that the judge and the defendant could know the nature and purpose of the plea. The defendant was as usual called to appear before the judge by a summons. The judge disregarded all delaying demurrers, and all frivolous appeals inspired by a spirit of chicanery with
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1 P. Pansier, L'Oeuvre des Repenties à Avignon du XIIIe au XVIIIe Siècle, Paris 1910, pp. 229-31, 233.
the sole object of impeding the progress of the case. The formality of the litis contestatio 1 was not required, but, on the other hand, the oaths de calumnia and de veritate dicenda were insisted upon, since they provided a guarantee that there would be no dissimulation of the truth. The opposing parties developed their proofs and discussed them freely; the judge was careful only to prevent the advocates and attorneys from being too long-winded and to cut short the depositions where the witnesses appeared too numerous and irrelevant. He interrogated the parties if necessary in order to form his own opinion; he then gave the verdict which had to be written down and which took into consideration every point raised in the plea.' 2
Unlike the auditors of cases heard in the Apostolic Palace, the cardinals had to receive from the Pope a specific delegation of authority detailing their powers every time they examined a case. Their tribunals were accordingly nothing more than tribunals of demurrer.
While recourse to their court had the advantage of speeding the outcome of litigation, it also involved some rather serious inconvenience. The sudden departure of a cardinal on a mission might interrupt the progress of the suit; in this case the litigants had to make a formal request to the Pope for their case to be heard by another magistrate. Even if the cardinal did not leave the papal court, proceedings often suffered unexpected delays. Just as the cardinal was about to hear the plaintiffs' case, a messenger might summon him to the Pope's palace, or a visitor of note knock at his door. Then the hearing would be put off until a later date, which the judge, because of his manifold duties, was unable to specify exactly.
To win the cardinal's favour, the attorneys, in the name of their clients, would bring presents -- chickens, capons, partridges, rabbits, calves, oxen and other gifts of food. They were lavish, too, in giving tips to the door-keeper, so that they might come in out of their turn, and to the chamberlains and chaplains who might show them into their masters' presence. 3 Henry Bucglant, the representative of the burghers of Hamburg at the court of Avignon, complained in 1338 that the chamberlain of the cardinal of Autun was favouring his opponents. On their instigation the chamberlain had him driven out of his house by the cardinal's squires, on the pretext that this dwelling
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1 The litis contestatio was a formality whereby the defendant, having taken cognizance of the libellus, met the plea with a formal contradiction in the presence of the judge and the plaintiff ( P. Fournier, Les Officialités au moyen âge, Paris 1880, pp. 170-4).
2 P. Fournier, op. cit. pp. 231-2.
3 Inventaire des archives de la ville de Bruges, VOL. I, pp. 206-18. See also Th. Schrader , Die Rechnungsbücher, pp. 93 ff.
belonged to those wearing the cardinal's livery. Bucglant had to bring an action before the camerarius, before he could return to his lodging. 1
3. The Court of the Apostolic Palace. The Court of the Apostolic Palace became known as the tribunal of the Rota, a name which was in common use from 1330, but which does not appear in papal documents. The rota was the name given to a circular bench on which the judges sat and which was padded in 1352. The shape of this bench caused the tribunal itself to be called the Rota. The oldest document in which it is mentioned is dated to April 1274. At that time the auditor could not make an award except on the Pope's orders and after consultation with his colleagues. In documents of a later date, specific delegation of power is no longer mentioned. 2 On the other hand, we know that on 18 January 1307, Bernard Rouiard received general authority to take cognizance of all cases relating to benefices and to deliver final judgments upon them. 3 On 16 November 1331, the Constitution Ratio juris 4 drew up the definitive regulations for the working of the court.
Every day, about the hour of terce, after the bell had rung from Notre-Dame-des-Doms, the auditors of apostolic causes took their seats in their respective lodgings, or in the convent of the Dominican friars, or, later, in a room on the south side of the palace fitted out for them by John XXII. This building was badly constructed and disappeared in the time of Clement VI who placed at the judges' disposal the magnificent hall known as the Audienzia, which is still to be seen. On feast days the judges did not sit except on special instruction from the Pope.
No limits were placed on the competency of the auditors of apostolic causes. They examined all cases referred to them by the Pope and the vice-camerarius. Nevertheless, suits arising from the collation of benefices as a result of papal reservation were their principal concern.
They were forbidden, on pain of one month's suspension, to accept any 'consideration' either directly or indirectly, or to reveal to the interested parties anything concerning the proceedings before they were over. On a second offence, they were permanently deprived of office. If by chance they gave advice to one of the parties summoned before them, the case went to other auditors.
Before any affair could be dealt with at the Roman Curia, the
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1 Schrader, op. cit. p. 67.
2 F. E. Schneider, "' Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der römischen Rota als Kollegialgericht,'" Kirchengeschichtliche Festgabe A. de Waal, Freiburg 1913, pp. 20-36.
3 Regestum Clementis Papae V, no. 2262.
4 Tangl, op. cit. pp. 63-91.
admissibility of the case at issue had to be established. The plaintiff's attorney sent in an application stating the nature of the dispute, and asking for the appointment of an auditor to examine and settle it. On this original document the Pope or the vice-camerarius wrote their reply.
The judge thus appointed issued a summons to the absent party. This summons was made in public session of the audientia litterarurn contradictarum, and the document effecting it carried the seal of the audientia on the dorso.
After the issuing of the usual summonses, the representatives of the opposing parties appeared before the appointed auditor, and each received an injunction to present a written declaration ( libellus ) within a stated time. This done, they took the oaths de calumnia et veritate dicenda and were invited to produce, on a specific date, their depositions ( positiones ), counts of indictment and pleas of exception, together with all deeds, letters, instruments, rights and proofs, except when the rules of legal procedure permitted a postponement.
After the representatives had made their concluding statements, the auditors declared the discussion closed, and gave a date to the opposing parties to come and hear the final verdict. 1
When they had set out their conclusions in detail, the auditors signed the document and appended on silken cords the seal of red wax. After 1331 they were obliged to communicate their findings to their colleagues of the same status, and from about 1341, to those on the same roster. These colleagues had to give their opinion within twelve days. 2
They wrote it in their own hand, in terms such as these: supradictam conclusionem veram esse credo et meum sigillum appono, idem credo et sigillo prefatam conclusionem tam ex pretactis quam aliis rationibus credo esse veram et de jure procedere in quorum robur manu propria subscripsi et sigillum meum appendi, etc.
Each auditor had in his service not more than four clerks or notaries who entered the verdicts in a register and sent copies to the parties concerned. These copies were sent free if the supplicant could prove poverty.
The office of auditor could only be administered by jurisconsults of some reputation, who were graded according to their seniority and referred to as of the first, second or third class. This classification, legalised by the Constitution Ratio juris in 1331, was already in exist-
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1 G. Mollat, "'Contribution à l'Histoire de l'Administration Judiciaire de l'Église Romaine au XIVe Siècle,'" R.H.E. VOL. XXXII, 1936, pp. 877-96.
2 Ottenthal, Die Päpstlichen Kanzleiregeln, Innsbruck 1888, p. 36, no. 60.
ence in 1317-18 but presumably fell into disuse in the time of Clement VI.
The auditors, whose exact number is not known, 1 were obliged to wear cope and rochet out of doors in the place where the Curia was residing.
They could not be excommunicated, suspended or interdicted, except by the camerarius. 2 No-one could appeal from a decision made by the auditors; but while a trial was in progress, the parties concerned could use every delaying tactic that the spirit of chicanery could devise to impede its smooth running. In 1355, the nuns of Coyroux, near Obasine in the diocese of Limoges, complained to Innocent VI that their suit had been dragging on for eighteen months. Hugues de Guiscard was disputing their right to the parish church of Cornac in the diocese of Cahors, and for this purpose was making use of quibbles which the nuns were pleased to enumerate.
The case was being heard by the auditor Jean Aubert, and had reached the stage of the litis contestatio, when the attorney of Hugues de Guiscard lodged an appeal. The magistrate, Simon Subuca, made certain orders, against which the sisters of Coyroux appealed in their turn, alleging gravamina. A third auditor, Guillaume de Gimel, brought the case to its final stages, the award excepted. At this precise moment, the abbot and monks of Figeac asked for an injunction against the principal party, and laid before the first auditor, Jean Aubert, libelli against both Hugues de Guiscard and the nuns of Coyroux; hence the interruption of the hearing before Guillaume de Gimel.
Meanwhile, at the request of Hugues, Jean Aubert was discharged and Pierre d'Ylhan entrusted with the action brought by the abbot of Figeac, although this had already reached the stage of litis contestatio.
At the demand of Hugues de Guiscard again, both affairs were submitted to Pierre d'Ylhan. But an interlocutory decision by this judge failed to satisfy and notice of appeal was given. Guillaume de Gimel was put in charge of the appeal, but as he was away from the Curia, the litigants had to take their case to a fourth auditor, Oldrad de Maynières.
Weary of their opponents' frivolous appeals and quibblings, destined only to delay the matter, the nuns of Coyroux, as a last resort, implored Innocent VI to hand over their case to a cardinal
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1 Sixtus IV, on 14 May 1472, fixed the number of auditors at twelve. In 1323, there were eight. See Tangl, "'Eine Rota-Verhandlung vom Jahre 1323,'" Mitteilungen, additional VOL. VI, 1901, pp. 320-32.
2 Ottenthal, op. cit. p. 33, no. 52.
who, despite any appeals that might be made, would examine it quickly and bring it to an end; this request was granted. 1
This one example, chosen from thousands, shows how inventive could be the spirit of chicanery and how long a law-suit could last. That of the sisters of Coyroux had dragged on for eighteen months; but this was nothing compared with the suit brought by the canons of Hamburg against the burgesses of that town, which began at the court of Avignon in 1337 and only ended--and then in a compromise--in 1353.
4. The Audientia Litterarum Contradictarum. Before a suit had reached the stage of litis contestatio, 2 the defendant was entitled to challenge the person of the plaintiff or the magistrate, or to refuse to attend at the place where the court of justice was set up. He might, for example, object on the grounds that the plaintiff was excommunicate and therefore debarred from bringing a legal action; plead that the attorneys had insufficient authority, or none at all; accuse the judge of partiality; or point out that his life would be endangered if he had to appear in a certain locality. In the same way, he was allowed to object to the despatch of a papal rescript committing a case to a deputy, or to question the authenticity of documents submitted by his opponent. The examination of expedients invented by the spirit of chicanery to delay the progress of an action took place in a special office called, from the thirteenth century, the 'Court of Objections,' audientia litterarum contradictarum, or more simply, the 'Public Audience,' audientia publica.
The auditor who was in charge of this court acted as a judge. He decided the validity of dilatory objections. When the parties could not agree on the choice of the examining magistrate, he appointed one by virtue of his office. He took cognizance of all disputes provoked by documents produced for the trial, verified the authenticity of such documents and ordered copies to be made of them, or declared them invalid. It was part of his duty to make sure that the letters of award sent by the Pope or by the vice-chancellor or the corrector of apostolic letters were read in public audience to allow the persons concerned to object if they so wished.
The auditor employed two sworn readers who, starting early in the morning, read aloud in a clear voice, omitting nothing and adding nothing of their own.
When this reading was completed, the attorneys for the parties concerned rose to their feet and stated their objections. It appears
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1 E. Albe, Titres et Documents Concernant le Quercy et le Limousin, Brive 1905, pp. 1819.
2 See above, p. 298.
from the Constitution Qui exacti temporis, dated 16 November 1331, 1 which lays down the rules of procedure for the audientia litterarum contradictarum, that incidents often occurred during the reading sessions. The attorneys did not wait for the correct moment to protest. They tried to drown the readers' voices, and prevent them from continuing their reading by raucous shouts, whistles and all kinds of uproar. John XXII punished the first breaking of silence by a fine of one sou tournois, and the third by a further fine of three sous tournois and suspension from office for a year. The Pope took every precaution to prevent frauds from being committed by the attorneys. The auditors followed his example, and in the fourteenth century issued a large number of regulations intended to check fraudulent practices. The fact that these attempts were so often renewed shows the futility of the measures.
Sworn notaries drew up the text of summonses, monitory letters, authentications and in general all documents issued by the auditor. 2
D. The Apostolic Penitentiary
It was the function of the Apostolic Penitentiary to remove ecclesiastical censures (excommunication, suspension or interdict), to lift sentences of irregularity (that is the canonical prohibition from exercising sacerdotal duties), and to grant marriage dispensations and absolution in certain special cases.
The person in charge of this administration was called the Grand Penitentiary; he was always a cardinal-priest or a cardinal-bishop, and was directly responsible to the Pope to whom he took oath. His duties continued during a vacancy of the Holy See, unless he took part in the Conclave. If he happened to die during this period, the Cardinals had the right to appoint his successor. The symbol of his office was the ferula or wand that he bore on solemn feast-days. The staff who carried out his orders were under his supervision.
A confidential official ( persona sufficiens ) accepted and examined the pleas from the petitioners or their attorneys. When the proposal was not ambiguous, he ordered a mandate to be issued. When it presented some difficulty, he submitted it to a doctor of canon law who in his turn, if he were at a loss, passed it on to the Grand Penitentiary. In the last resort, the Pope was consulted, but only with the consent of the Grand Penitentiary.
The doctor of canon law also read those letters called 'declaratory
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1 Tangl, op. cit. pp. 111-15.
