Pope Clement V (1305-1314)

The pope who moves the papacy

Before Clement V, the pope was the bishop of Rome who resided in Rome. After him, and for nearly seventy years, the pope governed the Church from the Rhône. Clement V never formally renounced Rome, nor did he “sell” the papacy to France; but by settling in Avignon in 1309, he inaugurated a de facto shift in the center of gravity of Christianity. Many of these effects are involuntary: Clement V believed his stay in Provence provisional.^[9]

The pope who suppressed the Temple

The Order of the Temple, founded in 1120, was in 1307 one of the richest and most prestigious institutions in Christianity. In seven years, it was destroyed. Clement V did not want this destruction: he procrastinated, protested, suspended procedures, tried to save the order. But he ended up suppressing it to avoid, in his own words, a worse evil — the scandal of an open confrontation with the crown of France and the risk of a schism.

A weak man, a preserved function

The theological lesson of the pontificate is there. Clement V accumulates personal faults: weakness of character, complacency towards the king, nepotism, taste for money, ruined health. However, no erroneous doctrinal definition comes out of his pontificate. This is precisely the type of case that apologists oppose to the objection that the unworthiness of a pope would ruin the authority of the Church: the Holy Spirit preserves the function, not the virtue of man.^[10] As the theology of infallibility would later write, a pope can be mediocre, worldly or pusillanimous without this affecting the deposit of faith.

A family of Gascon nobility

Bertrand de Got was born around 1264 in Villandraut, in the south of present-day Gironde, in the heart of Gascony then attached to the Duchy of Aquitaine, possession of the King of England. nephews will make careers in the Church - a family rise which already announces the future nepotism of the pontificate.^[11][12]

Law before theology

Bertrand studied the arts in Toulouse, then canon and civil law in Orléans and Bologna, the two great law faculties of the time.^[13] This is a crucial detail: Clement V is not a theologian nor a monk, but a jurist. His entire career, and his entire management of the Templar affair, bears the mark of this training: he reasons in terms of procedure, competence, law - which explains both his calculated slowness and his concern to never condemn without due form.^[14]

Bishop of Comminges, then archbishop of Bordeaux

His career is rapid. Chaplain of the pope, he was named bishop of Comminges in 1295, then archbishop of Bordeaux on December 23, 1299 by Boniface VIII. As metropolitan of Bordeaux, he governed a strategic ecclesiastical province between the interests of Edward I of England and Philip the Fair of France. This position of man between two crowns, accustomed to vacillating, prepares the conciliatory pope that he will be.

Between Plantagenêt and Capétien

The idea, spread by chroniclers, that Bertrand de Got would have been a liege of Philip the Fair even before his election is largely false. Archbishop in an English land, he owed as much to Edward I as to the King of France.^[15] The famous secret interview of Saint-Jean-d'Angély - where Philippe is said to have, in a forest, extracted six promises from Bertrand in exchange for the tiara - is a legend reported by the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani, which modern historians consider improbable: it is part of propaganda hostile to the popes of Avignon, not the established fact.^[16][17]

Eleven months of deadlock

On the death of Benedict XI, on July 7, 1304, the conclave met at Perugia and remained paralysed for nearly a year. The cardinals are divided into two irreconcilable camps: a “Boniface” party, faithful to the memory of Boniface VIII and hostile to France, and a French party, favorable to a rapprochement with Philip the Fair.^[18][19] Neither can achieve the required two-thirds majority. The deadlock lasts eleven months.

The election of June 5, 1305

The way out of the crisis is a compromise: the cardinals chose a man from outside the Sacred College, not belonging to either of the two Roman factions — the Archbishop of Bordeaux. Bertrand de Got was elected on June 5, 1305 and took the name of Clement V on July 24. This choice would have serious consequences, because this pope will never go to Italy.

A pope who does not go to Rome

Revealing detail: instead of going to Rome for his coronation, Clement V summons the cardinals to come join him in France.^[20] The papacy thus begins its pontificate on the other side of the Alps. What was supposed to be a step becomes a mode of government.

A coronation outside Rome

Clement V was crowned on November 14, 1305 in Lyon, in the Saint-Just basilica, in the presence of Philip the Fair and a crowd of princes.

The collapse of the wall

The event remains marked by a sinister accident, read by contemporaries as a dire omen. During the coronation procession, a wall overloaded with spectators collapses: the pope is thrown to the ground, his tiara rolls away and the carbuncle which adorned him is lost; several people were killed, including the Duke of Brittany John II.

