- Original name:
- Pierre-Roger de Beaufort
- Born:
- 1329, Limoges-Fourche, France
- Died:
- March 26/27, 1378, Rome, Papal States [Italy]
- Title / Office:
- pope (1370-1378)
Gregory XI
Who was Gregory XI?
When did Gregory XI reign as pope?
What was significant about Gregory XI’s return to Rome?
Gregory XI (born 1329, Limoges-Fourche, France—died March 26/27, 1378, Rome, Papal States [Italy]) was the pope, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, from 1370 to 1378. He was the church’s last French-born pontiff and the last in the line of popes that reigned during the Avignon papacy, a period when Avignon, France, was the papal seat instead of Rome. Gregory’s pontificate occurred during an era when European monarchs had been consolidating their power and testing church-state relations and when the Sacred College of Cardinals was beginning to flex its muscles in selecting (or deposing) a pope. Indeed, his was the last papacy before the Great Western Schism (1378 –1417), a fractured period when there were two, and later three, rival popes in different cities, each with his own following, his own College of Cardinals, and his own administrative offices.
Last of the Avignon popes
Pierre-Roger de Beaufort was made a cardinal in 1348 by his uncle, Pope Clement VI. Although not a priest, he was unanimously elected pope at Avignon on December 30, 1370, to succeed Pope Urban V. As pope, he immediately considered returning the papacy to Rome (which Urban had also attempted to do) to conduct negotiations for reuniting the Eastern and Western churches and to maintain papal territories against a Florentine revolt being led against the pope by the powerful Visconti family.
Gregory temporarily shelved his Roman plan, however, to labor (unsuccessfully) for peace between England and France, because another phase in the intermittent Hundred Years’ War had begun in 1369. In 1375 Gregory defeated Florence in its war against the Papal States. The following year the great mystic and nun St. Catherine of Siena encouraged Gregory to move to Rome. In December 1376 peace was concluded with Florence.
The return to Rome
On January 17, 1377, Gregory returned the papacy to Rome over the opposition of France and of several cardinals. Although his months there were marked by strife and led him to flee temporarily to Anagni, his move back to Rome was a highly significant act in papal history: Despite the onset of the Western Schism and the reign of antipopes in other cities, the papacy thenceforth remained at Rome, which to some degree signified a restoration of the church’s independent authority.