2 J. Teige, 'Beiträge zur Geschichte der Audientia litterarum contradictarum', Prague 1897, pp. 5-92.
or deliberative', written by scribes of the Penitentiary, examined them and gave them, either in person or through an accredited courier, to the Sealer.
The Distributor accepted petitions, divided the work amongst the scribes, taxed the letters, accepted the sums of money paid out by the petitioners, and each month divided this money among the scribes.
There were twelve scribes ( scriptores ) of the Penitentiary, under Clement V, and eighteen under Clement VI. They were obliged, on pain of a fine, to despatch the letters they had been entrusted to write within twenty-four hours of the receipt of the petitions and not to refuse to write out the graces where these had been granted free of charge.
At the hour of prime, or at whatever time had been arranged, the Correctors ( correctores ) looked over the letters written by the scribes, and then took them to the Sealer, who affixed the seal of the Grand Penitentiary. After this a Distributor or some trustworthy person handed over the documents to the parties concerned.
The lesser penitentiaries ( penitentarii minores ), who varied from twelve to eighteen in number during the course of the fourteenth century, belonged to the mendicant orders. Very occasionally they were chosen from the secular clergy, or from the Benedictines or the Cluniacs. Whatever their origin, they were subjected to a very searching examination before taking up office. Their duties consisted in hearing confessions, from prime until terce, in the cathedral or principal church of the place where the Pope was residing. Their powers were strictly limited to the persons whose confessions they heard, and were not transferable. If a penitent's case presented difficulties or was outside their scope, they referred it to the Grand Penitentiary or to the supreme pontiff, in the form of a petition. Otherwise they granted either dispensation or absolution. If an authenticated document were required, the distributor ordered the scribes present to write a letter immediately; this was then revised and the seal of one of the penitentiaries affixed if that of the confessor of the party concerned were not available.
Such was the staff of the Apostolic Penitentiary as listed in the Bull In agro Dominico which, on 8 April 1338, laid down regulations for the running of this department. 1 Various contemporary documents reveal the existence of other officials: the lieutenant ( locumtenens ) of the Penitentiary who acted for the Grand Penitentiary during his absence; the auditor of the Penitentiary ( auditor Penitentiariae ) whose duties were similar to those of the doctor of canon law and
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1 Cocquelines, Bullarum, VOL. III, pt 2, pp. 259-64.
who, in addition, tried forgers of penitentiary letters and offenders coming within the jurisdiction of the Grand Penitentiary, and sentenced the guilty to imprisonment or signed discharges. Lastly, there was the auditor's notary. 1
As will now be readily understood, the organisation of the various parts of the machinery of the central administration of the Roman Church in the fourteenth century was extremely complicated. The detailed nature of papal prescriptions indicates the constant anxiety of the Popes who framed them to prevent fraud and forestall corrupt practice. This is the characteristic feature of the work of the Popes at Avignon, particularly of John XXII and Benedict XII. It bears the stamp of French genius and was to last and to serve as a basis for the innovations in points of detail that Popes in future ages were to deem necessary.
4
The Cardinals
In the formal language of the Chancery, the cardinals are 'the pillars of the Church,' and their importance in the fourteenth century does not belie this description.
The oligarchic tendencies which had produced the systematic reduction in the number of the cardinals in the Sacred College from the twelfth century onwards, were even more apparent in the fourteenth. 2 This tendency was particularly noticeable in the Conclave of Innocent VI, when the elected Pope signed an agreement 3 which he hastened to revoke as soon as he was crowned.
The cardinals took a very large share in the general administration of the Roman Church. The Pope often summoned them to meet in open or secret Consistory. He acted only after consulting them. Before making any promotion to the cardinalate, he sounded them on the opportuneness of such a promotion, and on the number and character of possible candidates. In grave matters such as, for instance, the question of the crusade or the definition of a dogma, his 'brothers,' the cardinals, supplied him with written memoranda ( vota ) and gave reasons for their views. 4
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1 E. Göller, Die Päpstliche Poenitentiarie, VOL. 1, pt 1, Rome 1907.
2 In the various conclaves to elect the Avignon Popes, the lowest number of cardinals was eighteen, and the highest twenty-six.
3 See above, p. 44-5. See also J. Lulvès, " 'Päpsfliche Wahtkapitulationen,' " Quellen, VOL. XII, 1909, pp. 189-211.
4 Coulon, VOL. II, cols. 281-318. See also F. Tocco, La quistione della povertà nel secolo XIV, 1910.
Such was their influence in politics that governments contended for their favour. The highly informative correspondence of the Aragonese ambassadors at the courts of Clement V and John XXII shows by what intrigues the cardinals were surrounded. Kings and princes carried on uninterrupted correspondence with the Cardinals, and did not disdain to call them their 'friends.' They even granted them pensions. The needy Emperor Charles IV allowed Pietro Corsini an annual income of 1,000 florins from the revenues of Florence. 1 In 1354, in return for an annual payment of 300 florins, the Florentines succeeded in persuading Pierre Bertrand, Rinaldo Orsini and Bertrand de Déaulx to further their interests, and greeted them with the significant title of 'Protectors.' 2 The Visconti were unsparing with their gold in Avignon in their efforts to thwart the Italian policy of Albornoz.
The cardinals did, in fact, have their own political opinions, or at least represented, in general, that of their native land. Moreover, some of them did not fear to cross the Pope, as did Napoleone Orsini, who openly made common cause with Louis of Bavaria and the rebel Franciscans against the Holy See, or Pierre de Colombiers and Guy de Boulogne who, unknown to Innocent VI, conspired to work out a plan to dismember the kingdom of France and allowed meetings to take place in their own residences between the duke of Lancaster and the king of Navarre. 3
It would, indeed, have been difficult for these prelates not to act like politicians, since there were usually political reasons for their elevation to the purple. It was very much in the interests of the kings of France to have champions at the court of Avignon, especially while they were at war with England. They were always urgently requesting the Pope to consider as candidates men who had often been their clerks, counsellors, vice-chancellors or members of their household. Moreover, the preponderance of French cardinals in the Sacred College is one of the characteristics of the Avignon Papacy. Of the one hundred and thirty-four cardinals created by Clement V, John XXII, Benedict XII, Clement VI, Innocent VI, Urban V and Gregory XI, thirteen were Italian, five Spanish, two English, one Genoan and one hundred and thirteen French. It should be noted, however, that the exclusion of Germans from the Sacred College dates back to Gregory IX, and was to continue until the time of the Great Schism, when Urban VI, repudiated by France, sought sup-
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1 H. Otto, " 'Ungedruckte Aktenstücke aus der Zeit Karls IV.,' " Quellen, VOL. IX, 1906, pp. 72-83.
2 Archivio storico italiano, set. 5, VOL. XXXVII, 1906, p. 29.
3 G. Mollat, R.H.E. VOL. X, 1909, p. 742.
port from the Emperor, and in an effort to please him, nominated one of his subjects as cardinal.
Although the Cardinals were chiefly chosen on political grounds, they were personages of some importance in the fourteenth century, and worthy servants of the Church. Most of them were still young and actively employed as legates and nuncios; on occasion they did not even hesitate to visit battlefields, to compel the belligerents to accept their mediation. Gaucelme de Jean, Napoleone Orsini, Guy de Boulogne, and Simon Langham were skilful diplomats. Bertrand du Poujet and Albornoz had genuine talents both as warriors and as statesmen. Legal experts of repute were worthily represented by Guillaume de Mandagout, Bérenger Frédol, Bertrand de Montfavès, Gozzo di Rimini, Bertrand de Déaulx, Pierre Flandrin and Pierre Bertrand.
The dignity of cardinal demanded a glittering retinue. His household consisted of a chamberlain, an auditor, a sworn porter, one or more clerks, an attorney, scribes and footmen, a doctor, an apothecary, chaplains, resident clergy, a master of the horse, grooms and many other servants. 1 In 1316, John XXII forbade his cardinals to have more than ten squires in their retinue, and reduced the splendour of their train. 2 In addition to their staff they had a following, almost as numerous, of clerks and laymen, scholars and artists, poets and humanists, who came to seek fame, fortune and honours at Avignon. Petrarch excelled himself in his attacks on the cardinals: 'Instead of the Apostles who went barefoot,' he wrote, 'we now see satraps mounted on horses decked with gold and champing golden bits, and whose very hoofs will soon be shod with gold if God do not restrain their arrogant display of wealth. They could be taken for kings of the Persians or of the Parthians, who demand to be worshipped and into whose presence must no man come empty-banded.' 3 But Petrarch as much as anybody else was eager to gain their favour.
To house his little court, a cardinal needed extensive premises. In 1316, the establishment of Arnaud d'Aux occupied thirty-one houses or parts of houses; in 1321, that of Bernard de Garves needed fiftyone. 4 When Urban V returned to Italy, Pierre de Banhac had so many horses that he had to rent ten stables for them in Rome. Five of these stables held thirty-nine horses. 5
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1 F. Duchesne, Histoire de tous les Cardinaux François, VOL. 11 Paris 1666, p. 433.
2 H. Finke, Acta Aragonensia, VOL. I, p. 225.
3 De Sade, Mémoires pour la vie de François Pétrarque, VOL. 11, p. 95. Petrarch, Seniles, Bk XV.
4 S. Fantoni Castrucci, Istoria della Città d'Avignone, Bk II, VOL. 1, Venice 1678, pp. 164-5.
5 P. M. Baumgarten, Aus Kanzlei und Kammer, Freiburg 1907, P. 63.
We may gain some idea of the splendour and state in which these cardinals lived from their wills and the inventories of their furniture made after death. When Hugues Roger, the son of a country squire from near Limoges, died in 1364, he left 150,000 gold florins in his coffers, not counting about 20,000 seized by his executors, and 6,000 later paid by a debtor; in other words, more than ten million francs in gold. 1 The wills of other members of the Sacred College specify vast sums to be given to charity or for pious foundations. It is typical of their extreme wealth that even Popes borrowed from them. Thus in 1350, Clement VI acknowledged that he owed the Sacred College 16,000 gold florins; and in 1358 Innocent VI made a similar acknowledgement for 7,000. 2
The wealth of the cardinals came from various sources. In the first place, they received gifts from the Pope at the time of his election: John XXII and Benedict XII bestowed 100,000 florins on those who had elected them; Clement VI gave them 108,000, Innocent VI 75,000 and Urban V 40,000. 3 At each anniversary of the coronation of the reigning pontiff and at the great religious feasts, the members of the Sacred College received generous gifts of food, jewels or cash. The cardinals were allowed to accumulate benefices, and took full advantage of this apostolic dispensation. Even obscure benefices were sought after if they brought in a substantial income, as we may see from this short note written by Armand de Villemur and doubtless addressed to one of his colleagues: 'My most reverend lord, I have just learned through a friend that the bishop-elect of Constance, who has just been promoted today, is at present the incumbent of an excellent church or living at Veine. If His Holiness saw fit to grant it to me, he would be performing a work of piety.' 4
In addition to these extraordinary sources of income, the cardinals had also regular ones. Since the assignment made to them by Nicholas IV, 18 July 1289, the cardinals had the right to half the regular income of the Church, that is to say, to half of the taxes both great and small paid by monasteries, churches, feudatories and castellans, to half of the taxes owed by kingdoms subject to the Holy See, to half of Peter's Pence, and to half the net amounts received from the Comtat-Venaissin and the Papal States in Italy. 5 In addition to those benefits already granted, on 23 December 1334,
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1 Baluze, Vitae, VOL. IV, p. 127.
2 P. M. Baumgarten, Untersuchungen und Urkunden, Leipzig 1898, pp. 192, 245.
3 P. M. Baumgarten, " 'Wahlgeschenke der Päpste an das heilige Kollegium,' " Römische Quartalschrift, VOL. XXII, 1908, pp. 36-47.
4 U. Berlière, Suppliques de Clément VI, Paris 1906, p. xvii.
5 Potthast, Regesta Pontif. roman. , no. 23010.
Benedict XII allowed them to receive for the term of his life the visitation tax ( visitationes ad limina apostolorum ), 1 As for the ordinary services not mentioned either by him or by Nicholas IV, numerous documents prove that the Sacred College had had a share in them from the twelfth century onwards, but not a half share. 2
The finances of the Sacred College were administered by a special department, the Chamber ( Camera ) of the College of Cardinals ( Camera Collegii reverendissimorum in Christo patrum dominorum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae cardinalium ), directed by a cardinal appointed jointly by the Pope and the cardinals, and known as the Cardinal-Camerarius of the Sacred College.
The charge of the cardinal-camerarius was twofold: he had to supervise the incoming of the revenues of the Sacred College and effect their division among those entitled to receive them.
The Common Services provided at once the most substantial and the most regular source of income for the Sacred College. Consequently the cardinal-camerarius was present, either in person or by proxy, in the Apostolic Camera whenever prelates newly elected to bishoprics or abbeys solemnly swore to pay, within an agreed period, the tax fixed by custom. He remained, moreover, in constant relation with the camerarius of the Apostolic Camera. Together they granted remission of debts or deferment of payment, issued quittances, lifted sentences of irregularity and of excommunication incurred as the result of delays in payment. The tax-payers, however, did not make direct payment in the cardinal-camerarius, but to the Apostolic Camera, which then paid the cardinals their share.