The first concessions to the king

From the beginning of 1306, Clement V multiplied his gestures towards Philip the Fair. He defuses the bull Clericis laicos of Boniface VIII — which forbade the king from taxing the clergy without papal agreement — by interpreting it as not targeting the king of France; and he attenuated the scope of Unam sanctam, the bull which affirmed the superiority of spiritual power over the temporal, by declaring that it did not create any new harm to the kingdom of France.^[21][22] This capital retreat marks the reversal of the pontifical policy of confrontation led by Boniface VIII.

A traveling court (1305-1309)

During the first four years of his reign, Clement V had no capital. His court was itinerant between Bordeaux, Poitiers, Toulouse and Gascony, depending on his health, negotiations with the king and the Templar affair.^[23][24] This instability exhausted the papal administration and fueled disorder.

Arrival in Avignon on March 9, 1309

It was only on March 9, 1309 that Clement V settled in Avignon, first in the Dominican convent. Here again, the installation was conceived as temporary: neither Clement V nor his contemporaries imagined that it would last nearly seventy years.

Avignon, land of the Church, not land of France

An often distorted point must be reestablished. At the beginning of the 14th century, Avignon did not belong to the kingdom of France: the city was part of the county of Provence, stronghold of the Angevin house of Naples, vassal of the Empire; and the neighboring Comtat Venaissin is already a pontifical possession.^[25][26] The papacy therefore does not settle "in France", but on a land where it is at home. The next pope will also purchase Avignon in full ownership in 1348. Presenting Avignon as a territorial submission to the king of France is a simplification that history denies.

“Babylonian captivity”: a phrase requiring nuance

The expression "Babylonian captivity of the Church" comes from Petrarch, a passionate adversary of the court of Avignon, who compared the exile of the popes far from Rome to the exile of the Jewish people in Babylon.^[27] The formula made a fortune, but it is controversial: the popes of Avignon were neither prisoners nor captives, and the period saw an administrative reorganization considerable of the Church.^[28] The fact remains that the absence of Rome, city of Saint Peter, was a real injury from which Christianity suffered, and that the saints - Saint Catherine of Siena in the first rank - later begged the Pope to return.

The coup of October 13, 1307

At dawn on Friday, October 13, 1307, on the secret orders of Philip the Fair, all the Templars of the Kingdom of France were arrested simultaneously and their property seized.^[29][30] The operation, mounted by royal jurists, officially targeted heresy, idolatry and infamous rites; in reality it also aimed at the riches of the order and the prestige of the crown. Confessions, obtained under torture, poured in: the grand master Jacques de Molay himself recognized faults.

The protest then taking control

Clement V is faced with a fait accompli. Furious at having been circumvented - the order of the Temple only came under the authority of the pope -, he protested against the royal usurpation on October 27, 1307. Christianity** to arrest the Templars and place their property under sequestration, in the name of the Church and not the king. Way to legally recover a business that Philippe had launched alone.

Chinon: the secret absolution of dignitaries (August 1308)

This is the most revealing episode, and the longest ignored. In August 1308, in Chinon, three cardinals sent by Clement V questioned the main dignitaries of the order, including Jacques de Molay. After having heard them recognize their faults and ask for forgiveness, they grant them absolution in the name of the Pope and reconcile them with the Church.^[31][32]

“We gave them the grace of absolution... and we reintegrated them into the communion of the Church and restored them to participation in the sacraments. » — Parchment of Chinon, August 1308^[33]

This document, the "Chinon Parchment", was rediscovered and published by the historian Barbara Frale from the Vatican Secret Archives, where it had been misclassified for centuries. reconciled. The Pope therefore worked, to the extent of his weakness, to save the men of the Temple.

Faciens misericordiam and the double investigation

To regain control of the procedure, Clement V sets up a double investigation system: diocesan commissions against individual Templars, and a pontifical commission responsible for judging the order as such; by the bull Faciens misericordiam of August 12, 1308, he also convened a general council in Vienna to decide.

The stake of Jacques de Molay (March 18, 1314)

The outcome is tragic. On March 18, 1314, the grand master Jacques de Molay and the preceptor of Normandy Geoffroy de Charnay, who had initially confessed themselves guilty, publicly retracted and proclaimed the innocence of the order. Immediately delivered to the secular arm as relapses, they were burned alive the same evening on an islet of the Seine, in Paris.^[34][35] Legend relates that Molay, from the midst of the flames, summoned the pope and king to appear before the tribunal of God - Clement V died five weeks later, Philip the Fair before the end of the year.

