OMG Avignon

What Up, Nerds?

So by the early 1400's the authority of the Pope had gotten very discredited. That lack of legitimate authority caused a lot of the disagreements that John Wycliffe and Jan Hus had  with the church. And in turn that caused the Hussites to revolt and to start the Hussite Wars.

A big-ol' cause of the Pope being discredited was the fact that there were several of them hanging around at the same time. Because hey, there's only ever supposed to be one Pope at a time. Right?

So how did there get to be more than one Pope?

In the beginning of the 1300's there was a lot of conflict between the Pope and Secular authorities. The Kings of France and Germany had been especially tough sticking points-- a couple Popes in a row excommunicated the kings, re-communicated them, excommunicated their ministers, and just fought between themselves over who had the final say.

At the same time the city of Rome was getting more dangerous. It was dangerous because of both mob violence and all the diseases that were bouncing up and down the streets. At one point a Pope died after only eight months on the job, and everybody suspected that he was poisoned by the French King's most important minister--a minister who the Pope had excommunicated.

And then in 1305 the Vatican had to elect a new Pope. All of their original choices were too divisive so they threw a Hail Mary and they elected an unexpected French Archbishop for the job.

This guy was supposed to be a neutral candidate who wouldn't be in the pocket of either the Italian Bishops who had dominated Rome or of the French establishment who was feuding with the Italians. He had been tight with a previous Italian pope, so it seemed like a good choice.

So he got himself crowned as Pope Clement V.

This badass new Pope looks at the situation. He sees a bunch of pushy Italian bishops who want to boss him around. He sees that Rome is a city that's full of diseases that will kill him and that it's a city that is full of a mob that will threaten him. He sees that the French king is 100% behind him. He sees that he's French and despite despite the fact that he'd been in good with an Italian Pope before, he really didn't care for Italy.

So instead of heading on down to that sh*thole Rome, he heads to the city of Avignon in the south of France. He sets up a sexy new bachelor pad and starts living the goddamn life.

Technically, ANY Papal residence is a bachelor pad.
(Pic from Wiki)

Now all the Italians are like "WHAT THE F*CK, BRAH?"

Depending on how familiar you are with the institution of the Papacy, this might seem weird. After all, who are a bunch of Italians to tell the Pope where he should live?

The problem is that there is no official position called "Pope." The real title of the Pope is the Bishop of Rome. And being the Bishop of Rome is only important because St. Peter was once the Bishop of Rome, before the Romans killed him. The actual meaning of the word "Pope" is just something like "Big Daddy."

So the Italians are all pissed off about the fact that the Bishop of Rome literally NEVER went to Rome. Clement is a total badass (or dickbag, depending on your perspective) and shrugs off the whining Italians. Then he goes right ahead and packs the College of Cardinals (the institution that elects the Pope) full of good old French boys. And Clement's papal administration picks up and moves to Avignon while making excuses about how the City of Rome was too dangerous for them to go.

For the next seventy years those Frenchmen who now controlled the College of Cardinals kept electing French Popes. And those French Popes happily kept chugging along and living in Avignon.

Eventually in 1377 Pope Gregory XI started really feeling the pressure from Italy. The pope Pope owned a kingdom that stretched right across Italy. And because neither he or any of the six Popes that came before him had ever visited Italy, there was a growing threat of rebellion. So Pope Greg packed up bags and moved to Rome. He died pretty quickly after that.

As per usual practice, the College of Cardinals all met so that they could elect the next Pope. While they met, one of those famous Roman mobs busted into the room where they were meeting and threatened them into electing an Italian as Pope.

So a guy named Urban VI got crowned as Pope.

Urban pissed off all the Frenchmen pretty quickly, because f*ck France apparently. The French Cardinals all stormed off to Avignon. There they met and declared the Urban wasn't really the Pope because a mob had forced them to elect him. They elected their own Pope, who called himself Clement.

So there were two Popes, one in Avignon and one in Rome, and Europe split up between which one they thought was the real Pope and which one they thought was the Antichrist.

The Popes feuded with each other and important countries put pressure on both Popes to resign and to end the schism. Neither side proved willing.

In 1409 a big hunk of the Church held a council at Pisa, where they officially deposed both Popes and elected a new Pope to replace them as head of a united Catholic Church. But neither Pope would admit they had been deposed, and so instead of bringing the number of Popes back down to one the council just created a third Pope.

In 1414 the Pope from Pisa called another council to stop the schism. This council did several things including condemning and executing Jan Hus (which very clearly led to the Hussite wars). However they also called upon all the current Popes to resign. The Popes from Pisa and from Rome both cooperated, but the Avignon Pope refused. Everyone in Europe decided that at this point the Avignon Pope was just being an asshole. And so when the council elected Pope Martin V almost everyone agreed that Martin was the true Pope.

This picture of Pope Martin was too good not to throw
in. I  mean Jesus Christ, he's more turtle than man!
(Pic from Wiki)

Eventually Avignon realized that it had f*ucked up and admitted its Popes weren't really the Pope. Funny enough the last big country to insist that the Avignon Pope was the real Pope wasn't France. At was the Kingdom of Aragon in Spain. Weird, right?

And that is how come there were three Popes at once.