A very strict check was kept on the administration of the cardinals' revenues and the way they were divided among members of the Sacred College. Cardinals were not entitled to draw on the budget until after the ceremony of their enthronement. This consisted of three rites: the aperitio oris, when the Pope granted them the right to be present at Consistories and take part in discussions there; the assignment to them of a titular church; and the receiving of the ring, the symbol of their relationship with the Roman Church. 3
Cardinals absent from the Curia for any reason, other than sickness or a regular dispensation, received no share of the revenues of the Sacred College, even if they were absent on a legation. This did
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1 E. Göller, Die Einnahmen der apostolischen Kammer unter Benedikt XII ( GörresGesellschaft, VOL. IV, Paderborn 1910-37), p. 2.
2 E. Göller, Die Einnahmen der apostolischen Kammer unter Johann XXI ( GörresGesellschaft, VOL. 1), pp. 20Æ-52Æ.
3 The ceremonial of the nomination and enthronement of the cardinals, as used in the time of Benedict XII, is set out in Rinaldi, ad annum 1338, §83-7.
not, however, involve the legates in any loss, for the supreme pontiff compensated them in other ways, notably by granting them the right to claim lodging wherever they might be.
To help him carry out his duties, the cardinal-camerarius had a staff directly responsible to him. Until the death of Clement V, he had one clerk called the procurator et officialis Sacri Collegii, and from then on two clerks, known until 1332 as distributores et receptores pecuniarum Collegii and later as clerks of the Sacred College ( clerici Collegii ). These clerks kept the registers and had charge of the distribution of the cardinals' monies. They had servitores and scribes to help them. 1
5
Extravagant Living at the Court of Avignon; Feasts and Expenditure
The Papal Court outshone all the other courts of Europe by the extravagance of its living and the splendour of its feasts.
The furnishings inside the Palais des Doms 'showed a strange mixture of sumptuousness and simplicity.' The stone floors of the bedrooms were covered with matting which, until the time of Clement VI, was made of straw and rushes. The windows in the palace, except those in the chapel and the Consistory, contained not glass, but waxed linen. The rooms were decorated with great display of luxury. Carpets ornamented the halls and rooms of state. Rich materials hid the furniture which in itself was simple enough. When the walls were not covered with paintings, they were hung with finely woven tapestries made in the workshops of Spain and Flanders, or with hangings of silk, taffeta, or green or red serge.
The gold and silver plate included utensils of every kind: trays, drinking-vessels, goblets with lids, ewers, sauce-boats, bowls, jugs for wine and water, basins, silver-gilt flagons elaborately wrought, knives and forks with handles of ivory or jasper. The plate of Clement V weighed seven hundred marks, or about 159 kilograms; that of Clement VI in 1348 weighed eight hundred and sixty-two marks, or nearly 196 kilograms. 2
Clothes were expensive. A length of scarlet cloth for the Pope cost from 70 to 150 florins; a piece of gold brocade imported from Venice,
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1 P. M. Baumgarten, Untersuchungen und Urkunden, pp. xxxiv-clxxvii.
2 One mark at the papal court was equivalent to 226'623 grammes. See P. Guilhiermoz , " 'Note sur les poids du moyen âge,' " B.E.C. VOL. LXVII, 1906, pp. 413-14.
30 florins, the sable lining for a cloak, 75 to 100 florins. In 1347 Clement VI bought forty cloths of gold diversely coloured and woven at Damascus in Syria at a cost of 1,278 florins. Silk came from Tuscany, serge from Tournai, white woollen cloth from Carcassonne, and broad-cloth from Brussels, Malines, Louvain, Arras, Anduze, Alais, St Gilles in Gard, Narbonne in Aude, Béziers, Clermont, Montpellier, Pézenas, St Thibéry in Hérault and Toulouse. Fine linen was exported from Rheims, Paris or Flanders.
During John XXII's reign the cost of clothing the Papal household amounted on an average to 7,842 florins a year. Clothes for the summer were distributed in the spring and clothes for the winter in the autumn. The winter clothing of a sergeant was worth five florins, a penitentiary's eight and a master of theology's twelve.
Fur being considered a luxury article, its use was restricted to knights, pages, squires, gentlemen of the bedchamber and ladies of the court. It was used on an enormous scale. Clement VI used up to 1,080 ermine pelts for the following purposes: 68 for a hood, 430 for a cape, 310 for a mantle, 150 for two hoods, 64 for another hood, 30 for a hat, 80 for a large hood, 88 for nine birettas. 1 John XXII even had his pillow trimmed with fur.
The normal bill of fare for the Pope's table gives little evidence of refined taste. The caterer for the kitchens used to buy whalemeat by the hundredweight, and lay in a large stock of salt meat. But if the Pope's guests were no gourmets, they had healthy appetites as we can see from the account of the food served on 22 November 1324 at the dinner given by John XXII to celebrate the marriage of his great-niece, Jeanne de Trian, with the young Guichard de Poitiers. On that occasion they ate 4,012 loaves of bread, 8¾, oxen, 55¼ sheep, 8 pigs, 4 boars, a large quantity of different kinds of fish, 200 capons, 690 chickens, 580 partridges, 270 rabbits, 40 plovers, 37 ducks, 50 pigeons, 4 cranes, 2 pheasants, 2 peacocks, 292 small birds, 3 cwt. 2lbs. of cheese, 3,000 eggs, a mere 2,000 apples, pears and other fruits; they drank 11 barrels of wine. 2 In 1323, at the wedding-feast of Bernarde de Via, the great-niece of John XXII, and in 1324 at that of the Pope's brother Pierre, more than 931 and 720 florins respectively were spent, that is about 70,000 and 54,000 francs in gold coin. 3
To provision the court necessitated extensive commercial dealings. It was easy for the Apostolic Camera to find corn, wine, oil and fruits from the fertile valleys of the Saône and the Rhône or the
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1 E. Müntz, " 'L'Argent et le Luxe à la Cour Pontificale d'Avignon,' " R.Q.H. VOL. LXVI, 1899, p. 388.
2 Introitus et exitus, 65 fol. 39v.
3 Schäfer, Die Ausgaben, pp. 76-8, 82-6.
surrounding countryside; wood it procured from the Genevan region, tunny-fish from Marseilles and Montpellier, whalemeat from La Rochelle and herring from Bordeaux. In the time of Gregory XI, instead of getting supplies from the Mediterranean ports near to Avignon, the Apostolic Camera brought salt fish from the north and west of France. At Quimper, the collector for the ecclesiastical province of Tours, transformed for the moment into a travelling merchant, bought stockfish and toilljs costing, in 1372, 2 sous and 11 deniers and, in 1373, 2 sous apiece; at Dieppe and Boulogne-surMer he bought herrings at 8 francs 5 sous the thousand; at Orleans he bought them for 4 francs 10 sous the five hundred, and at Tours he bought salmon at the rate of 26 sous 8 deniers each. The purchase price included the cost of transport to Avignon by land and water, and of providing board and lodging for those who accompanied the convoy, but not their wages. Moreover, toll dues were payable in kind, and varied considerably. Of the 3,010 stockfish that left Quimper in 1372, 40 were taken in two tolls (representing a cash value of 5 francs, 16 sous and 8 deniers); of 19,370 herrings, only 1,370 (about 10 francs) were seized; and of the 3,283 stockfish despatched from Quimper in 1372, only 33 (worth 3 francs 5 sous) were taken. To sum up, in 1372 and 1373, the purchases made by the collector Guy de La Roche in Brittany and elsewhere amounted to 954 francs, 12 sous and 2 deniers. 1
Religious festivals were celebrated with great ceremony. In Holy Week and at certain solemn feasts, the people of Avignon came thronging to the courtyard of the Papal palace. A great bay-window opposite Clement VI's chapel, opened above the passage-way leading to the audience chambers and the grand staircase. There the Pope would appear and give the crowd his pontifical blessing. 2
At Notre-Dame-des-Doms the supreme pontiff himself would very often officiate, and would preach to his court. The sermons delivered by John XXII and Clement VI are famous.
On the fourth Sunday in Lent took place the ceremony of presenting the golden rose. This precious jewel, of which an example may still be seen at the Musée de Cluny in Paris, was worth more than 100 florins, or 6,000-7,500 gold francs. In the fourteenth century it was made like the branch of a rose-tree. A sapphire shone at the centre of a rose whose petals were wide open. The buds were adorned with pearls and garnets. In 1368, despite the protests of his
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1 G. Mollat, Études et Documents sur l'Histoire de Bretagne, pp. 168-71.
2 Colombe, " 'Au Palais des Papes; la Grande Fenêtre,' " Revue du Midi, VOL. XLII, 1909, pp. 791-5; " 'La Fenêtre de l'indulgence au palais des papes d'Avignon,' " Mémoires de l'académie de Vaucluse, ser. 2, VOL. X, 1910, pp. 33-40.
cardinals, Urban V gave the rose to Queen Joanna of Naples although, according to the rules of protocol, this honour should really have gone to the king of Cyprus who was at the court at the time. 1
Once a year, on Christmas Day, the Pope presented a belt of silver, a sword, and a hat or cap ornamented with fine pearls, to a lord who had distinguished himself by some outstanding act in the service of Christendom, or had shown unusual ability in some important negotiation. The recipient was present at matins and read one of the lessons. This papal gift had considerable value: in 1365 it cost 324 florins, that is about 20,000 gold francs. 2
The obsequies of Popes were marked by the abundant distribution of alms and by the giving of gratuities to court officials. When Clement VI died, the Apostolic Camera spent 440 Avignonese pounds in bread given to the poor, 700 florins divided amongst the houses of the mendicant orders in Avignon, and 425 florins given to charitable institutions and the hospitals of the town. For nine successive days, fifty priests said masses for the repose of the Pope's soul. Knights and high officials of the court were given black robes of sendal (a fine, smooth silk) and fine wool. The decoration of the mortuary chapel was very simple in comparison with its elaborate lighting which cost as much as 1,104 florins. Around the catafalque, which was hung with black sendal, were candelabra draped in black, and funerary urns; on the bier a pall of black sendal carried the Pope's arms embroidered in gold on a background of red silk; at each corner of the catafalque stood an escutcheon of arms.
The actual obsequies consisted of three ceremonies. The first took place in the great chapel of the Palace, where a cardinal pronounced a funeral oration in praise of the deceased; the second was held in Notre-Dame-des-Doms and went on for nine days; the last and by far the most onerous ceremony was the bearing of the body with great pomp to its final burial-place. 3
More accounts of civil feasts than of religious banquets have been preserved: we have seen the splendid scale on which the nuptials of relatives of the Pope were celebrated. There is nothing, however, to equal the reception given to Clement VI by Cardinal Annibale di Ceccano in 1343, in the outskirts of Avignon. An Italian has left us the following eye-witness account:
'The Pope was led into a room hung from floor to ceiling with tapestries of great richness. The ground was covered with a velvet
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1 Revue de l'art chrétien, VOL. XLIV, 1901, pp. 1-11.
2 Ibid. VOL. XXXII, 1889, pp. 408-11.
3 E. Déprez, " Les Funérailles de Clément VI et d'Innocent VI,' " Mélanges, VOL. XX, 1900, pp. 235-50.
carpet. The state bed was hung with the finest crimson velvet, lined with white ermine, and covered with cloths of gold and of silk. Four knights and twelve squires of the Pope's household waited at table; the knights received from the host a rich belt of silver and a purse worth 25 gold florins; and the squires, a belt and a purse to the value of 12 florins. Fifty squires from Cardinal Annibale's suite assisted the papal knights and squires. The meal consisted of nine courses ( vivande ) each having three dishes, that is a total of twenty-seven dishes. We saw brought in, among other things, a sort of castle containing a huge stag, a boar, kids, hares and rabbits. At the end of the fourth course, the cardinal presented the Pope with a white charger, worth 400 florins, and two rings, valued at 150 florins, one set with an enormous sapphire and the other with an equally enormous topaz; and last of all, a nappo worth 100 florins. Each of the sixteen cardinals received a ring set with fine stones, and so did the twenty prelates and the noble laymen. The twelve young clerks of the papal household were each given a belt and a purse worth 25 gold florins; and the twenty-four sergeants-at-arms, a belt worth 3 florins. After the fifth course, they brought in a fountain surmounted by a tree and a pillar, flowing with five kinds of wine. The margins of the fountain were decked with peacocks, pheasants, partridges, cranes and other birds. In the interval between the seventh and eighth courses there was a tournament, which took place in the banqueting hall itself. A concert brought the main part of the feast to a close. At dessert, two trees were brought in; one seemed made of silver, and bore apples, pears, figs, peaches and grapes of gold; the other was green as laurel, and was decorated with crystallised fruits of many colours.
'The wines came from Provence, La Rochelle, Beaune, St Pourçain and the Rhine. After dessert the master cook danced, together with his thirty assistants. When the Pope had retired to his apartments, wines and spices were set before us.'
The day was brought to an end with singing, tournaments, dancing and, as a climax, a farce which the Pope and cardinals found highly diverting. Over the Sorgue a dummy bridge had been built looking as though it led to the scene of the festivities; many unsuspecting and inquisitive folk, clerks, monks and lay, innocently ventured on to this bridge; when the crowd on it was thick, the bridge gave way and the artless sight-seers all tumbled headlong into the river. 1
Must we believe that the banquets at the papal court sometimes degenerated into orgies? Petrarch has described some of them with a
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1 E. Müntz, in R.Q.H. VOL. LXVI, 1899, pp. 403-04. See also E. Casanova, " 'Visità di un papa avignonese,' " A.S.R.S.P. VOL. XXII, 1899, pp. 371-81.
wealth of truly scabrous detail. But the Italian poet had a very lively imagination. Moreover, his undisguised hatred of the Avignon Popes gives the historian good reason to view his descriptions with extreme reserve. We have no means of checking the point at which straightforward description ends and satire begins.