Convocation and opening

The Council of Vienne, XVth ecumenical council, opened on October 16, 1311 in the Dauphinois city of Vienne, on the Rhône.^[36][37] It brought together around twenty cardinals, more than a hundred bishops and numerous abbots. Three major issues are on the agenda: the fate of the Order of the Temple, the reform of the Church and a proposed crusade.

The suppression of the Temple: Vox in excelso

On the Templars, the assembly is initially reluctant. The majority of the Council Fathers believe that the evidence of heresy is insufficient and that the order should be able to defend itself. By the bull Vox in excelso, dated March 22, 1312 and read in council, Clement V suppresses the Order of the Temple.

“Not by a definitive sentence”: what Clement V did not do

The legal and theological point is crucial, and it clears the pope of the accusation of having condemned the Temple as heretical. Clement V does not suppress the order by a judgment declaring his guilt, but by way of provision and apostolic ordinance — an administrative decision based on scandal and the general good of the Church, not on a sentence of heresy.^[38][39]

“Not without bitterness and pain of heart, not by way of definitive sentence, but by way of provision and apostolic ordinance, we suppress the order of the Temple. » — Bulle Vox in excelso, March 22, 1312^[40]

The nuance is not an artifice: it means that, after examination, the Church has not declared the Templars heretics. The pope sacrifices the institution to avoid a schism, but he saves the principle: the Temple is not condemned for the faith, it is dissolved by government decision. This is exactly the point masked by the dark legend of a pope complicit in a conviction for heresy.

Ad providam: the transfer to the Hospitallers

There remained the question of the order's immense assets. Philip the Fair coveted them. Clement V refused to leave them to the crown: by the bull Ad providam of May 2, 1312, he transferred most of the property of the Temple to the other great military order, the Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem, so that they remained in the service of the Holy Land.^[41][42] The bull Considerantes dudum (May 6, 1312) finally settled the fate of the individual Templars, referred to the judgment of the provincial councils. Here again, the pope secured a decisive point against the king.

Chairs of oriental languages

The Council of Vienna was not only the Council of the Templars. He made a decision of remarkable missionary perspective: the creation of chairs of teaching Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and "Chaldean" (Aramaic) in the great universities of Christendom - Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Salamanca and at the pontifical curia.^[43][44] The objective was to train clerics capable of reading the sources in their language and to dialogue with Jews and Muslims. It is one of the founding acts of Christian Oriental studies, and it bears the signature of an otherwise much criticized pope.

The condemnation of spiritual errors

The council finally deals with several doctrinal questions. He settles the dispute over poverty among the Franciscans with the constitution Exivi de paradiso, and he condemns the errors attributed to the beguards and beguines of the sect of the "Free Spirit", who claimed to achieve a state of union with God dispensing commandments and sacraments.^[45][46] On the ground of faith, the pontificate of Clement V therefore remains faithful : he condemns antinomian illuminism, not the authentic mystical life.

The Revenge of Philip the Fair

Philip the Fair had not forgiven Boniface VIII for the humiliation of the attack on Anagni (1303). He demanded from Clement V a posthumous trial of the deceased pope, accused of heresy, simony and immorality, in order to have exhume and burn his bones - which would have cast shame on the entire papacy and retrospectively justified the royal aggression.^[47][48] The trial, opened in Avignon, deliberately bogged down for years.

Clement V saves the memory of a pope

This is one of the fights where Clement V's weakness turned into tenacity. Rather than condemn his predecessor, he tempered until obtaining a compromise at the Council of Vienna: the memory of Boniface VIII was not condemned. In exchange, the pope declared that Philip the Fair had acted out of zeal in good faith, without evil intention - a formula which saved the honor of the king without tarnishing that of the dead pope.^[49][50] On this essential point - the integrity of the pontifical function -, Clement V held his ground.

The gesture toward Celestine V

In the same register, Philip pushed for the canonization of Celestine V**, the hermit pope who had abdicated in 1294 and of whom Boniface VIII was the successor: canonizing him indirectly amounted to reaching Boniface. Clement V did canonize the hermit of Abruzzi in 1313, but by proclaiming him a saint under his religious name, Peter of the Morrone, and not under his papal title - a subtle way of recognizing the holiness of the man without giving the king the symbolic victory he was seeking.^[51]

Gascon nepotism

The most well-founded criticism against Clement V is his nepotism. During his reign, he created twenty-four cardinals, a large majority of whom were Gascons and close relatives: nephews, cousins, faithful to his country.^[52][53] This francization and "Gasconnization" of the Sacred College will weigh heavily: it guarantees that his successors will be French and will remain in Avignon, and prepares the divisions of the future schism. The pope also greatly enriched his family - a fault that his contemporaries bluntly criticized him for.

