. 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
avignon. rather than being in a landscape where the pope could actually act as an independent power and make alliances with anyone that he chose, he was now firmly entrenched in one country, clearly under the control of one king. that was what warped the papacy. it is a little bit as though wash d.c. suddenly upped and said, well, now manhattan is going to be the capital of the entire united states. for the first time since the invention of the conclave, the one with true power over the church is not the one chosen by god but a power-hungry monarch instead. it is the dream of all of the great rulers of medieval europe to control the papacy. but phillip actually got the papacy into france. once you ve done that, the pope can become a puppet of what you want to get done. that is a moment for the church that becomes very troubling. you re abdicating the seat of
captured by the king of france. for a long period of time, it was completely the instrument of the french crown, and almost every cardinal who was appointed to the college of cardinals during this time was french. by 1347, it appears that the papacy has become an arm of the french crown for good. if you have psoriasis, little things can be a big deal. that s why there s otezla.
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