The Schism.

In the year 1377 the Pope was at Avignon. Seventy years ago a Pope had come there, as the guest of the Count of Provence, in order to arrange with the King of France the iniquitous extermination of the Templars. He had come to Avignon in the hour of Papal triumph; for in the tragic ruin of the Hohenstaufens, the prestige of the empire was destroyed at last. But in reality this fatal victory had left the Pope no longer the arbiter between France and Germany, but the dependent of the sole surviving Power. The attraction of successful France drew the Pope from Rome to Avignon.

At Rome the Pope had left his Vatican, his authority, his tradition. At Avignon, a chance guest, hastily lodged in the Dominican monastery, he was little better than the Political Agent of Philippe-le-Bel. Yet he showed no hurry to return. Clement was a Frenchman of the South, a Gascon, at home in Provence but cruelly expatriated among the dissensions, the enthusiasms, the treacheries of foreign Italy. Year after year found him still at Avignon, and there he died in the year 1315. His successor, John XXI. or XXII., was another Gascon; and Benedict XII.(1334-1342) and Clement VI. (1342-1352) were Frenchmen also. They built a mighty palace at Avignon, immense, with huge square towers, and walls—four metres thick—scarce broken by the rare small pointed windows rearing their colossal strength high into the air. The great golden-brown palace was less of a palace than a prison, less of a cloister than a castle. It was, in fact, a baron’s fortress of the feudal age; for the Pope had almost forgotten that he was Pope of Rome; he was the Count of Venaissin and Avignon.

He was rich; he was a great lord; he lived luxuriously within those frowning gates. His rooms were full of money-brokers, weighing and counting out their heaps of gold; and there arose no Christ to drive them from the Temple. France, England, Germany, Italy, groaned in vain beneath the exactions of the unscrupulous financial ability that furnished the Court of Avignon with its soft living, its delicate manners, its attention to the Arts. In the beautiful house upon whose walls Simone Memmi had painted a host of his sweet and melancholy angels, men forgot the trumpet clang of the name of Hildebrand; and when the officers of Clement VI. dared to remonstrate with him upon the Oriental magnificence of his palace, deprecating an expenditure beyond that of any of his predecessors—“None of my predecessors knew how to be a Pope,” replied the Count of Venaissin. The Papal ideal had changed.

Yet it would be wrong to regard the Popes at Avignon as Oriental satraps dreaming away, among enchanted reveries, a life of luxury. They were aboveall things French and very French; active, keen, humane, with a genius for prosperity, a natural quickness for organization. They had a practical piety, of which they made a good income, not without an honest expenditure of pains. Their missions were established in Egypt, India, China, Nubia, Abyssinia, Barbary, and Morocco. Yet, though so eager to convert the heathen, they kept no rancour in their hearts against the unconverted. Cruel they were sometimes, for their age was cruel, but often they were amazingly humane. John XXII. launched Bull after Bull in defence of the unhappy Jews, massacred by Christian greed, and the perverted pity of Christian superstition. “As Jews they are Jews, as men they are men,” said the Pope. “Abhor their doctrines, respect their lives and their wealth.” And Clement VI., when France and Germany tortured and expelled the abominated nation, threw open wide the gates of Avignon, and at the knees of the Vicar of Christ, he made a momentary sanctuary for the Wandering Jew.

Clement was followed by Innocent VI., another Frenchman, equally content with Avignon. When he died it was nearly sixty years since any Pope had trodden the holy stones of Rome. But his successor, Urban V., for all his Gallic blood, revolted against the position of St. Peter as chaplain to the King of France. He saw that the Church lands in Italy were slipping continually from the Pope’s control, while Papal vicars established themselves as hereditary masters of their fiefs, and city after city declared itself with impunity no longer the vassal of St. Peter, but a free Republic.

In Germany the doctrines of Marsiglio and Occam had enduringly ruined the prestige of the Pope. For they declared the Bishop of Rome a simple bishop, subject to the law, subject to the Council, subject to deposition at the hands of the faithful; his thunders were pronounced illegitimate and harmless since no priest, but only a Council General, could excommunicate or even interdict a nation or a king. In Germany the Reformation had begun, as it was to continue, upon the lines of theory and dogma; in England it was already a political revolt, a declaration of national independence. In 1365 England refused to pay the tribute of 1,000 marks which John had promised to the Pope as to his lawful suzerain. England at that moment was triumphant. Ten years ago the battle of Poictiers had secured her hold on France. The French king had died a captive in the Savoy in London, and Europe was not yet aware that the new king of France was Charles the Wise.