Ambassadors from every nation were constantly to be seen passing to and fro in Avignon. In 1338, the khan of Tartary sent sixteen personages to pay his respects to Benedict XII. In 1342, eighteen Romans, chosen to represent the three classes of citizens, came to beg Clement VI to accept the office of Senator, and to return to their city and grant them the indulgence of his Jubilee. 1 Undoubtedly the most magnificent of all the embassies was that which, on the morrow of the battle of Tarifa, came from Castile to bring to Benedict XII his share of the booty. A long caravan wended its way from Spain: a hundred Moorish slaves held the bridles of a hundred horses from whose harness hung scimitars and shields taken from the enemy. Citizens of Castile led the war-horse of King Alfonso XI, and bore the twenty-four standards picked up on the banks of the river Salado. In order to perpetuate the memory of the victory of the Christian army, Benedict XII ordered the spoils of battle to be hung from the roof of his chapel, by the side of Alfonso's standard. 2
Sovereigns were not content with merely sending embassies to the Popes. They came to Avignon in person, and during the reign of Urban V, three monarchs were to be found there at the same time: John II ('the Good'), Peter of Lusignan, king of Cyprus, and Waldemar IV, king of Denmark. In 1365, the Emperor Charles IV in his turn entered the papal city. The sojourn of kings and princes occasioned magnificent festivities, including banquets of inordinate length after the fashion of the day. The duke of Lancaster kept open table for six weeks in the year 1354-5, and the citizens of Avignon, who had seen a hundred barrels of wine brought to the cellars of his lodging, were full of admiration for such a man, and freely said of him that 'he had no equal in all the world.' 3
Ever since the reign of Pope Clement II in the middle of the eleventh century, the political authority of the Popes had been constantly increasing. Their pre-eminence had become apparent during the conflict between the Papacy and the Empire. It was believed in Christendom during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that neither king nor emperor was the equal of the supreme pontiff: he surpassed
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1 C. Gipolla, " 'Note Petrarchesche desunte dall' Archivio Vaticano,' " Atti e memorie della R. Accademia della scienze di Torino, VOL. LIX, 1909, pp. 1-32.
2 L. Duhamel, Une Ambassade à la Cour Pontificale. Episode de l'Histoire du Palais des Papes, Avignon 1883.
3 G. Mollat, in R.H.E. VOL. X, 1909, p. 740.
them all. As general prosperity increased, he became by the thirteenth century, and more especially in the fourteenth, the centre of a glittering society. The Avignon Popes lived like princes and sustained this character magnificently. But the maintenance of themselves and their court consumed only a small part of their wealth. 1 The war which they were obliged to wage in Italy throughout the fourteenth century in order to keep their hold on the Papal States, swallowed up vast sums of money. Whereas John XXII's total expenditure amounted to about 4,200,000 florins, the maintenance of the papal forces in Italy between 1321 and 1331 cost 2,390,433 florins. Karl Heinrich Schäfer, who has set himself the task of balancing the Pope's accounts, estimates that the cost of the war in Italy amounted to 63.7 per cent of the whole expenses of the reign. 2 The conquest of the Papal States during the reigns of Clement VI, Innocent VI, Urban V and Gregory XI involved equally heavy sacrifices. The Apostolic Camera was always in debt, and to remedy this the Popes were compelled to raise large loans and extort money from ecclesiastical benefices.
Despite their financial worries, the Avignon Popes never forgot that they were 'Fathers of the poor.' John XXII had scarcely settled in the city when he determined to organise his almsgiving as he had already organised his other expenditure. He set up a kind of office of good works, the Pignotte, 3 which gave its name to the square where it stood: this square still exists today.
In charge of the Pignotte was an administrator who was assisted by two auxiliaries chosen from the Cistercians, and referred to in the documents as almoners. The duty of the three almoners was to administer the monies paid out to them by the camerarius and the treasurer who demanded formal receipts. They kept account-books in which they made a note of their day-to-day purchases and, after making a fair copy, presented these accounts at the end of every financial transaction to the clerks of the Camera who audited them. They also had ten full-time servants, whose task was to cook, to give help to the poor and to see that the stores were well supplied.
The Pignotte dealt, as the need arose, with a large number of tradesmen--bankers, dressmakers, tailors, washerwomen, cobblers and victuallers of all kinds. It provided the needy with clothing, medicines, wine and food. The fare provided was somewhat monotonous, but
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1 See J. Guiraud, L'Église romaine, pp. 23-87: chapters dealing with humanism and the arts at the courts of both Avignon and Rome during the fourteenth century.
2 Die Ausgaben, p. 37?.
3 According to Du Cange, the name is supposed to come from the Italian pagnotta, a small loaf of about 60 grammes which was distributed to the poor. According to Cottier and de Loye it derives from the shape of the loaves distributed, which were made like pine seeds or pine cones.
very substantial: it included soup, meat and eggs, fish during Lent and, more rarely, beans, salt and oil. On an average 67,500 loaves of bread were distributed each week during John XXII's reign. In 1344 the number of the poor receiving assistance was so great that the buildings of the Pignotte had to be enlarged. A neighbouring house was taken over from the monastery of St Véan at an annual rent of 40 florins and 5 sous viennois. In 1348, Clement VI gave to the Pignotte a garden near Notre-Dame-des-Miracles, which supplied them with vegetables and fruit. 1
The brethren and sisters of the mendicant orders in Avignon derived especial benefit from the Pope's generosity. On feast days, when the poor were dining under the open porticos of the Pignotte, the convents received an extra allowance of food, referred to in the accounts as a pittance ( pitancia ); and there were many of these days in the course of the year. In certain serious situations, the Apostolic Camera gave them rich presents. There is an entry showing a gift of 800 florins, together with an invitation to sing a Te Deum of thanksgiving and to pray for divine mercy. Often, too, the Popes would supply the brethren with gifts of vestments, chalices, priestly ornaments, missals, altar-linen, or financial help in the building and maintenance of their houses and churches. 2 Outside Avignon the Carthusians at Bonpas, Cahors, and Val-de-Bénédiction at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon and the monasteries of Chaise-Dieu, St Victor at Marseilles and Montpellier received exceedingly generous benefactions from John XXII, Innocent VI, Clement VI and Urban V.
The churches of the secular clergy had no less a share in the generosity of the supreme pontiffs. After he was elected, the Pope was not unmindful of his native village, or the district where he had carried out his episcopal duties. The churches in these areas were especially privileged. They received great quantities of rich silks, cloth of gold, ornaments, reliquaries, altar furnishings and sacred vessels. John XXII did not hesitate to convert his gold and silver plate into chalices, and to send them to the East. 3 He was fond of presenting bells, no doubt in order to encourage the saying of the Angelus, a devotion which he had popularised by the granting of indulgences. 4
It has been alleged that the Avignon Popes were indifferent to the fate of the churches in Rome. The books of the Apostolic Camera give the lie to this accusation. 5 In 1320, a Roman banker sent Pietro
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1 P. Pansier, L'Œuvre des repenties à Avignon, Paris 1910, pp. 47-9.
2 G. Mollat, " 'Jean XXII fut-il un avare?,' " R.H.E. VOL. VI, 1906, pp. 34-45.
3 Schäfer, Die Ausgaben, pp. 803-14.
4 G. Mollat, in R.H.E. VOL. VI, 1906, p. 44.
5 J. Guiraud, L'Église romaine, pp. 79-87.
Capocci 5,000 florins for the repair of St John Lateran, and a little later 3,000 florins were allocated to the fabric of St Peter's. 1 In the vaults of the Vatican inscriptions commemorate Benedict XII's generosity to the basilica. The gifts of Urban V deserve especial mention. Not content with erecting the graceful ciborium of St John Lateran, the Pope ordered the Siennese sculptor Giovanni Bartolo to make two busts of the apostles Peter and Paul, each weighing 1,700 marks. The bust of St Paul was silver-gilt. Sapphires and emeralds formed the borders of his tunic and mantle. In one hand the saint brandished a silver sword; in the other he held a book decorated with enamels. A royal crown set with rare pearls was on his brow. The tiara of St Peter shone with precious stones. The heads of the apostles were laid with great ceremony in the new reliquaries, and they were then placed beneath the ciborium. Urban V spent on this occasion 30,000 florins, and the queens of France, Navarre and Naples shared in the expense. 2
This does not end the list of papal charities. We need only mention, in addition, the care of the sick in the hospitals at Avignon, grants to students to allow them to buy books, dowries given to girls of small fortune, gifts to prisoners and the huge sums of money spent on missions and the Crusade.
Above all, the generosity of the Avignon Popes is proved by their accounts. Each year John XXII spent in almsgiving on an average more than 16,000 florins, that is from 172,000 to 320,000 gold francs. In the general picture of the accounts of his reign, his gifts come third in order, and represent 7.16 per cent of his total expenditure. 3 Louis Sanctus of Beeringen, a friend of Petrarch, tells us that in the reign of Clement VI, the Pignotte distributed daily 64 salmatae of corn. As he is careful to tell us that each salmata provided enough to make 500 loaves, the total number of loaves given to the poor every day amounted to no less than 32,000. 4
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1 G. Mollat, loc. cit.
2 M. Chaillan, Le Bienheureux Urbain V, pp. 174-6. See also Baluze, Vitae, VOL. I, col. 390.
3 Schäfer, Die Ausgaben, pp. 35?-37?.
4 De Smet, Recueil des chroniques de Flandre, VOL. III, Brussels 1856, p. 17.
CHAPTER II
Papal Finances
IN order to maintain their court, and to meet the expenses arising out of their political or religious activities, the Popes had to find considerable sources of income. These were chiefly found in the creation of taxes on ecclesiastical benefices. Such taxes may be divided into two kinds: those paid directly to the Curia and those levied on the spot by agents of the Papal treasury.
1
Taxes Paid Directly to the Curia
1. The Common Services ( servitia communia ) . This was the name given to the dues paid to the Apostolic Camera by bishops and abbots immediately on their nomination, on the confirmation of their election, on their consecration, and on their translation to another see or another abbey by the Supreme Pontiff.
Originally a free gift and purely optional, the common services became before the middle of the thirteenth century a compulsory tax which, from the time of Boniface VIII amounted to one-third of the gross annual income derived by the Papacy from its taxes on the revenues of bishops and abbots. The rate of the tax was subject to variations in the second half of the fourteenth century and the scales adopted by different Popes were entered in the Liber taxarum Camerae Apostolicae. 1
The only prelates and abbots obliged to pay this tax were those whose incomes from their sees and abbeys exceeded 100 gold florins and had been made subject to special or general reservations. In practice, very few escaped, owing to the way in which the Avignon Popes extended the use of their rights of reservation.
2. Petty Services ( servitia minuta ) . In addition to the common
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1 M. H. Hoberg, Taxae episcopatuum et abbatiarum pro communibus servitiis solvendis, ex libris Obligationum ab anno 1295 ad annum 1455 confectis, Vatican City 1947. See also E. Göller, Der 'Liber taxarum' der päpstlichen Kammer, Rome 1905.
services, newly-appointed bishops and abbots were obliged to pay the 'petty services,' that is, gifts or gratuities to the staff of the Curia or to members of the cardinals' households. By the fourteenth century there were five of these petty services. Each one was equivalent to the share of the common services received by each cardinal at the Curia; consequently the rate for these became higher as the number of cardinals present at the Curia decreased.
3. The Sacra, the Subdiaconum and the Quittance Fees. At the time of their consecration or their benediction at the papal court, bishops and abbots paid the following dues: the sacra, or gift made at the consecration, amounting to one-twentieth of the total paid in common services, and shared by the camerarius, the clerks of the Camera and the sergeants at arms; the subdiaconum, the perquisite of the papal subdeacons, and amounting to one-third of the sacra; and the quittance fees, proportional to the diverse sums of money paid both to the Apostolic Camera and to the cardinals' Camera.
4. Chancery fees were exacted for the despatching of letters of grace and justice, for their sealing ( emollumentum bullae ) and their registration. The scale for the payment of fees to scribes, abbreviators and registrars, first drawn up by John XXII in the Constitutions Cum ad sacrosanctae and Paterfamilias, dated 10 December 1316 and 16 November 1331 respectively, and later modified by subsequent Popes, was eventually incorporated in the Liber taxarum Cancellariae, the manual in common use at the Chancery. 1
5. Visitationes ad limina apostolorum. The term 'visitationes ad limina Apostolorum' was given not only to pilgrimages made to the tombs of the apostles Peter and Paul in Rome, but also to the dues originally payable on this occasion.
These dues were strictly payable at the time of the visits which certain bishops and abbots were compelled to make to the Curia at regular and specified intervals. If, however, special permission were obtained, the dues could be sent to the papal court by proxy.
6. Pallium dues were 'small sums paid for the despatch of the Bulls whereby the Pope conferred the pallium.'
7. The cense from kingdoms subject to the Roman Church. The kingdom of Naples paid 8,000 ounces of gold a year, Sicily ( Trinacria) 3,000 ounces of gold, Aragon 2,000 silver marks sterling for Corsica and Sardinia, and the king of England 700 silver marks sterling for England and 300 for Ireland.
