Outward events had more to do than philosophy with the disintegration of the Catholic synthesis which began in the fourteenth century. The Byzantine Empire was conquered by the Latins in 1204, and remained in their hands till 1261. During this time the religion of its government was Catholic, not Greek; but after 1261 Constantinople was lost to the Pope and never recovered, in spite of nominal union at Ferrara in 1438. The defeat of the Western Empire in its conflict with the papacy proved useless to the Church, owing to the rise of national monarchies in France and England; throughout most
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of the fourteenth century the Pope was, politically, a tool in the hands of the King of France. More important than these causes was the rise of a rich commercial class and the increase of knowledge in the laity. Both of these began in Italy, and remained more advanced in that country than in other parts of the West until the middle of the sixteenth century. North Italian cities were much richer, in the fourteenth century, than any of the cities of the North; and learned laymen, especially in law and medicine, were becoming increasingly numerous. The cities had a spirit of independence which, now that the Emperor was no longer a menace, was apt to turn against the Pope. But the same movements, though to a lesser degree, existed elsewhere. Flanders prospered; so did the Hanse towns. In England the wool trade was a source of wealth. The age was one in which tendencies which may be broadly called democratic were very strong, and nationalistic tendencies were even stronger. The papacy, which had become very worldly, appeared largely as a taxing agency, drawing to itself vast revenues which most countries wished to retain at home. The popes no longer had or deserved the moral authority which had given them power. Saint Francis had been able to work in harmony with Innocent III and Gregory IX, but the most earnest men of the fourteenth century were driven into conflict with the papacy.
At the beginning of the century, however, these causes of decline in the papacy were not yet apparent. Boniface VIII, in the Bull Unam Sanctam, made more extreme claims than had ever been made by any previous Pope. He instituted, in 1300, the year of Jubilee, when plenary indulgence is granted to all Catholics who visit Rome and perform certain ceremonies while there. This brought immense sums of money to the coffers of the Curia and the pockets of the Roman people. There was to be a Jubilee every hundredth year, but the profits were so great that the period was shortened to fifty years, and then to twenty-five, at which it remains to the present day. The first Jubilee, that of 1300, showed the Pope at the summit of his success, and may be conveniently regarded as the date from which the decline began.
Boniface VIII was an Italian, born at Anagni. He had been besieged in the Tower of London when in England, on behalf of the Pope, to support Henry III against the rebellious barons, but he was
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rescued in 1267 by the king’s son, afterwards Edward I. There was already in his day a powerful French party in the Church, and his election was opposed by the French cardinals. He came into violent conflict with the French king Philip IV, on the question whether the king had the right to tax the French clergy. Boniface was addicted to nepotism and avarice; he therefore wished to retain control over as many sources of revenue as possible. He was accused of heresy, probably with justice; it seems that he was an Averroist and did not believe in immortality. His quarrel with the King of France became so bitter that the king sent a force to arrest him, with a view to his being deposed by a General Council. He was caught at Anagni, but escaped to Rome, where he died. After this, for a long time, no pope ventured to oppose the King of France.
After a very brief intermediate reign, the cardinals in 1305 elected the archbishop of Bordeaux, who took the name of Clement V. He was a Gascon, and consistently represented the French party in the Church. Throughout his pontificate he never went to Italy. He was crowned in Lyons, and in 1309 he settled in Avignon, where the popes remained for about seventy years. Clement V signalized his alliance with the king of France by their joint action against the Templars. Both needed money, the Pope because he was addicted to favouritism and nepotism, Philip for the English war, the Flemish revolt, and the costs of an increasingly energetic government. After he had plundered the bankers of Lombardy, and persecuted the Jews to the limit of “what the traffic would bear,” it occurred to him that the Templars, in addition to being bankers, had immense landed estates in France, which, with the Pope’s help, he might acquire. It was therefore arranged that the Church should discover that the Templars had fallen into heresy, and that king and pope should share the spoils. On a given day in 1307, all the leading Templars in France were arrested; a list of leading questions, previously drawn up, was put to them all; under torture, they confessed that they had done homage to Satan and committed various other abominations; at last, in 1313, the Pope suppressed the order, and all its property was confiscated. The best account of this proceeding is in Henry C. Lea’s History of the Inquisition, where, after full investigation, the conclusion is reached that the charges against the Templars were wholly without foundation.
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In the case of the Templars, the financial interests of pope and king coincided. But on most occasions, in most parts of Christendom, they conflicted. In the time of Boniface VIII, Philip IV had secured the support of the Estates (even the Estate of the Church) in his disputes with the Pope as to taxation. When the popes became politically subservient to France, the sovereigns hostile to the French king were necessarily hostile to the Pope. This led to the protection of William of Occam and Marsiglio of Padua by the Emperor; at a slightly later date, it led to the protection of Wycliffe by John of Gaunt.
Bishops, in general, were by this time completely in subjection to the Pope; in an increasing proportion, they were actually appointed by him. The monastic orders and the Dominicans were equally obedient, but the Franciscans still had a certain spirit of independence. This led to their conflict with John XXII ( 1316-34), which we have already considered in connection with William of Occam. During this conflict, Marsiglio persuaded the Emperor to march on Rome, where the imperial crown was conferred on him by the populace, and a Franciscan antipope was elected after the populace had declared John XXII deposed. However, nothing came of all this beyond a general diminution of respect for the papacy.
The revolt against papal domination took different forms in different places. Sometimes it was associated with monarchical nationalism, sometimes with a Puritan horror of the corruption and worldliness of the papal court. In Rome itself, the revolt was associated with an archaistic democracy. Under Clement VI ( 1342-52) Rome, for a time, sought to free itself from the absentee pope under the leadership of a remarkable man, Cola di Rienzi. Rome suffered not only from the rule of the popes, but also from the local aristocracy, which continued the turbulence that had degraded the papacy in the tenth century. Indeed it was partly to escape from the lawless Roman nobles that the popes had fled to Avignon. At first Rienzi, who was the son of a tavern-keeper, rebelled only against the nobles, and in this he had the support of the Pope. He roused so much popular enthusiasm that the nobles fled ( 1347). Petrarch, who admired him and wrote an ode to him, urged him to continue his great and noble work. He took the title of tribune, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the Roman people over the Empire. He seems to have
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conceived this sovereignty democratically, for he called representatives from the Italian cities to a sort of parliament. Success, however, gave him delusions of grandeur. At this time, as at many others, there were rival claimants to the Empire. Rienzi summoned both of them, and the Electors, to come before him to have the issue decided. This naturally turned both imperial candidates against him, and also the Pope, who considered that it was for him to pronounce judgement in such matters. Rienzi was captured by the Pope ( 1352), and kept in prison for two years, until Clement VI died. Then he was released, and returned to Rome, where he acquired power again for a few months. On this second occasion, however, his popularity was brief, and in the end he was murdered by the mob. Byron, as well as Petrarch, wrote a poem in his praise.
It became evident that, if the papacy was to remain effectively the head of the whole Catholic Church, it must free itself from dependence on France by returning to Rome. Moreover, the Anglo-French war, in which France was suffering severe defeats, made France unsafe. Urban V
therefore went to Rome in 1367; but Italian
