Pope Gregory XI

See also Vicedomino de Vicedominis, a pope-elect who took the name Gregory XI.
Pope
Gregory XI
Papacy began 30 December 1370
Papacy ended 27 March 1378
Predecessor Urban V
Successor Urban VI (Roman claimant)
Clement VII (Avignon claimant)
Orders
Ordination 2 January 1371
Consecration 3 January 1371
Created Cardinal 29 May 1348
by Clement VI
Personal details
Birth name Pierre Roger de Beaufort
Born c. 1329
Maumont, Limousin, Kingdom of France
Died 27 March 1378(1378-03-27)
Rome, Papal States
Other popes named Gregory
Papal styles of
Pope Gregory XI
Reference style His Holiness
Spoken style Your Holiness
Religious style Holy Father
Posthumous style None
A bolognino of Gregory XI.

Pope Gregory XI (Latin: Gregorius XI; c. 1329 – 27 March 1378) was Pope from 30 December 1370 to his death in 1378.[1] He was the seventh and last Avignon Pope,[2] and the most recent French pope.

Biography

He was born Pierre Roger de Beaufort in Maumont in the modern commune of Rosiers-d'Égletons, Limousin, around 1330. The nephew of Pope Clement VI,[3] he succeeded Pope Urban V at the papal conclave of 1370 and was the seventh and last of the Avignon Popes.

Papacy

During his pontificate, vigorous measures (e.g. burning at the stake, confiscation of property) were taken against proponents of Lollardy which had found acceptance in Germany, England, and other parts of Europe. Efforts were made to reform corrupt practices in the various monastic orders such as collecting fees from persons visiting holy sites and the exhibiting of faux relics of saints.

Gregory confirmed a treaty between Sicily and Naples at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon on 20 August 1372, which brought about a permanent settlement between the rival kingdoms, which were both papal fiefs.[4]

John Wycliffe's 19 Reformation articles on church-related items as he wrote in his On Civil Dominion [5] and 21 proposed reformation articles of Johannes Klenkoka's Decadecon [6] were submitted to Pope Gregory XI in the early part of the 1370s. Gregory formally condemned fourteen articles of Decadecon in 1374 [7] and nineteen propositions of Wycliffe's On Civil Dominion in 1377.[5]

His decision to return to Rome on 17 January 1377, is supposedly attributed in part to the stirring words of Catherine of Siena.[8] This had been attempted by Gregory's predecessor, Urban V, without success. The project was delayed by a conflict between the pope and Florence, known as the War of the Eight Saints. The pope put Florence under interdict during 1376.[9]

Death

Gregory XI did not long survive this trip, dying on 27 March 1378.[10] He was buried the following day in the church of Santa Maria Nuova.[11] After his death the College of Cardinals was pressured by a Roman mob that broke into the voting chamber to force an Italian Pope into the papacy.[12] The Italian chosen was Urban VI. Soon after being elected, Urban gained the Cardinals' enmity.[13] The cardinals withdrew from Rome to Fondi, where they annulled their election of Urban and elected a French pope, Clement VII,[13] before returning to Avignon in 1378.

Subsequently, the Western Schism created by the selection of rival popes forced the people of Europe into a dilemma of papal allegiance. This schism was not resolved fully until the Council of Constance (1414–1418) was called by a group of cardinals. Boldly, the council deposed both current popes and, in 1417, elected Martin V as their successor. The chaos of the Western Schism thus brought about reforming councils and gave them the power over who was elected, replacing (for a time) the College of Cardinals.

Footnotes

  1.  Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Pope Gregory XI". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  2. Richard P. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, (HarperCollins, 2000), 245.
  3. George L. Williams, Papal Genealogy: The Families and Descendants of the Popes, (McFarland Company Inc., 1998), 43.
  4. Hayez, Michel (2002). "Gregorio XI, papa". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 59. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.
  5. 1 2 "The Condemnation of Wycliffe". Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2013-06-23.
  6. "first Quarter of the 14th Century stooping (county Hoya), 1374 Avignon". Deutsche-biographie.de. 2012-06-13. Retrieved 2013-06-23.
  7. Ocker, p. 62
  8. Francis Thomas Luongo, The Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena, (Cornell University Press, 2006), 25.
  9. Francis Thomas Luongo, The Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena, xii.
  10. Carol M. Richardson, Reclaiming Rome: Cardinals in the Fifteenth Century, ed. A.J. Vanderjagt, (Brill, 2009), 1.
  11. F Donald Logan, A History of the Church in the Middle Ages, (Routledge, 2002), 308.
  12. Joseph Dahmus, A History of the Middle Ages, (Doubleday Book Co., 1995), 381.
  13. 1 2 Joseph Dahmus, A History of the Middle Ages, 381.

References

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Catholic Church titles
Preceded by
Urban V
Pope
30 December 1370 – 27 March 1378
Succeeded by
Urban VI
(Rome claimant)
Clement VII
(Avignon claimant)
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