8. Legacies and unsolicited gifts to the Popes, and the reversion of the goods of those who died intestate at the papal court.
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1 See above, pp. 288 - 94.
9. Fines imposed by Papal tribunals on clergy and hymen for various offences; sums of money paid by way of commutation of vows and penances imposed by the penitentiaries; coinage fees; revenues from the see of Avignon held in commendam by the Popes; and other small sums.
2 Taxes Levied in the Taxpayer's Own Country by the Agents of the Curia
More important, more numerous and more oppressive were the taxes levied on the spot in the taxpayer's own country, first by extraordinary envoys and later by special officials called collectors ( collectores ). These taxes fell into seven different categories: tenths, annates, procurations, rights of spoil, caritative subsidies, cense and vacancies.
1. Tenths ( decimae ) . A tenth was an extraordinary aid exacted by the Avignon Popes from holders of ecclesiastical benefices, sometimes to organise a crusade, sometimes to enable the Popes to meet the heavy demands on their finances made chiefly by the conquest of the Papal States in Italy and the war against the Visconti.
To ensure the equitable distribution of this tax, the approximate value of the clergy's property had to be ascertained. For this purpose the Apostolic Camera sent special agents all over Christendom to draw up a complete list of ecclesiastical benefices, to indicate as accurately as possible the size of the income of each one, the charges on that income and the extent of the contribution with which it could be assessed. This assessment was called the taxatio, and it was commonly said of a benefice that it was assessed for tenths ( taxatus ad decimam ) or more simply, assessed ( taxatus ).
The term tenth should not mislead us as to the amount of the tax. The incumbent did not have to pay the tenth part of his gross income, but only the tenth part of the assessment, that is, that part of the income which remained after all expenses had been deducted and whose figure had been settled in the thirteenth century by the agents of the papal treasury.
In certain dioceses and certain ecclesiastical provinces in France that had suffered particularly from plague, war and famine, Urban V in 1363 and Gregory XI in 1372, 1373 and 1374 reduced the assessment for the tenth by half. This reduced assessment was denoted in the official records by the term 'nova taxatio', as opposed to 'antiqua taxatio'. The tenth underwent the same vicissitudes as the assessment and remained in the same proportion to it of one to ten. Thus the assessment of the priory of Odars in the diocese of Toulouse amounting in 1357 to 140 livres tournois, was reduced to 70 livres in 1374, and consequently its tenth was then only 7 livres. 1
A moderate subsidy ( subsidium loco decime ) was deducted from unassessed benefices. It was left to the collectors to estimate this sum, in proportion to the resources of the benefice and its incumbent.
In principle, no one was exempt from tenths: patriarchs, archbishops and bishops were subject to them just as much as other clergy. Only cardinals and members of the Order of St John of Jerusalem were formally exempt. In certain circumstances, the knights of the Teutonic Order shared this unusual privilege.
2. Annates ( annatae, fructus primi anni, annualia, annalia ) . In the fourteenth century annates were the revenues derived from a benefice during the first year's tenure of a new incumbent and reserved to the Apostolic Camera.
Although John XXII has for long been considered 'the inventor, author and father of annates,' in fact Clement V, in 1306, was the first Pope to claim them from England for the benefit of the Papal treasury.
Apart from France, which only became subject to them from 20 February 1326, 2 all the other Christian kingdoms paid annates in the time of the Avignon Popes, from John XXII till Gregory XI. Only Benedict XII, having abandoned the Crusade which had been the pretext for levying them, refrained from exacting them, and contented himself with making sure that the sums of money that the clergy had been unable to pay during his predecessor's lifetime were duly collected.
This tax had originally fallen only on those benefices that were vacant apud Sedem apostolicam ; but from 12 January 1334 it affected all those disposed of or conferred by the Holy See by virtue of general or particular reservations. As, from the time of Clement VI onwards, the Pope retained the right of collation of an ever-increasing number of benefices, and caused a greater proportion of them to fall vacant in Curia, it followed that a very large number of prelates-almost all of them by 1376--had to pay annates.
The payment of annates was calculated in two ways. Sometimes the Apostolic Camera would seize the portion of the revenue that the
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1 J.-M. Vidal, Documents pour servir à dresser le pouillé de la Province Ecclésiastique de Toulouse au XIVe Siècle, pp. 23, 24, 54, 58, 62, 63.
2 Regesta Vaticana 113, fol. 295 v.
incumbent nominally drew each year, in other words the assessed value, and leave him what remained (the residuum ) to provide for the carrying out of his duties. On other occasions, however, if it were to the Camera's advantage, it would take this residuum, and leave the other part of the income to meet the expenses of the benefice. The collectors could choose which of these two methods they preferred.
If the benefice were not assessed, the Camera and the incumbent shared the gross income before deduction of charges, which had to be met by the incumbent only. If the benefice fell vacant several times in one year, the annates were nevertheless only collected once.
Sometimes the incumbent handed over the entire income to the collectors; when this happened, they received all the profits and paid all the charges, and appointed some intermediary to conduct the services and administer the sacraments, in short, to carry out all the duties of a cure of souls.
3. Procurations. 'An ancient feudal custom, known as the droit de gîte, had changed in time to a tax known to the clergy as procuration.' When the bishop or lesser prelates such as abbots, archdeacons, archpriests or deans, visited benefices under their jurisdiction, they and their retinue were entitled to receive hospitality.
Originally a simple subsidy in kind, a procuration soon became a tax in money whose maximum rate was finally fixed by the Constitution Vas electionis, promulgated by Benedict XII on 18 December 1336. 1
Because of the wars that devastated Europe during the fourteenth century, and also for reasons of generosity, the Popes 'allowed the prelates to levy the procuration without personally making the visitation. These dispensations could be bought at the court of Avignon for half the value of the procuration or even for two-thirds of its assessed value. Urban V was the first to publish, on 1 June 1369, a general reservation forbidding the bishops to levy subsidies on their diocesans by way of compensation. This fiscal measure had highly regrettable consequences: as soon as the emoluments attached to the pastoral visitation disappeared, the bishops seem to have felt this to be a duty they were no longer bound in conscience to undertake. There was, however, some excuse for this attitude. The state of poverty into which France had sunk as a result of the Hundred Years' War made it difficult or even impossible to undertake lengthy journeys without some form of compensation.
4. Rights of Spoil ( spolia ) . The right of spoil was originally the right to seize the house and goods of any deceased bishop. Bishops
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1 Corpus juris canonici, Extravagantes communes, Bk III, tit. x, ch. 1.
and abbots in their turn seized the spoils of deceased incumbents who were their subordinates. The Holy See, by putting itself in the place of the legitimate collators of benefices was able, whenever a vacancy occurred, to appropriate the advantages which had hitherto been enjoyed by abbots and bishops. John XXII made a general extension of the right of spoil, and under his successors this right became more and more frequently and extensively applied, as the number of benefices reserved to papal collation increased.
On 11 December 1362, 1 Urban V claimed the right, during his lifetime, to inherit the property of any ecclesiastic regular or secular, dying anywhere in Christendom. This fiscal measure was, however, not applied to French and English churches. In these countries, whenever an incumbent died, a reservation was made, which the Pope might or might not claim, according to the circumstances. A Bull dated 9 July 1371 2 reserved henceforth for the Holy See the property of all clerks dying in the dioceses of Auch and Bordeaux, and in Spain.
The first legislative document to regulate the application of the right of spoil ( jus spolii ) dates from 16 May 1345. 3 From then on, the collectors were required to settle the debts contracted by the deceased on behalf of his church or his benefice, to defray the expenses of a suitable funeral, and to pay the wages of his servants and any fines that might be due. The legitimate heirs, if there were any, received the books and other items belonging to the patrimony of the deceased prelate or acquired by his own efforts. Similarly reservation did not extend to the ornaments of the church or to the vessels used in the offices, unless they had been bought with the sole object of evading the law. In the same way bed-linen, casks of wine, arms and the tools necessary for the care and maintenance of church property, the cattle and the agricultural implements were all exempt from spoil.
The application of the right of spoil provided the Papacy in the fourteenth century with one of its most substantial sources of income. The sale of the furniture of deceased prelates produced enormous sums of money. The Popes, however, put the most precious ornaments and jewels into their own treasury and the rare books into their library. In this way the library of the palace at Avignon acquired, between 1343 and 1350, more than twelve hundred valuable works. 4
5. Caritative subsidies ( subsidia caritativa ) . In imitation of bishops
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1 G. Mollat, La Fiscalité pontificale, p. 233.
2 Vatican Archives: Collectoria 358, fol. 2 r-v.
3 Vatican Archives: Instrumenta miscellanea ad annum 1345.
4 F. Ehrle, Historia bibliothecae pontificum Romanorum, Rome 1890, VOL. 1, p. 246.
and abbots who, from the twelfth century onwards, had been wont in times of financial stress to beg free gifts from their subordinates, the Popes, in the fourteenth century, appealed to the generosity of the clergy in time of need. As its name suggests, the contribution may well have been, at the outset, a token of love and affection, but by the fourteenth century it had lost much of its pristine significance. A voluntary subsidy was the equivalent of a subsidy whose amount was not fixed, and to obtain which it was necessary to appeal to the goodwill of the clergy. The Pope made his request in courteous terms, and entrusted his own fiscal agents with the task of collecting it. This subsidy was in fact the opposite of 'charitable,' since any incumbent who proved backward in paying his quota risked excommunication.
6. The Cense. 1 This was of two kinds: the greater, paid as a rent for the effective enjoyment of lands belonging to the Holy See; and the lesser, paid in order to obtain or to keep Papal protection.
Payments were very irregular, and provided only a slender source of income to the Papal treasury. Payment was usually made in coin, but occasionally in kind.
7. Vacancies ( fructus medii temporis, fructus intercalares, fructus vacantes ) . The term 'vacancies' was given to the revenue of benefices in the Pope's conferment and which, for that reason, were said to be vacantes in Curia. The Pope reserved the right to collect these revenues until a new incumbent had been appointed. Except during the reign of Clement VI, this tax was compulsory from the time of John XXII until that of Gregory XI.
Among vacancies are included the fructus indebite or male percepti, that is, revenues of a benefice improperly collected by a clerk, either because he had not been canonically provided to that benefice, or because he held it concurrently with other benefices in defiance of the Constitution Execrabilis, or because he had not asked for a dispensation on account of his age, or because he had not received Holy Orders within the time prescribed by canon law. In all these cases, the Holy See considered the benefice to be vacant and claimed the income improperly drawn by the incumbent. In these instances there was usually a 'composition,' that is an arrangement between the incumbent and the Papacy.
8. Revenues from the Papal States in Italy, from the ComtatVenaissin and from Avignon after that town had been ceded to the Papacy. Among these revenues should be included the cense paid by
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1 C. Daux, "' Le Cens Pontifical dans l'Église de France,'" R.Q.H. VOL. LXXV, 1904, pp. 5-73.
the great vassals of the Roman Church: the Marchesi d' Este (10,000 florins), the commune of Bologna (8,000 florins), the della Scala for the vicariate of Verona, Parma and Vicenza (5,000 florins) and the Visconti for that of Piacenza and other places (10,000 florins). Other revenues came from tolls, customs' duties, the salt-tax, the poll-tax, tithes, confiscation of property, fines imposed by the courts, legacies and inheritances, etc. 1
9. Peter's Pence. This direct tax was levied in England, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Bohemia, Croatia, Dalmatia, in the lands lying between the Baltic sea and the kingdom of Poland, conquered by the knights of the Teutonic Order, and in Aragon and Portugal.
3
The Methods of Collecting Taxes
The machinery for the payment of the common services is known to us in the most minute detail. First of all, the staff of the Camera and the prelates concerned, or their representatives, agreed upon the assessment of the revenues of benefices. Sometimes the Papal collectors or special commissioners held an enquiry. The tax amounted to one-third of the gross income. When the assessment had been settled, the prelate took an oath, either at the Curia or very occasionally elsewhere, to pay the tax within two terms; at least this was so from the end of John XXII's reign. If the term expired without payment having been made, the Pope, after consulting the cardinals in Consistory, granted delays. If, after being warned, the defaulter still did not pay his tax, ecclesiastical censures were imposed upon him and only removed when he had paid his debt in full. 2
There is nothing particularly remarkable or unexpected about the bureaucratic formalities which arose in the payment of other taxes direct to the Curia. The collection of taxes on the spot, however, is more interesting. It necessitated the employment of a large number of treasury agents.
Chief among these agents were the collectors ( collectores ) who were put in charge of financial districts known as collectorates ( collectoriae ). 3
The financial districts seldom corresponded to ecclesiastical
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1 K. H. Schäfer, Deutsche Ritter, Paderborn 1909, VOL. 1, pp. 16-44.
2 A. Clergeac, La Curie et les bénéfices consistoriaux, Paris 1911, pp. 80-156.
3 G. Mollat, op. cit. includes two maps showing French collectorates.
provinces. A single collectorate sometimes included two or three ecclesiastical provinces; on the other hand, a single ecclesiastical province might be large enough to constitute two or three collectorates. In France the number of collectorates varied greatly and fluctuated between twelve and seventeen; but it was always equal to, if not greater than, the total number of collectorates for all the other countries in the world.
