He displayed abilities rarely combined: scholarly studies and administrative skill. Under his leadership the Avignon papacy developed a competent, if corrupt, bureaucratic organization, and a fiscal staff that shocked the envious chancelleries of Europe with its capacity for gathering revenues. John undertook a dozen major conflicts that called for funds; like his predecessor he sold benefices, but without a blush; by sundry devices this scion of the banking town of Cahors so fattened the papal treasury that at his death it held 18,000,000 gold florins ($450,000,000), and 7,000,000 in plate and jewelry.2 He explained that the papal Curia had lost much of its income from Italy, and had to build its offices, staff, and services anew. John seems to have felt that he could serve God best by winning Mammon to his side. His personal habits tended to an abstemious simplicity.3
Meanwhile he patronized learning, shared in establishing medical schools at Perugia and Cahors, helped universities, founded a Latin college in Armenia, fostered the study of Oriental languages, fought alchemy and magic, spent days and nights in scholastic studies, and ended as a theologian suspected of heresy. Perhaps to check the spread of a mysticism that claimed direct contact with God, John ventured to teach that no one—not even the Mother of God—can attain to the Beatific Vision until the Last Judgment. A storm of protest arose among the eschatological experts; the University of Paris denounced the Pope’s view, a church synod at Vincennes condemned it as heresy, and Philip VI of France ordered him to reform his theology.4 The crafty nonagenarian eluded them all by dying (1334).
John’s successor was a man of gentler mold. Benedict XII, the son of a baker, tried to be a Christian as well as a pope; he resisted the temptation to distribute offices among his relatives; he earned an honorable hostility by bestowing benefices for merits, not for fees; he repressed bribery and corruption in all branches of Church administration; he alienated the mendicant orders by commanding them to reform; he was never known to be cruel or to shed blood in war. All the forces of corruption rejoiced at his early death (1342).
Clement VI, born of a noble house in Limousin, was accustomed to luxury, gaiety, and art, and could not understand why a pope should be austere when the papal treasury was full. Almost all who came to him for appointments secured them; no one, he said, should depart from him unsatisfied. He announced that any poor clergyman who should come to him within the next two months would partake of his bounty; an eyewitness reckoned that 100,000 came.5 He gave rich gifts to artists and poets; maintained a stud of horses equal to any in Christendom; admitted women freely to his court, enjoyed their charms, and mingled with them in Gallic gallantry. The countess of Turenne was so close to him that she sold ecclesiastical preferments with careless publicity.6 Hearing of Clement’s good nature, the Romans sent an embassy inviting him to reside in Rome. He did not relish the prospect, but he appeased them by declaring that the jubilee, which Boniface VIII had established in 1300 for every hundred years, should be celebrated every half century. Rome rejoiced at the news, deposed Rienzo, and renewed its political submission to the popes.
Under Clement VI Avignon became the capital not only of the religion but of the politics, culture, pleasure, and corruption of the Latin world. Now the administrative machinery of the Church took its definitive form: an Apostolic Chamber (camera apostolica) in charge of finances, and headed by a papal chamberlain (camerarius) who was second in dignity to the pope alone; a Papal Chancery (cancelleria) whose seven agencies, directed by a cardinal vice-chancellor, handled the complex correspondence of the See; a Papal Judiciary composed of prelates and laymen learned in canon law, and including the Consistory—the pope and his cardinals acting as a court of appeals; and an Apostolic Penitentiary—a college of clergy who dealt with marital dispensations, excommunication and interdict, and heard the confessions of those seeking papal absolution.
To house the pope and his aides, these ministries and agencies, their staffs and servants, Benedict XII began, and Urban V completed, the immense Palace of the Popes, a congeries of Gothic buildings—living chambers, council halls, chapels, and offices—enclosing two courts, and themselves enclosed by mighty ramparts whose height and breadth and massive towers suggest that the popes, if besieged, would rely on no miracle for their defense. Benedict XII invited Giotto to come and decorate the palace and the adjoining cathedral; Giotto planned to come, but died; and in 1338 Benedict summoned from Siena Simone Martini, whose frescoes, now obliterated, marked the zenith of painting in Avignon. Around this palace, in lesser palaces, mansions, tenements, and hovels, gathered a great population of prelates, envoys, lawyers, merchants, artists, poets, servants, soldiers, beggars, and prostitutes of every grade from cultured courtesans to tavern tarts. Here, for the most part, dwelt those bishops in partibus infidelium who were appointed to sees that had fallen into the hands of non-Christians.
We, who are inured to colossal figures, can imagine the amount of money required to support this complex administrative establishment and its entourage. Several sources of income were nearly dried up: Italy, deserted by the papacy, sent hardly anything; Germany, at odds with John XXII, sent half its usual tribute; France, holding the Church almost at its mercy, appropriated for secular purposes a large part of French ecclesiastical revenues, and borrowed heavily from the papacy to finance the Hundred Years’ War; England severely restricted the flow of money to a Church that was in effect an ally of France. To meet this situation the Avignon popes were driven to develop every trickle of revenue. Each bishop or abbot, whether appointed by pope or secular prince, transmitted to the Curia, as an inaugural fee, one third of his prospective income for a year, and paid exasperating gratuities to the numerous intermediaries who had supported his nomination. If he became an archbishop he had to pay a substantial fee for the archiepiscopal pallium—a circular band of white wool, worn over the chasuble as the insignia of his office. When a new pontiff was elected, every ecclesiastical benefice or office sent him its full revenue for one year (annates), and thereafter a tenth of its revenue in each year; additional voluntary contributions were expected from time to time. On the death of any cardinal, archbishop, bishop, or abbot, his personal possessions and effects belonged to the papacy. In the interim between such death and the installation of a new appointee the popes received the revenues, and paid the expenses, of the benefice; and they were accused of deliberately extending this interval. Every ecclesiastical appointee was held responsible for dues unpaid by his predecessors. As bishops and abbots were in many cases feudal proprietors of estates received in fief from the king, they had to pay him tribute and provide him with soldiery, so that many were hard pressed to meet their combined ecclesiastical and secular obligations; and as the papal exactions were more severe than the state’s, we find the hierarchy sometimes supporting the king against the pope. The Avignon pontiffs almost completely ignored the ancient rights of cathedral chapters or monastic councils to choose bishops or abbots; and these by-passed collators joined in the accumulating resentment. Cases tried in the Papal Judiciary usually required the expensive help of lawyers, who had to pay an annual fee for license to plead in the papal courts. Every judgment or favor received from the Curia expected a gift in acknowledgment; even permission to be ordained had to be bought. The secular governments of Europe looked with awe and fury upon the fiscal machinery of the popes.7