Taxation and criticism

Maintaining a traveling court and then an Avignon administration was expensive. Clement V developed pontifical taxation - reserves of profits, taxes, annates - which nourished the grievance, taken up by the reformers, of a Church hungry for money.^[54] These criticisms, sometimes exaggerated, contain a grain of truth: the court of Avignon was rich, worldly, and its lifestyle scandalized the most demanding souls.

What Clement V refused

However, it would be unfair to reduce Clement V to an instrument of the king. The results show a series of decisive refusals opposed to Philip the Fair: he did not condemn the Temple as heretic by judgment; he did not deliver his property to the crown, transferring it to the Hospitallers; he did not condemn the memory of Boniface VIII; he did not canonize Celestine V as pope to serve royal vengeance.

A trained jurist, Clement V left behind a lasting work of canon law. He brought together his own decretals and the canons of the Council of Vienna into an official collection, the Constitutiones Clementinae — the “Clementines”. It constitutes one of the large parts of the Corpus iuris canonici, the law of the Church which will remain in force until the Code of 1917. In this way, the legacy of Clement V far exceeds the affair of the Templars.

The death of Roquemaure (April 20, 1314)

Undermined for years by a chronic illness - tradition speaks of intestinal cancer -, Clement V died on April 20, 1314 at Roquemaure, on the Rhône, while he was trying to return to his native Gascony. who saw it as the fulfillment of the “curse of the Templars”.

The desecrated tomb of Uzeste

In accordance with his last wishes, his body was buried in the Notre-Dame d'Uzeste collegiate church, in Gironde, which he had richly endowed. There nevertheless remains, in Uzeste, the monumental memory of the only pope of Avignon buried in his country of origin.

Dante, the black legend and history

No feather has more permanently blackened Clement V than that of Dante Alighieri. In the Divine Comedy, the poet ranks the pope among the simoniacs of hell and announces his arrival as that of a “lawless pastor” coming from the sunset.^[55]

“A shepherd without law will come from the west, with even uglier works, such that he will cover both him and me. » — Dante, Hell, song XIX^[56]

This poetic condemnation forged the dark legend of a venal and submissive pope. Critical history, without hiding anything of its weaknesses, strongly nuances the portrait: Clement V was a sick and weak man, prisoner of an overwhelming balance of power with the most powerful king in Christendom, but also a skillful jurist who, on decisive points, knew how to save the law and the faith where a more naive pope would have given up everything.^[57]

The pontificate of Clement V is a borderline case: that of a personally weak pope, subject to extreme political pressure, and whose reign opened a long crisis. However, it offers three lessons.

First, the distinction between man and function. Clement V accumulated faults; yet, the deposit of faith runs through his reign intact. The Church has never taught that its pastors would be saints, but that the See of Peter would be preserved from defining error - and this pontificate is a striking verification of that.^[58]

Then, resistance in weakness. Where legend sees a docile instrument, history shows a man who, on the Temple, on property, on Boniface VIII, opposed the king with decisive legal refusals. Weakness of character did not result in betrayal of office.

Finally, the cost of leaving Rome. The installation in Avignon, conceived as temporary, opens a wound of seventy years and prepares the Great Schism. The saints sensed it, and it was a woman, Catherine de Siena, who would later obtain the return of the pope to the city of Saint Peter. Clement V is the pope with whom the exile begins — and his story reminds us that the center of Christianity is not indifferent.

• Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) — the pope of the confrontation with Philip the Fair, whose memory Clement V refused to condemn.
• Pope Benedict XI (1303-1304) — the immediate predecessor, whose death opened the long conclave of Perugia.
• Pope Clement VI — the Pope of Avignon who purchased the city in full ownership in 1348.
• Pope Celestine V — the hermit who abdicated, canonized by Clement V in 1313.
• Benevacantism — on the legitimacy of the papal renunciation, illustrated by Celestine V.

Ignispedia article — Church History category, “The Popes” series. Sourcing: Holy See, Catholic Encyclopedia, Treccani (Enciclopedia dei Papi), Sophia Menache (Cambridge, 1998), Malcolm Barber (Cambridge, 2006), Barbara Frale (chinon parchment), G. Mollat, N. Tanner, J. Lecler.