The office of collector is older than the name, and goes back to the beginning of the thirteenth century. The collector was at first simply a special envoy charged with levying taxes for the Crusade. From an itinerant official, as he was in the days of Clement V and John XXII, he became an official with a permanent headquarters when, in the time of Clement VI, taxes on the revenues of the Church became customary.
The collectors were nominated for an indefinite period by the Pope, or, more frequently, by the camerarius. Their duties could only be terminated by their resignation, recall or transfer to another charge. Chosen from all ranks of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and usually graduates, they enjoyed extensive powers, superior in some respects to those of the bishops whom they had the authority to excommunicate. The freedom of action which was left to collectors in places far removed from the immediate control of the Camera made their office by no means a sinecure, for their duties were often difficult and always heavy; but the position was much sought after, and inspired respect and fear in the taxpayers.
After taking an oath of loyalty to the camerarius and receiving their Bulls of appointment and letters of safe conduct, the newly-appointed collectors hired horses or hackneys and escorted by notaries and servants, left Avignon for their districts.
On arrival at their destination, they notified their presence to the ecclesiastical authorities and the taxpayers by publishing their letters of appointment. Their chief preoccupation was to collect around them a number of subordinates upon whom they unloaded almost all the practical work. They themselves were usually content to direct and supervise their staff, and more particularly, to look after the cash-box.
The most important members of their staff were the sub-collectors to whom they deputed the task of raising the taxes in the various dioceses attached to their collectorate. In general there was one to each diocese.
The sub-collectors had strictly to obey the orders of their superiors. At certain times of the year, and at very irregular intervals, they sent them the account-books together with the money collected and in exchange got a sealed receipt. In the more extensive collectorates, they were headed by a general sub-collector, who was directly responsible to the collector.
Under the sub-collectors there were a certain number of sworn subordinates, such as notaries, servants and members of the household.
The collectors also employed money-changers, so that the taxes, which were necessarily collected in the currency of the country concerned, could be converted into French gold coin, money of Tours or, most frequently, florins, which were accepted currency in Avignon. This operation, already difficult enough because of the constant fluctuations in currency values in the fourteenth century, was made even more complicated by the fact that in the thirteenth century the agreed assessment for the levying of tenths, and later used as a basis for assessing annates, had been calculated in livres, sous and deniers, that is in money of account. The collector had therefore to be able to tell what actual specie corresponded to this notional money.
When the conversion had been made, the collector still had to send the money to Avignon, or dispose of it in accordance with the orders of the Camera. The most frequent method of avoiding the transport of coin, always long, costly and dangerous, was to assign it to some third person to whom the Holy See acknowledged itself a creditor. If the money were assigned direct to the Camera, the collector, one of the sub-collectors or some other trusted person, escorted to the papal court the sum derived from the taxes. On other occasions, special delegates from the Holy See received the money and encouraged the collectors. Lastly, among intermediaries often used must be included, except in France, Italian and French banking houses.
Accounts were rendered to the court at Avignon at somewhat irregular intervals. In principle this took place every two years, at least at the end of the fourteenth century. As a general rule, the Apostolic Camera would order its collectors to come to Avignon to render their accounts, and would use various forms of compulsion to enforce this order, if they did not obey or made frivolous excuses. If necessary, a sub-collector could take the place of the collector for the rendering of accounts.
The accounts themselves were drawn up in a kind of register, of which at least two copies were made. One remained in the keeping of the collector, while the other, after checking, was placed in the archives of the Camera. There was no fixed plan for the way in which accounts were drawn up: some were detailed, others very brief; some were arranged under the dioceses of the financial district, and others under the different kinds of tax.
At the Camera a clerk was appointed by the camerarius to check the accounts carefully and make a report. His task was usually facilitated by the collector who summarised the very diffuse information contained in his large books into a few pages of figures which formed a note-book (the compotus abbreviatus or compotus brevis ) attached to his register. The auditor informed his superior when his task was complete and then read his report on a certain day in the office of the treasury, in the presence of the camerarius, the treasurer and the other clerks of the Camera; then the quitus was granted as required, and the collector rewarded for his trouble.
In case of a dispute between incumbents and collectors, or of malversations on the part of the collectors, a secret enquiry was held. When the informers had proved the alleged facts, a public enquiry was held, presided over by a clerk of the Apostolic Camera or a special commissioner, Collectors who were found guilty usually had their property confiscated and were imprisoned. In the fourteenth century some of them abused their authority to use the 'spiritual weapons' -- excommunication, interdict, aggrave and reaggrave -- and employed them to extort money for their own profit. But in general they carried out their duties conscientiously, faithfully and honestly. This is clear from a study of their books, and explains the favours and rewards that the Pope granted to so many of them. 1
4
The Effects and Results of the Financial Policy of the Avignon Popes
We must now try to assess the amount of money obtained by the Avignon Popes by means of their fiscal measures, and as the consequences of their financial policy.
In 1313 Clement V possessed 1,040,000 gold florins, but the grandiose provisions of his will emptied the treasury. In August 1316 the cardinals and John XXII had only 70,000 florins to share between them.
In these financial straits the new Pope created taxes inspired by ideas taken from his predecessors. This extraordinary move, which
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1 G. Mollat, La Fiscalitè Pontificale. See also E. Göller, Die Einnahmen.
in the long run had disastrous moral consequences and necessitated the immediate reorganisation of a complex financial system, at first produced very fine material results. The money collected reached an average of 228,000 florins a year, or a total of 4,100,000 for the whole pontificate. Expenditure, however, chiefly occasioned by the Italian wars, amounted to 4,191,446 florins. The Apostolic Camera would have been entirely bankrupt if John XXII had not paid out 440,000 florins from his own private resources, and if a lawsuit after the death of Clement V had not turned out well and supplied his successor with 150,000 florins.
The reserve fund that John XXII left--about 750, 000 florins-was quite sufficient for Benedict XII, who discontinued certain taxes. Receipts went down by 62,000 florins a year. In spite of this, thanks to his wise economy, Benedict left at his death 1,117,000 florins.
This very favourable financial situation was rapidly altered after the accession of Clement VI. Although the money received annually by the Pope reached an average of 188,500 florins, the amount in the papal coffers at his death fell to 311,115 florins, and this sum had only been obtained by means of loans.
Innocent VI had an annual income of 253,600 florins. The Italian war swallowed up more than all this, and the Camera fell into debt. Urban V and Gregory XI lived from hand to mouth. They borrowed wherever they could, and at the same time oppressed incumbents with taxes.
It was, therefore, chiefly the Italian wars which ruined the Avignon Popes, and caused them to extort money from the clergy. 1
However justified they may have been, the fiscal measures of the Avignon Popes roused very lively discontent. Contemporary accounts reflect public feeling and leave us in no doubt as to its nature. Even if we leave aside Dante's 2 or Petrarch's 3 over-prejudiced diatribes stigmatising the rapacity of the princes of the Church; even if we pay no attention to the ill-natured tales of Italian, English and German chroniclers, who were all blinded by their national hatred of the French Popes, there are still eye-witness accounts which show the same characteristics. For instance, one can listen to the strong
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1 K. H. Schäfer, Die Ausgaben, pp. 13 ? -19 ?, 8-44.
2 In vesta di pastor' lupi rapaci
Si veggion di quassù per tutti i paschi,
O difesa di Dio, perchè pur giaci?
Del sangue nostro Caorsini e Guaschi
S' apparecchian di bere. O buon principio
A che vil fin convien che tu caschi!
( Paradiso, XXVII, 55-60)
3 See in particular Petrarch's sonnets.
words of one chronicler telling how Charles the Fair, having opposed the levy of a tenth, hastily authorised it as soon as the Pope had allowed him to raise one for himself: 'And so, when Holy Church has been shorn by one, another flays her alive.' 1 A little later, in his De planctu ecclesiae, 2 Alvarez Pelayo, a firm supporter of papal omnipotence, lashes out vigorously at the greed of the Curia, the source, according to him, of all the ills from which the Church was suffering. St Catherine of Siena and St Bridget of Sweden also reproach the pontiffs bitterly for the spirit of worldly gain that, they say, is paramount in Avignon.
The state of mind of the clergy is shown even more clearly in the documents in the papal archives, and even in the collectors' account books. As we have already seen, Parliaments in England protested bitterly against papal exactions. 3 In France the incumbents expressed their opposition by hindering the collectors in the carrying out of their duties. From the reign of Philip VI, the Pope's agents more and more frequently ran up against the king's officers who defended the interests of the taxpayers. A canon of Cahors, for example, had accepted the custody of the hereditament of the bishop of Tulle, which had been seized in accordance with the right of spoil. King's officers, on the demand of the disappointed heirs, entered his house, searched it from top to bottom, found his strong room, forced open the coffer where the hereditament was kept, and carried off the contents. 4 In the diocese of Nîmes, the sub-collector's delegate was about to sequester the goods of a church when a young man leapt upon him, stabbed him and left him on the spot for dead. Then, turning to the delegate's companion, a notary now petrified with fear, he cried, brandishing his sword, 'Ha! villain, you too shall die!' But at this the scrivener, screwing up his courage, leapt on to his horse and fied. 5
Such scenes of violence were not confined to France. In Germany, collectors were so frequently being seized and cast into unsavoury prisons that, in 1347, one of them had great difficulty in recruiting any assistants. Of two of his couriers, one had had his hand cut off, the other had been strangled. 6 Moreover, the clergy's opposition to the payment of papal taxes was greater in Germany than in any other country. Thus the collection of the sexennial tenth, decreed by the
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1 Grandes Chroniques de France, ed. Paris, VOL. V, p. 300.
2 Venice 1560, pp. 28 f, 48.
3 See above, p. 163.
4 Vatican Archives: Collectoria 91. G. Mollat, op. cit. p. 104.
5 Ibid. pp. 95 - 6.
6 J. P. Kirsch, Die päpstlichen Kollektorien, Paderborn 1894, pp. 119, 137 f, 150, 162 f, 178, 184, 189, 195.
Council of Vienne in 1312, was still not complete in the diocese of Breslau in 1335. 1 Collectors had recourse to violent measures, such as excommunication and interdict, which were for the most part quite ineffective. In 1357 the Holy See was driven to agree to a compromise, and even then had to send a nuncio, Philippe de Cabassole, to see that it was carried out. His exhortations had little result, for in 1371 the collectors were still doing their best to see that the tax was paid. 2 The resistance of the German clergy is perhaps best shown by the curious agreement signed in 1372 by the ecclesiastics of the dioceses of Cologne, Bonn, Xanten, Söst and Mainz: the contracting parties undertook upon oath not to pay any part of the tenth demanded by Gregory XI, and to give each other mutual support if the Holy See should institute proceedings against any one of them; any incumbent who did not stand by these promises was to be deprived of his benefices and declared unfit to hold any others. But despite these protestations, the German clergy gave way before the proceedings brought against them by the Papacy. 3 It is true that the princes and the Emperor supported the Pope's action, and not in an entirely disinterested spirit, for their zeal had its reward: they were authorised to make good their depleted finances with the aid of ecclesiastical property, in accordance with the policy that the pontiffs had followed since the time of Clement V.
It is easy to understand the grievances of the clergy. When they brought forward, as their reasons for asking for a relief from taxation, the misfortunes of the times, the disasters of war, the high price of food, the scarcity of money, the ravages of famine and pestilence, they were telling the truth. Throughout nearly all Christendom, most benefices were ruined, laid waste and destroyed by the Great Companies and other soldiers, and bringing in practically no revenue. Consequently papal taxes inevitably reduced the incumbents to direst poverty. What more eloquent in their brevity than the notes written in the collectors' account books against the name of some church: 'Destructa est; deserta est.' Some time ago, Father Denifle drew up a harrowing list of the disasters, ruins, fires and 'desolations' that befell France during the Hundred Years' War. 4
Various other circumstances, too, made the taxes heavy to bear: their number and variety in the first place, and then their nature and the means employed to collect them.
Lapse of time never wiped out the debts incurred by the tax-
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1 E. Hennig, Die päpstlichen Zehnten, Halle 1909, pp. 14-23.
2 Ibid. pp. 27 - 35.
3 Ibid. pp. 36 - 41.
4 Denifle, La Désolation des églises, monastères et hôpitaux en France pendant la guerre de Cent Ans, Paris 1899.
payers. Personal and real alike, the debts remained the responsibility of the benefice whose revenues were burdened by all the obligations that had been contracted and not honoured, however far back they might date. Each incumbent was responsible for his predecessors; this provided the papal treasury with unquestionable security, but was a heavy and sometimes intolerable burden on the incumbents. Thus in 1342, the arrears of common services owed by Nicolino Canali, who had recently been provided to the archbishopric of Ravenna, amounted to 14,700 gold florins, without counting the corresponding petty services. From 11 March 1361 to 13 November 1366 there were five successive occupants of the archbishopric of Palermo. The last of them, Matteo da Cumae, found himself under the obligation to pay the services owed by his four deceased predecessors who had died without having rendered them. 1
It is true that incumbents had some means of redress against those whose debts they paid, or, where they had died, against their heirs. The Apostolic Camera usually made no difficulties about yielding the conduct of the action against the debtors to the incumbent, provided that it did not prefer to act itself in this matter. It usually did so when there was some security for the debt owed, or when it was too heavy for one person, and sometimes, in the latter case, the collector assumed responsibility for the recovery of a part only of the debt, and left the incumbent to take care of the rest. It is evident that this system guaranteed the imprescriptibility of Papal finances: the benefice and its holder were always responsible for them. Is it surprising that, by the end of the fourteenth century, so many benefices were without priests to serve them? 2
The methods of compulsion used to break down opposition and ensure that the taxes were gathered also played their part in making the Papal treasury an object of hatred. Financial theory was not very advanced in the Middle Ages: its sole object was to supply authorities with rough-and-ready expedients, rather like the means employed by conquerors in times of war. Harsh methods prevailed both outside and inside the Church at this period. Because appeals to the secular arm were almost a complete mockery and public authorities sometimes obstructed the sequestration of goods, attempts were made to enforce all the consequences of excommunication. On 5 July 1328, in the audientia litterarum contradictarum, no fewer than one patriarch, five archbishops, thirty bishops and forty-six abbots were excommunicated because they had not paid their common services
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1 A. Clergeac, La Curie et les bénéfices consistoriaux, p. 99.