At that moment, indeed, France, in reality so near the top of the wheel of fortune, appeared at her lowest. Nations and men forget how quick that wheel revolves; and the Pope, beholding France his sole protector against the world, and France the prey of England, felt himself no longer safe at Avignon. In 1361 a company of freebooters had defeated the Papal troops at the very gates of the Papal city; the Pope had bought them off with a ransom, and had redoubled the fortifications. But he had realized his insecurity. It was evident that the real interests of the Church demanded the return of the Pope to Rome.

Urban made a courageous, a heroic effort. He dragged his reluctant Court of luxurious French Cardinals across the seas to Rome. But in that black and savage haunt of robbers, the Pope remembered Avignon too well. He came home at Christmas time in 1379; but it was only to die in the beautiful familiar palace; and, out of France, the faithful called his death the judgment of the Lord upon him who looks back from the plough.

A brighter epoch opened for his successor, Gregory XI. The genius of King Charles and his brothers, the Dukes of Anjou and Burgundy, had restored the fortunes of France; and Anjou, at any rate, was aware of the advantage which the House of France might reap from the partnership of a Pope at Avignon. For the Pope, of course, was a Frenchman and willing to assist in the triumph of his country, a triumph he could best assist by remaining at Avignon to further and inspire the policy of his king. Every tie, indeed, united to detain Gregory in Provence. He was no ascetic, indifferent to glory or to comfort; but an affectionate, natural man, loving his ease, loving his family, loving the land where he was born. At Avignon he dwelt among his friends, his kinsmen, his father the Comte de Beaufort, his mother, his four sisters. The stories of his Cardinals could only add to his own horror of that distant Italy whose language he could not speak. He was ill, and he dreaded the miasma of Rome; he needed the comforts of that Court whose luxurious memory should long survive in France. “You should have come to Europe a few years ago, before theSchism,” writes the anonymous author of Maître Jehan de Meun—

“N’a pas longtemps mourût GregoireJe te dis que toute la gloireDu plus hault seigneur terrienVers son estat n’estoit plus rien.Là ne falloit ne pompe ne miseQue herault sceult à devise,Richesse du tout surmontantTout prince que lors fut vivant.”[5]

“N’a pas longtemps mourût Gregoire

Je te dis que toute la gloire

Du plus hault seigneur terrien

Vers son estat n’estoit plus rien.

Là ne falloit ne pompe ne mise

Que herault sceult à devise,

Richesse du tout surmontant

Tout prince que lors fut vivant.”[5]

Yet it was Gregory the Eleventh who was to restore the Papacy to Rome.

It was no longer so easy to return as it had been in the days of Urban. That Pope had not removed to Rome until the energy of Gil Albornoz had reduced the princes of Italy into submission. But now Albornoz was dead, and Italy was more than ever tumultuous and discordant, for the French Governors whom Urban had left behind him had filled the Papal states with horror of the French Pope. Petrarch also was dead, whose pen no less than the sword of Albornoz had been a potent instrument for the return of Urban. The times were changed, and Italy, who had mourned so long the Papal tiara fallen from her forehead, was no longer willing to receive it. After seventy years of exile the Papacy had become a foreign power, and by many of the Italian princes the restoration of Gregory seemed little less than a French invasion. Of all the Papal states only Orvieto, Ancona,Cesano, and Jesi remained true to him. Florence, of old so faithful to the Church, was now united against her with the Ghibelline Viscontis of Milan; and the Arch-Guelf clasped with a mailed hand her new crimson banner written in golden letters with the one wordLibertas.

The Italians seemed as capable of shaking off the Pope as they had been capable of shaking off the Emperor. Only a few voices still lamented the exile of St. Peter. Gregory knew very well that the return to Rome meant strife and bitterness, and that he must re-enter his dominions bringing in his hand not peace, but a sword. This prospect inspired him with disgust and fatigue; while every principle of habit, affection, patriotism, loyalty, and selfish interest conspired to keep him in Avignon. All this in one scale; but there lay in the other the conscience of the Pope and the voice that inspired that conscience. It was the voice of a young Italian nun. Europe, distracted with wars, perplexed, unguided, heard at last one voice that proclaimed the will of God, and acknowledged her conscience in St. Catherine of Siena.

The letters of St. Catherine came frequently to Avignon, and with them came other letters from the French Governors telling of the increasing difficulty of keeping together the little that was left of the patrimony of St. Peter. Gregory became visibly disturbed. His conscience urged him to return to Rome. In July the Duke of Anjou[6]came to Avignon to dissuade the Pope from an enterprise so disastrous, as he believed, to the future of France. Of all theroyal princes Anjou was the one specially concerned with Italian policy. He was a man handsome, impressive, with a breadth of view and a force of ambition that made him many followers. This son of St. Louis could not fail to influence the Pope. He made it harder to go from Avignon; but the persuading voice of Catherine would not be stilled. The Pope was ill and afraid, a timid man; his sisters and his parents clung to him, entreating him to stay; his Cardinals opposed him; his king commanded: yet on the 13th of September he quitted Avignon. Evil omens added to the discouragement of his spirit; his horse stumbled under him at starting, and fearful tempests delayed him on the sea. But on January 17, 1377, the Pope re-entered Rome.

