Clement V

Clement V (born c. 1260, Bordelais region, France—died April 20, 1314, Roquemaure, Provence) was the pope, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, from 1305 to 1314. He was the first pontiff to reign from Avignon, France, marking the beginning of the Avignon papacy, which lasted until 1377. Much of his decision-making was made at the behest of the French king Philip IV the Fair, and his pontificate was marked by woe, most of it caused by Philip. Indeed, by creating a majority of French cardinals, Clement assured a line of French popes whose reign eventually weakened the authority of the church and gave way to the Western Schism (1378–1417).

Background and election to the papacy

Bishop of Comminges from March 1295, Bertrand de Got became archbishop of Bordeaux in 1299. He was elected pope through the manipulation of King Philip IV at Perugia, Italy, in 1305. His coronation took place at Lyon, France, a conciliation to the king.

The king’s interference with the papacy had begun during the reign of Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), who had clashed with Philip over the issue of taxing the French clergy. Their dispute escalated into a kidnapping plot orchestrated by the king’s chief adviser, Guillaume de Nogaret. Boniface’s successor, Benedict XI (reigned 1303–04), had mostly appeased Philip, but he refused to pardon Nogaret or a member of the Colonna family of Rome, which had also been involved in Boniface’s kidnapping. Benedict’s death less than a year after his election was said to be caused by poisoning.

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First Avignon pope

Not allowing the church a role in secular affairs, Philip forced Clement to annul Pope Boniface VIII’s bulls Clericis laicos, forbidding clergy to pay taxes to lay authorities, and Unam sanctam, defining the pope’s supreme authority. From 1307 Philip wanted to destroy the Knights Templars, a powerful and wealth religious military order of knighthood. After Philip accused the Templars of heresy, Clement arranged for a council to meet at Vienne, Dauphiné, in order to settle the issue. The prospect of this council prompted Clement to select Avignon, where he arrived in 1309, for his papal residence; he found it to be a more suitable center for church administration than Rome, primarily for political reasons. The Council of Vienne convened in 1311. Clement approved the council’s decision to charge heresy against the Spirituals, a branch of the Franciscan order who observed absolute material poverty and asceticism. In April 1312 Philip forced Clement, outside the council, to suppress the Templars. Furthermore, Clement was obliged to dissolve the Templars himself so as not to leave their extinction to Philip and to erase from the papal registers all apostolic letters against Philip and his agents.

Although he supported the election in 1308 of the German king Henry VII and his elevation as Holy Roman emperor in 1312, Clement was influenced by the Council of Vienne and by French pressure to favor King Robert of Naples when Henry prepared war against him. Consequently, Clement adopted an anti-imperial stand and in 1313 threatened Henry with excommunication. Upon Henry’s death, Clement, claiming to rule while the throne was vacant, gave Robert the title of imperial vicar in Italy.

Clement openly favored his relatives and appears to have had a large secret treasure. An adroit pontiff but timid and chronically ill from cancer, he left a notable contribution to canon law in the Clementinae, a collection of his decretals and those of the Council of Vienne later promulgated by his successor, Pope John XXII, in 1317. He made the school at Perugia a university and created chairs of Asiatic languages at Paris; Bologna, Italy; Oxford, England; and Salamanca, Spain.

Legacy

For yielding to France and complying with Philip, for turning against Henry, for practicing simony (selling ecclesiastical offices), and for transferring the papal see from Rome to Avignon, Clement was censured by Dante in the Inferno as “a shepherd without law, of uglier deed” and a “new Jason.” (He was hardly alone; Dante also cast Boniface VIII and Celestine V into Hell, among other popes and religious figures.) He was responsible for the so-called Babylonian Captivity (1309–77), during which the papacy abandoned its traditional residence in Rome for Avignon. The Avignon residency ultimately led to antagonism, especially within England and Germany, and diminished the church’s power as emerging European monarchs centralized their own. This fracturing of church authority only continued, resulting in the Great Western Schism, which saw two, and later three, rival popes, each with his own following, his own Sacred College of Cardinals, and his own administrative offices.

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