#37 The Avignon Popes – Part III

* Against complaints about how much they were demanding, the popes said “hey looking this good isn’t easy!” * Clement VI had been forced to lend Philip VI of France 592,000 gold florins – $135 million. * And 3,517,000 more to King John II, Philip’s son and heir. Roughly $800 million. * Quick quiz – how long did the Hundred Years’ War last? * 116 years. * Fought from 1337 to 1453 by the House of Plantagenet, rulers of the Kingdom of England, against the French House of Valois, over the right to rule the Kingdom of France. * Who was the last Plantagenet king of England? * Richard III. * Now is the winter… * A lot of money had to be spent trying to reconquer the lost papal states in Italy. * Despite all taxes the popes suffered dire deficits. * John XXII rescued the papal treasury by paying into it 440,000 florins from his personal funds; * Innocent VI had to sell his silver plate, his jewelry and works of art; * Urban V had to borrow 30,000 florins from his cardinals; * Gregory XI owed 120,000 francs when he died. * Some people said the huge deficits were caused mostly by the worldly luxury of the papal court. * Clement VI was surrounded by male and female relatives attired in precious stuffs and furs; by knights, squires, sergeants at arms, chaplains, ushers, chamberlains, musicians, poets, artists, doctors, scientists, tailors, philosophers, and chefs who were the envy of kings—all in all, some four hundred persons, all fed, clothed, lodged, and salaried by a lovably lavish Pope who had never known the cost of money. * Clement thought of himself as a ruler who had to awe his subjects and impress ambassadors by “conspicuous consumption” after the custom of kings. * The cardinals too, as the royal council of a state as well as the princes of the Church, had to maintain establishments befitting their dignity and power; their retinues, equipages, banquets were the talk of the town. * Perhaps Cardinal Bernard of Garves overdid it, who hired fifty-one dwellings to house his retainers; and Cardinal Peter of Banhac, five of whose ten stables sheltered thirty-nine horses in comfort and style. * Even bishops fell in line, and, despite remonstrances from provincial synods, kept rich establishments with jesters, falcons, and dogs. * Avignon assumed the morals as well as the manners of royal courts. * One bishop wrote: “That the whole Christian folk take from the clergy pernicious examples of gluttony is clear and notorious, since the said clergy feast more luxuriously and splendidly, and with more dishes, than princes and kings” * And Petrarch had this too say about Avignon: * the impious Babylon, the hell on earth, the sink of vice, the sewer of the world. There is in it neither faith nor charity nor religion nor the fear of God…. All the filth and wickedness of the world have run together here…. Old men plunge hot and headlong into the arms of Venus; forgetting their age, dignity, and powers, they rush into every shame, as if all their glory consisted not in the cross of Christ but in feasting, drunkenness, and unchastity…. Fornication, incest, rape, adultery are the lascivious delights of the pontifical games. * Of course, Petrarch was biased. *