2 G. Mollat, op. cit. pp. 63-5.
at the proper time. We may judge from this one example what a deplorable effect it must have made upon Christian communities when at High Mass on Sundays or feast-days, they heard sentences of excommunication against their own pastors solemnly read out. 1 The effect of these sanctions was occasionally both uncivilised and absurd: the coffin of Bishop Gonsalvo of Mondonnedo had to remain outside the graveyard until his heirs had undertaken to pay their kinsfolks' debts. 2
Although the papal treasury did grant delays, respites and postponements, it was generally uncompromising in its insistence on the principle that payment must be made. The structure of taxation was such that it was virtually impossible for the taxpayers to escape from its stranglehold.
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1 E. Göller, Die Einnahmen, pp. 45?-46?.
2 Vidal, no. 6351.
CHAPTER III
The Centralisation of the Church during the Avignon Papacy
FROM the time of Gregory VII, the government of the Church had become increasingly centralised under the personal control of the Roman Pontiff. In many respects this movement reached its climax in the fourteenth century.
Appeals to the court of Avignon became extremely frequent. The Popes awarded university degrees directly, having exempted the recipients from keeping the terms required in the faculties of law and theology. They intervened still more in the affairs of the religious orders, reformed them whether they would or no, and made appointments to offices and dignities within the order. In the time of Gregory XI the Dominicans had for the first time a cardinal 'Protector' at the papal court. 1 During the whole of the 'Babylonian exile' only one œcumenical council met, at Vienne in 1311-12. There Clement V clearly stated his supreme authority. When some of the Fathers refused to support the plan to unite the property of the Templars with that of the knights of St John, he replied, 'If you agree to the assignment of the property to the Hospital, I shall decree it in your names and mine with pleasure; but if not, I shall still do it whether you like it or not.' 2 As this plain speaking did not silence the opposition, Clement ignored it. Contemporaries were in no doubt as to the real implication of the Pope's attitude. An English chronicler declared--with some little exaggeration--that the Council of Vienne 'did not deserve the name of Council, for the Lord Pope did everything on his own authority.' 3
The progressive centralisation of the Church, however, is nowhere more clearly shown than in the manner in which the Avignon Popes laid claim to an ever-increasing share in the collation of benefices. To attain their ends the Popes exercised their right of reservation, that is, the right claimed by the Roman pontiff, in virtue of the primacy
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1 Mortier, Histoire des Maîtres Généraux de l'Ordre des Frères Prêcheurs, VOL. III, p. 399.
2 Lizerand, Clément V et Philippe le Bel, p. 270.
3 Walter of Hemingburgh, ed. Hamilton, London 1848, VOL. II, p. 293.
of his jurisdiction, to confer a benefice vacant or about to become vacant, without reference to the ordinary collators.
There were two kinds of reservation: general and special. General reservations affected, either in perpetuity or temporarily, all benefices of a certain category, vacant or due to fall vacant, either in the whole Church or in some specified province, diocese or kingdom. Special reservations were concerned with one benefice only, by reason either of its location, or its status, or its persons, and lasted either for a specified time or for ever. 1
The use of general reservation dates back to Clement IV. The Decretal Licet ecclesiarum, dated 27 August 1265, gave the Pope full authority to dispose of benefices of persons dying at the Curia. Boniface VIII extended this measure to include those whose holders died in the neighbourhood of the papal court, within a radius of two days' march ( dietae ). 2 Clement V, not satisfied with providing to these ecclesiastical charges whose vacancies literally occurred at the Curia, used all kinds of pretexts to extend his powers of reservation. Then John XXII codified the usage introduced by his predecessors, with a few additions, and promulgated the Constitution Ex debito. 3 Reservation was thenceforward extended to affect all benefices which lost their incumbent by deposition or deprivation, by disallowance of an election, by refusal to allow a request to elect, by disclaimer into the hands of the reigning pontiff, by provision or translation to another benefice by the same authority. To these were also added the benefices of abbots and bishops blessed or consecrated by Clement V or John XXII, those possessed by cardinals at the time of their death, whether or not this took place at the Curia, those of papal officials, vice-chancellors, chamberlains, notaries, auditores litterarurn contradictarum, correctors, scribes and abbreviators of apostolic letters, penitentiaries and resident chaplains of the Holy See, and indeed of all persons attached to the Curia, whether or not they died while on legation or special missions.
It would be tedious to give a detailed account of the many emendations and additions made to the Constitution Ex debito by the successors of John XXII. Suffice it to say that special and general reservations were constantly being increased and widened in scope. The last stage in their development occurred when Gregory XI retained during his lifetime the right to appoint to all patriarchal, archiepiscopal and episcopal churches, as well as to all houses of
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1 Lux, Constitutionum apostolicarum de generali beneficiorum reservatione collectio et interpretatio, Breslau 1904, pp. 4-8.
2 Corpus juris canonici, Bk III, tit. IV, chaps, 2, 34 in VI°.
3 Lux, op. cit. pp. 51-4.
monks and friars, regardless of their revenue, wherever and however they fell vacant. 1 Thus, under the last of the Avignon Popes, the decay of the elective principle reached its nadir, and the conferment of benefices not subject to election was in almost all cases taken out of the hands of the rightful collators. Possibly at no other period of history, has the Roman pontiff exercised his powers of jurisdiction to such an extent.
To the question what had led the Avignon Popes to take over the collation of charges and ecclesiastical offices, the Bulls suggest various answers: the primacy of the Apostolic See; the neglect of the ordinary collators to provide incumbents to vacant benefices, and the infringements of the law that they made in their choice of candidates; the prolonged vacancies in episcopal sees, to the detriment of the spiritual welfare of the faithful and of the proper distribution of the mensal revenues of the see; and especially the disputes arising out of abbatial and episcopal elections.
Although the electoral system had been very well organised in the thirteenth century, it did in fact leave the way open for intrigues within cathedral and conventual chapters; for fierce rivalries; for compromises dishonourable and not without a taint of simony on the part of those elected; for long and disastrous schisms where the electors could not agree and for endless lawsuits.
The detailed formalities laid down to ensure the choice of the right persons gave rise to incessant disputes. To be duly elected bishop, for example, a priest must not only have received a majority vote; this majority had also to be recognised as the wiser party (sanior). 2 To make sure that this condition had been fulfilled, the intentions guiding the choice of the electors had to be scrutinised, and the merits of the successful candidate carefully considered. Consequently, if the minority considered itself the wiser party, its vote might prevail. If the majority persisted in supporting its original candidate, a double election took place; there followed a period of irritating discussions, quarrels, litigation, long lawsuits before the competent authority, and sometimes even brawls and bloodshed. Thus direct appointments by the Holy See could, from certain points of view, be of benefit to the Church, and at the least a real remedy for the evils arising from elections.
At Constance, for instance, where the episcopal see fell vacant six times between 1306 and 1356, there were four occasions on which the canons formed two opposing camps, each one electing its own
____________________
1 Ibid. pp. 21 - 46.
2 P. Viollet, in Histoire littéraire de la France, VOL. XXXIV, pp. 35-41.
bishop. 1 In other places, where the members of chapters were deeply divided amongst themselves, they were not dismayed at the prospect of the harm their schism might do to the Church. In Gascony, the canons' repeated appeals to the Curia had drawn the attention of the Papacy to the pitiful plight of churches left without pastors, sometimes for five or six years. 2 In a word, if the Holy See seized the right to appoint bishops and thus deprived the chapters, the chapters were nevertheless the agents of their own downfall for discord was endemic in their midst, diverse abuses all too frequently vitiated their elections, and the authority of metropolitan bishops no longer provided a remedy prompt enough or sufficiently effective to deal with the misfortunes of the churches.
Another important reason behind the papal reservations was a political one. In Italy, where the Avignon Popes were constantly waging war, it was vitally important for them to feel that they could be assured of an episcopate completely devoted to their material interests. In the same way, in Germany, the Holy See wished to make sure that no partisan, open or secret, of Louis of Bavaria was holding episcopal office. In the rest of Christendom there was a kind of tacit agreement between the Papacy and public authorities or ordinary collators, which was advantageous to both sides. Instead of using uncanonical methods to force their candidates on to the chapters, the kings preferred to have recourse to the Holy See, to ask the Pope to reserve such and such a church to himself, and then to recommend their candidates to the Pope. Doubtless their wishes were not always granted; nevertheless, they received satisfaction often enough to give them no cause for complaint. In 1307, the canons of Constance had simultaneously elected Rodolfus von Hewen and Ludwig von Strasbourg. The two rivals had recourse to the Holy See, which rejected them both. Clement V appointed as bishop a Frenchman, GU+ 00E9rard, archdeacon of Autun, under pressure from Philip the Fair, who coveted the Empire and wanted to have some supporters there. French influence also carried the day in 1306, when Peter von Aichspalt and Otto de Grandson were appointed as archbishop of Mainz and bishop of Basle. 3 In 1318 the Count de la Marche requested that the see of Rouen should be given to his chancellor, Guillaume de Flavacourt. But he was politely ignored, because John XXII was well aware of the prince's intrigues against Philip V, the Tall. 4 By 1322, the Count de la Marche had become king of France
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1 Rieder, Römische Quellen zur Konstanzer Bistumsgeschichte, Innsbruck 1908, pp. 40?-68?.
2 A. Clergeac, in Revue de Gascogne, 1906, p. 57.
3 Rieder, op. cit. p. 40.
4 Coulon, no. 773.
and wished to put his favourite in the important see of Auch. Although the canons of the cathedral had voted unanimously in favour of Roger d'Armagnac, the Pope supported the king's candidate. 1 After the death of the bishop of Mantua, Ruffino di Lodi, the court at Avignon had decided that a certain Filippino should succeed him. To satisfy the Gonzaga family, Urban V quashed this provision and, on 16 August 1367, nominated Guido di Arezzo. 2 In England it rarely happened that the Popes did not accept the bishops suggested by the kings. 3 On the other hand, in the Iberian peninsula and in Sicily, the Holy See usually set aside the royal candidates, because the political interests of the Papacy were diametrically opposed to those of the house of Aragon. 4
The Holy See had also a financial object in increasing the number of reservations. The Pope assured himself of a source of income by compelling prelates, who owed their appointments to him, to pay chancery dues and petty and common services. We may judge how profitable such a course proved, by noting that from 7 August 1316 until 16 April 1334, the cardinals and John XXII divided between them the vast sum of 1,097,957 gold florins, received as common services. According to Göller, the common services constituted the chief source of income of the Holy See. 5
Reservation also had the advantage of allowing the Popes to abrogate to themselves the right of regale, that is to draw the mensal revenues of episcopal sees when they were vacant. A curious example which can be quoted is that of the succession of Amanieu d'Armagnac, Archbishop of Auch, who died in 1318. Out of the possible mensal revenues, John XXII gave 25,000 gold florins to the Duke of Bourbon and devoted the rest to the Crusade, except for 10,000 florins, which he graciously left for Guillaume de Flavacourt, who was provided to the see on 26 August 1323. 6
It was equally to the Pope's advantage to claim the right to confer non-elective benefices. In this instance, reservation allowed him to levy annates and vacantes.
Lastly, the Holy See retained the right to dispose of benefices, elective or otherwise, in order to provide cardinals and officials of the papal court. This was an ingenious means whereby the Pope could give stipends to his staff, without paying for them. In this he
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1 Guérard, Documents Pontificaux sur la Gascogne, VOL. II, Paris 1903, nos. 193, 252, 297.
2 F. Novati, Niccolò Spinelli.
3 Haller, Papsttum und Kirchenreform, pp. 115-21.
4 Finke, Acta Aragonensia, VOL. I, nos. 135, 140, 142-4, 147-9; VOL. II, nos. 739, 7864 f, 796.
5 Göller, Die Einnahmen, p. 46?.
6 G. Mollat, La Fiscalité Pontificale, p. 63.
followed the example of the kings of France, who gave their courtiers gifts in money or kind, generally lands which they had obtained through confiscation. 1 This strange conception had tiresome results. The more important the post at court, the more was the income required for it, and consequently the more numerous the benefices needed. Thus, in the course of the one year 1317, Cardinal Gaucelme de Jean was possessed of the office of cantor, endowed with a canonry and prebend in the church of Saintes; of the office of treasurer, endowed with a canonry and a prebend in the cathedral of Lichfield; of a canonry in the cathedral chapter of Cahors; of various expectative graces, soon to become actual benefices, in the dioceses of Canterbury, York, Rheims and Rouen; of the parish churches of Hollingbourne and Hackney, in the dioceses of Canterbury and London; of the priory of Ribenhac in the diocese of Saintes; and of a canonry in the cathedral of Lincoln, with all the rights held by the late Thomas de Grandson in the archdeaconry of Northampton. The generosity of the Holy See did not limit itself to these many favours: John XXII and Benedict XII heaped still more benefices upon the cardinal. 2
Papal reservations deprived chapters of their electoral rights, and ordinary collators of their privilege to nominate to non-elective charges. The resistance offered by these aggrieved persons varied in intensity and effectiveness in different countries.
