. in the mid-1360s, the papacy has left rome and been operating in avignon, france for almost 60 years. at this point the cardinals are almost all french and have become accustomed to the luxurious lifestyle afforded to them as a thank you for the church s loyalty to the french crown. but outside the walls of the lush papal castle, the rest of europe is a wasteland, setting the stage for what will be the last papal resignation for 600 years. the black death. this contagious, dreadful
but pope urban v and his successor, another frenchman, gregor xi, remained firm in their spiritual conviction that the papacy longs at the tomb of st. peter. there is a lot of resentment about their having to sort of come down in the world, which i think just shows what a cushioned, isolated existence they were living in avignon, that you have a europe that s been devastated by the plague, that the entire social structure of europe has changed, that in some places 90% of the population has died, but the primary concern of the college of cardinals is that they re not getting enough courses for dinner. so you definitely have a sense in which during the avignon papacy it has gotten so out of touch with what the church is supposed to be doing. when pope gregory xi dies in 1378, many of the cardinals prepare to move back to avignon, but the frustrated romans call for a sign that the papacy has freed itself from the french
disease devastated europe. pretty of the entire population was wiped out. in the wake of the plague, the papacy is forced to re-evaluate its role in europe and face dire conditions in the city it abandoned. with the absence of the papacy from rome, the upkeep of the city began to fail. a great deal of the upkeep of rome came out of the pope s coffers. now this was all going to france. law and order became very, very shaky. you have a rise in pickpockets and muggings because there is no king in rome, there s no interior in rome, and now there is no pope in rome. the romans learned, somewhat reluctantly, that the city depended on the presence of the papacy to flourish, to become anything more than just a bit of a wreck. fed up with the sheltered confines of avignon, pope urban
where the church is supposed to lie. if you leave the bones of peter behind and you re not moving them, you re moving to this other place, what you re saying is that maybe this isn t as important to the church as we had thought it was previously. that becomes a really dangerous situation for holding together not just the papacy, but holding together beliefs and tenets of the church. leaving rome costs the papacy its religious authority throughout europe. but once the church becomes established in france, pope clement v finds that despite being hundreds of miles from the bones of st. peter, there are certain benefits to the new location. it was very clearly a time when they had given up their spiritual authority in order to enjoy material prosperity. the college of cardinals, which also became centered at avignon after this, was absolutely notorious for luxurious living
v decides that the papacy has lost sight of its spiritual purpose and must return to the bones of st. peter in rome. urban v, a reform-minded pope, is appalled by the luxury. he was appalled by the self-indulgence in avignon. he announced to the cardinals that they could only have one course at dinner rather than their usual ten-course bafrpg wet. it had increasingly become clear that as long as the papacy was tied to the fortunes of any country, that the ability to act as a spir attual leader would be seriously compromised. he was convicted that the papacy ned needed to return to its home in rome, but it was not an easy transition. the cardinals who had become used to their indulgent lifestyle in avignon did not appreciate the rundown conditions in the fallen city.