The seventy years which had made the beauty of Avignon had ruined Rome. No longer the pilgrims brought her the custom of foreign countries; the Court of the Vatican no longer gave an impetus to trade; the prestige of the Pope had ceased to make of Rome the centre of Europe; and the deserted city had realized her intrinsic poverty. Thirty years ago Rienzi had proclaimed her a cave of robbers rather than the abode of decent men. The churches were in ruins,[7]many of them wholly roofless; and in St. Peter’s and the Lateran the flocks nibbled the grass of the pavement up to the steps of the altar. Row after row of ruined dwelling-places gave way to wild fields and heaths—scars of desolation upon the depopulated enclosure of Aurelian. If mediæval Rome lay in ruins, the Rome of antiquity was yet moreruthlessly destroyed, and the temples and theatres of the pagans were used as a quarry or a limekiln by their savage and impoverished successors. For with prosperity, peace and order had deserted Rome. The fierce clans of Colonna and Orsini terrorized the starved and fever-stricken populace; and there was no law beyond their tyranny. Murder was frequent, vendetta an honoured custom, and the Eternal City the shambles of unpunished bloodshedding.

In such a place decency, quiet, or even safety were naturally strangers. The Cardinals, unwilling martyrs, mourned day and night for Avignon. The Pope himself became disenchanted, ungentle, and embittered. But he was resolved not to quit this odious Italy until the patrimony of St. Peter was regained. Albornoz was dead, it is true; but in the Cardinal of the Twelve Apostles the Pope found a spirit no less militant, resolute and cruel to lead his armies against the revolted cities and to re-establish in Italy the vanished prestige of Rome.

Robert of Geneva, Cardinal of the Twelve Apostles, was, like the Pope himself, a Frenchman of good family and aristocratic prejudice. His father was the Count of Geneva, his mother Mahault of Auvergne and Boulogne. In his eyes the revolt of subjects was a crime beyond excuse; and when, as in the present case, there was added to the denial of the divine right of sovereigns a heretic apostasy from the dominion of the Church, his indignation dried the founts of pity in his heart. The history of his whole life proves the Cardinal to be not naturally cruel, nor even vindictive; but his campaign in Italy was terrible.With the Frenchman’s distrust of the Italians, Robert refused to engage Italian condottieri; he knew that these companies, changing masters continually, were gentle to the enemy of the moment, the brother-in-arms of yesterday and to-morrow. The Cardinal, fiercely in earnest, engaged the Breton Jehan de Malestroit who had cried, “Where the sun can enter, I can enter!” and the Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood, with his White Company the most terrible of the day. Supported by these pitiless auxiliaries, Robert of Geneva quenched in blood the fierce resistance of Florence, Bologna, Cesena, Faenza, and other rebellious cities. Massacre after massacre, sack and pillage innumerable marked his progress; but the voice of the Churchman was never heard to cry for mercy. He had no admiration for the obstinate courage of the besieged; they were rebels, and beyond pity. “I will wash my hands in their blood!” he cried at Bologna and at Cesena there were 5,000 slain. These things made the name of the young Cardinal an abomination in Italy. But they secured in one campaign the submission of the Italians.

The laurels of Robert of Geneva still were green when, on March 27, 1378, Gregory the Eleventh died at Anagni. The Pope had been on the point of returning to Avignon; and the necessity of their prolonged residence in savage Rome, and the fact that the Conclave must be held there, fell with the weight of misfortune upon the impatient Cardinals.

It was the first Conclave that had been held in Rome for fifty-seven years, and the Roman populace clamoured in the streets for a Roman Pope. Butamong the sixteen Cardinals of the Conclave, eleven were French. They might easily have carried the necessary majority of two-thirds had they been of one mind among themselves; but the hatred of North and South did not merely divide the French from the Italians; it divided the Frenchmen among themselves. Gregory and Clement had both been Limousins, and the majority of the French Cardinals decided to continue this tradition. The remnant, however—the Gallicans, as they called themselves—preferred even an Italian to a Limousin; and their spokesman, Robert of Geneva, made overtures to the Trans-Alpines. The result was the election of a man of no party, a man who was not even a Cardinal. Bartolommeo Prignano, Archbishop of Bari, was an Italian; but he was something more than an Italian; he was a Neapolitan, a subject of Queen Giovanna, and therefore presumably in favour of the French. He had lived at Avignon, and was familiar with French customs and French policy. It was hoped that he might prove a bond of union. Scarcely was his election accomplished, in haste, amid the noises of the shouting mob outside, when the impatient Romans burst into the Conclave, clamouring for a Roman Pope. The Cardinals dared not confess their choice of a Neapolitan, and in their terror they lied, imposing on the people the Cardinal of St. Peter’s, a Roman born. This fraud, together with the constraint put on the Conclave by the violence of the mob, were a few months later alleged against the validity of the election of Prignano.

