Everything about Pope Clement V totally explained
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Pope Clement V (About
1264 –
April 20,
1314), born
Raymond Bertrand de Got (also occasionally spelled
de Gouth and
de Goth), was
Pope from
1305 to his death. He is memorable in history for suppressing the order of the
Templars, and as the Pope who moved the
Roman Curia to
Avignon - although, as a matter of fact, he moved the Roman Curia to
Carpentras - in 1309, after staying during 4 years in
Poitiers.
Biography
Born in
Villandraut,
Aquitaine, Bertrand was
canon and
sacristan of the Cathedral of Saint-André in
Bordeaux, then
vicar-general to his brother, the
archbishop of Lyon, who in
1294 was created
Cardinal Bishop of Albano. He was then made bishop of
St-Bertrand-de-Comminges, the cathedral church of which he was responsible for greatly enlarging and embellishing; and chaplain to
Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), who made him
archbishop of Bordeaux in 1297.
Following the death of
Benedict XI in 1304, he was elected Pope Clement V in June 1305 (and was consecrated on 14 November), after a year's
interregnum occasioned by the disputes between the
French and
Italian cardinals, who were nearly equally balanced in the
conclave, which had to be held at
Perugia. Bertrand was neither Italian nor a cardinal, and his election might have been considered a gesture towards neutrality. The contemporary chronicler
Giovanni Villani reports gossip that he'd bound himself to King
Philip IV of France (1285–1314) by a formal agreement previous to his elevation, made at
St. Jean d'Angély in
Saintonge. Whether this was true or not, it's likely that the future pope had conditions laid down for him by the conclave of cardinals. At
Bordeaux, Bertrand was formally notified of his election and urged to come to Italy; but he selected
Lyon for his
coronation,
November 14, 1305, which was celebrated with magnificence and attended by Philip IV. Among his first acts was the creation of nine French cardinals.
Early in
1306, Clement V explained away those features of the
bulls Clericis Laicos that might seem to apply to the King of France and essentially withdrew
Unam Sanctam, the two bulls of Boniface VIII which were particularly offensive to Philip IV's ambitious ministry. He appears to have conducted himself throughout his pontificate as the mere tool of the French monarchy, a radical change in papal policy.
On
October 13,
1307, came the arrest of hundreds of the
Knights Templar in France, an action apparently financially motivated and undertaken by the efficient royal bureaucracy to increase the prestige of the crown.
Philip IV was the force behind this ruthless move, but it has also tarnished the historical reputation of Clement V. From the very day of Clement V's coronation, the King had charged the Templars with
heresy, immorality and abuses, and the scruples of the Pope were compromised by a growing sense that the burgeoning French State might not wait for the Church, but would proceed independently.
In March
1309 the entire papal court moved from
Poitiers (where it had remained for 4 years) to
Avignon, which wasn't then part of
France but an imperial
fief held by the King of
Sicily. The removal of the
Papacy to
Avignon was justified at the time by French apologists on grounds of security, since
Rome, where the dissensions of the Roman aristocrats and their armed militia had reached a
nadir, and where the
Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano had been destroyed in a fire, was unstable and dangerous. But the decision proved the precursor of the long
Avignon Papacy, the 'Babylonian captivity' (1309–77), in
Petrarch's phrase, and marks a point from which the decay of the strictly Catholic conception of the pope as universal bishop may be dated.
Meanwhile, Philip IV's lawyers pressed to reopen
Nogaret's charges of heresy against the late Boniface VIII that had circulated in the pamphlet war around
Unam sanctam. Clement V had to yield to pressures for this extraordinary trial, begun
February 2, 1309, at Avignon, which dragged on for two years. In the document that called for the witnesses, Clement V expressed both his personal conviction of the innocence of Boniface VIII and his resolution to satisfy the King. Finally, in February,
1311, Philip IV wrote to Clement V abandoning the process to the future council of
Vienne. For his part, Clement V absolved all the participants in the abduction of Boniface at
Anagni.
In pursuance of the King's wishes, Clement V summoned the
Council of Vienne (1311), which refused to convict the Templars of heresy. The Pope abolished the order anyway, as the Templars seemed to be in bad repute and had outlived their usefulness as papal bankers and protectors of pilgrims in the East. Their French estates were
de jure granted to the
Knights Hospitallers, but Philip IV held them until his death and expropriated the Templar's bank outright.
Charges of
heresy and
sodomy aside, the guilt or innocence of the Templars is one of the more difficult historical problems, partly because of the atmosphere of hysteria that had built up in the preceding generation and the habitually intemperate language and extravagant denunciations exchanged between temporal rulers and churchmen, and partly because the subject has been embraced by conspiracy theorists and pseudo-historians.
Clement V's pontificate was also a disastrous time for Italy. The
Papal States were entrusted to a team of three cardinals, but Rome, the battleground of the
Colonna and
Orsini factions, was ungovernable. In
1310, the
Emperor Henry VII (1308–13) entered Italy, established the
Visconti as
vicars in
Milan, and was crowned by Clement V's legates in
Rome (1312) before he died near Siena in
1313.
In
Ferrara papal armies clashed with
Venice. When
excommunication and
interdict failed to have their intended effect, Clement V preached a
crusade against the Venetians, a symptom of how polarized that particular conflict had become.
Other remarkable incidents of Clement V's reign are his violent repression of the
Fra Dolcino, which he considered a heresy, in
Lombardy and his promulgation of the
Clementine Constitutions in 1313. He died in April 1314. According to one story, while his body was lying in state, a thunderstorm developed during the night and lightning struck the church where his body lay, igniting the building. The fire was so intense that, when it was extinguished, the body of Pope Clement V was almost completely destroyed. He is buried at
La Chaise-Dieu in
Auvergne.
Promulgation of a Crusade and relations with the Mongols
On April 4, 1312, a Crusade was promulgated by Pope Clement V at the
Council of Vienne. In 1313, the French king
Philippe le Bel "took the cross", making the vow to go on a Crusade in the Levant, thus responding to Clement V's call. He was however warned against leaving by
Enguerrand de Marigny, and died soon after in a hunting accident.
Clement also engaged on and off in communications with the
Mongol Empire, towards the possibility of creating a
Franco-Mongol alliance against the Muslims. In April 1305, the Mongol
Ilkhan ruler
Oljeitu sent an embassy led by
Buscarello de Ghizolfi to Clement,
Philip the Fair, and
Edward I of England. In 1307, another Mongol embassy led by
Tommaso Ugi di Siena reached European monarchs. However, no coordinated military action was forthcoming, and hopes of alliance petered out within a few years. Another embassy was sent by Oljeitu to the West and to
Edward II in 1313.
That same year, the French king
Philippe le Bel "took the cross", making the vow to go on a Crusade in the Levant, but he died soon after in a hunting accident.
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