At first, the reservations decreed by John XXII were favourably received in England. The clergy felt that they were now freed from the bondage in which they had been held by the king's power. They thought that kings would no longer allow themselves to confer ecclesiastical offices on their courtiers, on unworthy recipients or on laymen. They praised the wise measures of the Constitution Execrabilis which forbade the accumulation of benefices, and which gave to the Holy See the right to collate to those that fell vacant on this count. But the clergy soon lost their illusions when they saw how the Pope gave more benefices than ever to foreigners, and allowed tenure of pluralities to members of the Curia and especially to cardinals. Enthusiasm gave way to cries of rage. We have already told how the opposition made itself felt in England. 3 As a rule it was so vigorous that ecclesiastics were prevented from taking possession of the nonelective benefices granted them by the Holy See; but the English clergy had no power to prevent the encroachment of the Pope's authority in another direction -- that of reserving bishoprics as he thought fit, and
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1 J. Viard, Documents parisiens du règne de Philippe VI de Valois, VOL. I, Paris 1899, pp. viii-ix.
2 E. Albe, Autour de Jean XXII, Rome 1903-6, VOL. I, pp. 117-24.
3 See above, p. 263. See also Haller, op. cit. VOL. I, pp. 99-101, 107-21.
conferring them, with very few exceptions, on the king's candidates.
In Germany, the Papacy met with almost complete failure in the provinces subject to Louis of Bavaria. In vain did the Pope declare chapter elections null and void, appoint new bishops and pronounce an anathema against those who had been first elected; his candidates did not succeed in making their authority recognised in the dioceses entrusted to them. The accession of Charles IV to the imperial throne brought little change in the situation. Most of the time elections took place in spite of, and in defiance of, papal reservations. All the Popes could do to uphold the principle of their sovereign right was to quash chapter elections, and then to elevate to the episcopate precisely those persons whom the chapters had elected. They could not always be sure even of this purely formal triumph. Ludwig von Wetten, for instance, whom Gregory XI had appointed archbishop of Mainz on 28 April 1374 on the Emperor's request, was never able to take possession of his see. The canons supported their own candidate, Adolf von Nassau, by force of arms and enthroned him. 1
Direct collation of non-elective benefices by the Holy See was opposed with equal violence. At Würzburg, to cite a typical example, the bishop and the chapter had threatened with capital punishment 'whomsoever shall carry, publish or execute apostolic letters' in the whole of the diocese. Innocent VI having conferred on a Frenchman, Jean Guilabert, the archdeaconry of Künzelsau, together with a canonry and a prebend in the cathedral, three clerks came to Würzburg and made it their duty to carry out the papal mandate. When they were reading out the Bulls of collation in the church, the canons' servants set upon them, snatched the Bulls from their hands, and bore them off to prison. That very evening, the unfortunate clerks were cast into the Main. 2
In France, the bishops of Mende and Angers, Guillaume Durant and Guillaume le Maire, had denounced the abuses inherent in papal reservations to the Fathers at the Council of Vienne. Guillaume le Maire deplored the influx of unworthy clerks to the Roman court, where their unedifying way of life was ignored. The number of expectative graces granted to them had reached such proportions that, he declared, 'today prelates cannot supply the benefices with good men, or good men with benefices.' 3 Guillaume Durant called for the suppression of Papal provisions; otherwise, he said, 'order in the Church will be set at nought.' 4 At the beginning of his Pontificate,
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1 F. Vigener, "' Karl IV und der Mainzer Bistumsstreit,'" Westdeutsche Zeitschrift, Ergänzungsheft XII, 1908.
2 Kirsch, 'Ein Prozess, Römische Quartalschrift, VOL. XXI, 1907, pp. 67-96.
3 C. Port, in Mélanges historiques, VOL. II, p. 481.
4 De modo, pt 3, tit xxvii.
John XXII seemed to wish to limit his powers of reservation. When the King of France begged him to make extensive use of it, he replied that to suppress elections caused men to murmur against him. He declared: 'Experience has proved to me, and does still, that prelates promoted by the Holy See have not shown and do not show themselves to be grateful and devoted sons of the Church, but rather degenerate offspring, who do all in their power to stir up trouble in the Church.' 1 But the Pope's scruples were short-lived, and he began with characteristic tenacity to pursue a domineering policy. If the canons, acting in ignorance of a Papal reservation, made an election, John XXII would first quash it and then bestow canonical approval on the person they had elected. If their ignorance was not genuine, he either deposed or confirmed their candidate, according to the circumstances, having first annulled the election. Thus, on 19 January 1327, John XXII refused to recognise Raymond Arnaud de Poylohaut, who had been elected by the chapter, as bishop of Dax, and appointed instead Bernard de Liposse, one of his chaplains. 2 When his chosen candidate did not succeed in taking possession of his see, the Pope provided him with another, caused a fresh election to take place, and confirmed in office the person whom he had not been able to evict. The Pope had another crafty but sure method of overcoming resistance: he would transfer prelates from one see to another that had fallen vacant, and give churches a new bishop on the very day that he had taken the former one from them. Thus it became quite impossible to hold elections. 3
In Spain, Italy, the Low Countries and the Scandinavian and Slav states, John XXII used the same tactics as in France. His successors, realising the advantages of such methods, zealously adopted them. Thus the downfall of the chapters was confirmed and the triumph of papal omnipotence assured, as is abundantly shown by Eubel's Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi, compiled from the Vatican archives. The bishops themselves showed how dependent they were upon the Roman Pontiff, by their growing habit in the fourteenth century of styling themselves 'Bishop by the Grace of God and of the Apostolic See,'-- Dei et Sedis Apostolicae gratia episcopus N.
The Vatican registers provide the clearest proof of the frequency of direct collation of non-elective benefices by the Holy See. Sicily was almost the only place where, as a result of their disagreements with the kings, the Popes were unable to exercise their authority.
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1 Coulon, no. 667 (Bull dated 30 July 1318).
2 Degert, Histore des évêques de Dax, pp. 161-3.
3 Clergeac, in the article quoted, pp. 147 f.
Conclusion
IT was for long customary to judge the Avignon Popes only in the light of the malevolent accounts of contemporary chroniclers, and the tendentious writings of Petrarch, St Catherine of Siena and St Bridget of Sweden. All these used to be accepted quite uncritically and without question.
Since, however, documents from the archives were published, though only in an abridged form some seventy or eighty years ago, it has become possible to modify the judgment of history which had hitherto remained uniformly unfavourable to the Avignon Papacy.
In the first place, the Avignon Popes have frequently been criticised for being too humble in their attitude towards France, and too willing to modify their general policy to suit the particular convenience of the French royal house. In certain instances, such as the trial of the Templars, and in the case of certain Popes, such as Clement V and Benedict XII, this criticism still seems justified. But to take a more general view, the diplomatic activities of the Avignon Popes were carried on with a real independence both in the East and in the West, and in their foreign policy they unremittingly pursued a threefold aim: to bring peace to Europe, to conquer the Holy Land and to recapture the Papal States.
It must be admitted that the Avignon Popes failed to realise their plans for a Crusade. It is difficult to decide how Utopian such plans were, in view of the political situation in fourteenth-century Europe. The Popes may well have thought that their influence over the princes of Christendom was still sufficient to justify a hope of success in the noble enterprise. Indeed, throughout the century, their arbitration and intervention were constantly requested, or at least accepted, except in the case of the imperial election, which was now beyond the Roman Pontiff's sphere of influence.
The most commonly held grievance against the Avignon Popes is that they continued to stay on the bank of the Rhône, far from the Eternal City, which seemed abandoned 'without hope of return.' On this particular point, the results of our historical investigations are quite unambiguous. Italy was plunged into political anarchy and could not guarantee safe shelter to the Papacy. Throughout the fourteenth century the Popes tried, with varying success, to restore peace in the peninsula and to take their place once more among the small states that were in process of formation. The victories of Cardinal Albornoz and his skilful policy, which was carried on by Gregory XI, eventually made Rome once more a fitting habitation for the Pope.
The Italian policy of the Avignon Popes provides at least an explanation and to a certain extent an excuse for their financial system, which was in many ways a new one, and which was eventually to cause serious harm to Christian countries. This discontent was to come into the full light of day at the time of the Great Schism of the West.
The financial policy of the Avignon Popes was closely linked with the increasing tendency to centralise the administration of the Roman Church. This tendency received a lively impetus from, and was very similar to, the corresponding centralisation which was going on in the various European states during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as a result of the constitution of national monarchies. It was to give rise to the dangerous forces of reaction which almost carried the day at the Council of Basle.
In conclusion, the religious activities of the Avignon Popes stand out in the zeal with which they put down heresy, reformed the religious orders and brought the knowledge of the Gospel to distant lands.
Index
Aachen 206, 223
Abbadia al Ponte 132
Abbreviator's Office see Chancery
Abella, Ferrer d', agent of the king of Aragon 207
Acciajuoli, Niccolò 142, 187
Achaia, principality of 48
--, princes of see Taranto
Ademar, HU+E9lie, prior of the Order of Grandmont 20
Agarvi, Jean, provost of Aix-en-Provence 237
Agde, bishop of 270
Agen 5, 18
Aichspalt, Peter von, archbishop of Mainz 7, 338
Aigrefeuille, Guillaume d' 57
--, Pierre d' 52 n
Aire, bishop of 253
Aix, Aix-en-Provence 57
--, archbishop of 272
--, provost of see Agarvi, Jean
Ajaccio, bishop of 61
Albenga 58, 114, 215
Albergotti, Giovanni, bishop of Arezzo 162
Albert I of Hapsburg, emperor 67, 190
Alberti, Giacomo, bishop of Castello 209, 212, 214
--, Jacopo, cardinal, archbishop of Monreale 216
Albertini, Niccoló see Prato, Niccoló Albertini de
Albi, diocese of 18
--, Cardinal Bernard of 29, 272, 274
Albigensians 26, 110 see also Catharists
Albornoz, Gil Alvarez Carillo, cardinal, Papal legate to Italy, archbishop of Toledo xxi, 57, 125 f, 128 - 46, 153 f, 158, 161, 187, 306 f, 344
--, Gomez, rector of Bologna, nephew of Cardinal Albornoz 144
Albret, Amanieu d' 253
Albuquerque, Juan Alfonso 275
Alcherio, abbot of San Pietro of Lodi 121 f, 124
Aldobrandino, marquis d' Este see Este, Aldobrandino
Aleria, bishop of 209
Alessandria 76, 82, 92
Alet, diocese of 18
Alfonso IV, king of Aragon 216, 269, 271 n
-- XI, king of Castile 126, 274 f, 315
-- IV, king of Portugal 274
Algeciras, siege of 126
Altopascio, battle of 98
Amadeus VI, count of Savoy, 62, 76 f, 121, 158, 162
Amelia 126, 133, 215
Anagni xxii, 3, 6, 213, 246, 249
Ancona, March of xxi, 63, 99, 113, 118 f, 126, 129, 133 ff, 137 - 40, 157, 172, 215
--, rector of see Oleggio, Giovanni da
Andalo, Brancaleone degli 147
Andalusia 126
Andreas, John 9
Andrew, prince of Hungary, younger son of King Carobert, husband of Joanna I queen of Naples 175 - 84, 295
Andronicus II Palaeologus, emperor of Byzantium 7
Angelo, Fra, hermit 153
Angers, bishop of see Maire, Guillaume le
Anjou, duke of 169, 171 see also Louis
--, House of xix, 67, 173 ff, 189, 193 see also Naples, rulers of
--, Robert of see Robert of Anjou, king of Naples
Anna, princess palatine 227
Annates 250, 322 f
Antibes 63
Apostolic Camera see Camera, Apostolic
Apostolic Palace, court of the 294, 296, 298 see also Rota, the
Apostolic Penitentiary see Penitentiary, Apostolic
Aquila 182
Aquitaine, preceptor of knights templars of 241
--, minister of Franciscan province of see Tour, Bertrand de la
Ara Coeli, convent of, Rome 213
Aragon 18, 21, 50, 61, 95, 241, 250, 269, 275, 320, 326
--, ambassador of xvii, 70
--, house of xix, 173, 339
--, kings of see Alfonso IV; James II; Peter IV
--, John of 185 f
--, Peter of, O.F.M. 160
Arezzo 69, 146, 215
--, bishop of see Albergotti, Giovanni; Pietramala, Guido de' Tarlati di
--, Guido di, bishop of Mantua 339
Argenta 101, 107 ff, 113
Arimbaldo, brother of Fra Moriale 153
Arles, kingdom of 106, 193, 206, 219 f, 248
Arlotti, Giovanni, cardinal 214
Armagh, archbishop of see Fitz-Ralph, Richard
Armagnac, count of see Jean I
--, Amanieu d', archbishop of Auch 339
--, Bernard d' 253
--, Mathe d' 253
--, Roger d' 339
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