But at first no conscience was troubled by thisirregularity. For six months the Archbishop of Bari wore an undisputed tiara, and Urban VI. succeeded quietly to Gregory. Urban was zealous for reform, passionately determined against simony, pure in his life, energetic, resolute; but virtue has seldom been manifest in so unlovable an Avatar. The man was a Neapolitan peasant: short, squat, coarse, and savage. He flung rude words and violent speeches like mud in the faces of his elegant French Cardinals. “Fool!” “Blockhead!” “Simoniacal Pharisee!”—such were the hard nails with which he studded the ever unpalatable word Reform; and one day, had not Robert of Geneva caught the holy father by the sleeve, he would have struck a Cardinal in the assembled Consistory.

Robert of Geneva was thirty-six years old; he was tall, commanding, with a handsome face and fine manners. His aristocratic urbanity veiled a nature that did not scorn to do and dare. There could be no greater contrast to the Pope than he, and he became the idol of the Cardinals, although, in fact, he, the Arch-Gallican, was the distant cause of the election of Urban. His reputation for ferocity in battle added a prestige to his pleasant courtliness: it was he who should have been the Pope! He would not have kept the College, throughout the sweltering summer, in Rome where the detested Urban declared that he would live and die. Something must be done, and at once, for Urban threatened to create a majority of Italian Cardinals. One by one the Cardinals left Rome for their health. Their resort was first Anagni, thence they went to Fondi. It wasan open secret in Rome wherefore they found the air so good there. Urban got wind of their conferences, and on the 18th of September he created twenty-eight Italian cardinals. Two days later there was a great ceremony in the church at Fondi. The French Cardinals announced to the world that at last a legitimate Pope had been elected in succession to Gregory. He was, of course, a Frenchman; he was Robert of Geneva; he was Clement VII., the first Antipope of the great Schism.

The Church was terribly divided by this news—Clement, elected by all the French, was not repudiated by the Italian Cardinals, who, playing the waiting game of their nation, remained neutral. Yet the contest was a contest not of persons, but of nationalities. “The significance of Urban’s election lay in the fact that it restored the Papacy to Rome, and freed it from the influence of France.”[8]Catharine of Siena clearly perceived this significance, and wrote of Clement, who was to undo her sacred mission, as “a devil in the shape of man.” In the North of Italy the campaign of Clement in the previous year persuaded the decimated cities of the truth of this opinion; but the South was not firm for Urban, and Naples openly declared herself the champion of his rival. The confusion was not only in Italy. The Church everywhere was shaken to its foundations. In many bishoprics there were two bishops;[9]there was a terrible doubtin the minds of the Faithful, for of the two Popes, one must be Antichrist, his followers heretics, and consigned to eternal damnation. It is not too much to say that the authority of the Church never recovered from this long and terrible questioning. The minds of the pious turned from the Church to God; Mysticism and heresy consoled the uncertain; and false prophets were common in the land.

Confusion in the Church was echoed by confusion in the State. England, because of the war with France, was passionate for Urban. The Empire also was for Urban; and Brittany, and all whose hand was against the French. “France desires not merely the Papacy, but the universal monarchy of the globe,” wrote Urban to the Emperor.[10]But among the smaller states France had still her supporters; Scotland, Savoy, Naples, Leon, and Castile followed in her wake, and declared for Clement. There was great joy in France. Louis of Anjou, perhaps the first of European princes to send in his adhesion to the Antipope, was consoled for the departure of Gregory; and when the news was brought to the king, he exclaimed, “I am Pope at last!” But the joy was the joy of princes, not the joy of the people. The nation mourned the confusion that had fallen on the Church, and the University of Paris wrapped itself in a melancholy neutrality.

5. Paris: Bib. Nat.FrançaisFrançais, 811; No. 7203;“L’Apparicion de Jehan de Meun.”

6. July 17, 1376.

7. Pastor,“Geschichte der Päpste,”i. 63, after Gregorovius.

8. Creighton, “History of the Papacy,” vol. i. p. 64.

9. Especially in Germany—Mayence, Breslau, Constance, Metz, Loire, Breslau, Lübeck, &c. See Pastor.,op. cit., book ii. p. 108,et seq.

10. Sept. 6, 1382.VidePastor., p. 108.

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