Pope Innocent VI (1352-1362)

The pope who defended the plenitude of papal power

The most important act of Innocent VI is not a solemn dogmatic bull: it is a refusal. Before entering the conclave, the cardinals had drafted a pact — the first certain electoral capitulation in history — by which each pledged, if elected, to share power and revenues with the Sacred College and to submit to its control.^[13][14] Elected, Étienne Aubert at first accepted it "insofar as it was not contrary to the law of the Church", then declared it "illegal and null".^[15] The reason he gives strikes at the heart of Catholic ecclesiology: such a pact would amputate the power that the pope holds not from the college, but from Christ. It is this point — and not the courtly anecdote — that makes Innocent VI a decisive pope.

The pope who made the return to Rome possible

Since Clement V (1305), the papacy had resided in Avignon, and the Papal States in Italy, given over to local tyrants and rebellious cities, had escaped all authority. As long as Rome and the Patrimony of Saint Peter remained out of control, no return was possible. Innocent VI understood that the prerequisite for the return was not a pious wish, but a reconquest. By entrusting this task to Cardinal Albornoz, he concretely prepared the return that his successors Urban V (1367) and Gregory XI (1377) would carry out.^[16][17]

The reforming pope after the Magnificent Pope

The contrast with Clement VI is striking and deliberate. The "Magnificent Pope" had made of Avignon a princely, patronizing and lavish court; Innocent VI dismissed luxury, reduced staff, sold works of art to pay for the war in Italy, and above all ordered prelates to reside in their churches, under threat of excommunication.^[18][19] Two centuries before the Council of Trent, this austere jurist pinpointed the two sores gnawing the clergy: absenteeism and the accumulation of benefices. His reform was partial, but it foretells the great Tridentine recovery.

A son of the minor Limousin nobility

Étienne Aubert was born around 1282 in the hamlet of Monts, in the parish of Beyssac, in the heart of lower Limousin (now Corrèze), into a family of minor aristocracy; his father was Adhémar Aubert.^[20][21] Like his predecessor Clement VI and several Avignon popes, he was Limousin: under the Valois this province supplied the Church with a remarkable nursery of jurists and prelates. Nothing in his birth destined him for the tiara; everything came from law and merit.

The jurist and the judge of Toulouse

Unlike Clement VI, a theologian of Paris, Étienne Aubert was a man of law. He studied at the University of Toulouse, obtained his doctorate there, then taught civil law.^[22][23] A lawyer in Limoges, he became juge-mage of Toulouse, one of the highest judicial offices of royal Languedoc. This legal training marked his entire pontificate: his defense of the plenitudo potestatis, his Constitutions for the Papal States, his administrative rigor are above all the work of a canonist experienced in governance.

Bishop, cardinal, Grand Penitentiary

The rise was rapid. He was named Bishop of Noyon on 23 January 1338, transferred to Clermont in 1340, then created cardinal-priest of Saints John and Paul by Clement VI on 20 September 1342.^[24][25] In February 1352 he became cardinal-bishop of Ostia — the first rank of the Sacred College — and Grand Penitentiary of the Roman Church, an office that governs the internal forum and reserved absolutions.^[26] At the time of Clement VI's death, he was therefore one of the most powerful men of the curia.

A short conclave and an unexpected election

On the death of Clement VI, on 6 December 1352, the conclave opens in Avignon. It is brief — two days — and results on 18 December 1352 in the election of Étienne Aubert, who takes the name Innocent VI.^[27][28] He is crowned on 30 December 1352 by Cardinal Gaillard de la Mothe.^[29] His election owes much to a compromise: a consensus candidate, he was not the declared favorite.

The first electoral capitulation in history

The 1352 conclave occupies a singular place in the history of the Church: it is there that the first certain electoral capitulation appears. Worried by the growing power of the pope and the court’s expenditures, the cardinals sign, before the election, a pact that would have made the pope a primus inter pares subject to the College.

Such a text would have transformed the pontifical monarchy into an oligarchy.^[30][31] It foreshadowed, sixty years in advance, the conciliarist crisis born of the Great Western Schism (1378), when attempts would be made to subject the pope to a council.

The annulment: the papacy is not a monarchy of the cardinals

Once elected, Innocent VI makes a definitive decision. By an act of 6 July 1353, he declares the pact null and void, for two reasons: it violates the legislation of Gregory X (Second Council of Lyon, 1274) which reserves the conclave to the sole election of the pope, and above all it diminishes a power of divine institution.^[32][33] The formula reported by historians of the Church has remained famous:

“Innocent VI declared the pact illegal and void, because it contained a limitation of the pontifical power conferred by God.” — The Catholic Encyclopedia, article “Pope Innocent VI”, 1910^[34]

The gesture is not a mere power play. It defends a truth that Vatican I would formulate dogmatically five centuries later: the primacy of Peter is of divine right, and the pope exercises over the whole Church a power full, supreme and universal, which he does not hold from a delegation of men.

“The Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ and pastor of the whole Church, possesses over it a full, supreme and universal power, which he can always exercise freely.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 882^[35]

Innocent VI, a jurist, clearly saw what an overly powerful Sacred College would make of the papacy: an assembly of shareholders. He refused. In the order of doctrine, it is his most lasting act.

The end of splendor

The new pope upends the scene. He reduces the staff of the papal chapel, dismisses part of the courtiers, sells precious objects and works of art to finance the war in Italy and relief after the plague.^[36][37] The return to sobriety is such that some, used to the generosity of Clement VI, find him stingy. In reality, he restores the balance of a depleted Treasury.

The residence of pastors and the end of holding multiple benefices

The deepest reform targets the clergy itself. Innocent VI orders prelates and benefice holders to return to their churches, under pain of excommunication; he abolishes reservations, disapproves of holding multiple benefices and sets fixed incomes for the auditors of the Rota to put an end to venality.^[38][39] These are precisely the abuses — absenteeism, pluralism, covert simony — that the Council of Trent would denounce two centuries later. The pope of Avignon attacks them with the means of law.

Foundations and support for education

Far from being a mere manager, Innocent VI founds and endows. In 1359, he establishes in Toulouse the Collège Saint-Martial for poor clerics; in 1360, he endows the University of Bologna with a faculty of theology.^[40] He encourages reform among the mendicant orders and supports efforts to return to observance. The jurist had understood that a Church is also reformed through the school and through the training of its clergy.

Why reconquer Italy?

A papal return to Rome was impossible as long as the Patrimony of Saint Peter remained in the hands of unruly lords and cities: Giovanni di Vico in Viterbo, the Malatesta in Rimini, the Ordelaffi in Forlì, the Visconti weighing on Romagna. Innocent VI makes the restoration of pontifical authority in Italy the concrete condition of any return. On 30 June 1353, he names an exceptional Spanish cardinal, former Archbishop of Toledo and man of war, as legate: Gil Álvarez Carrillo de Albornoz.^[41][42]

Albornoz's campaigns

At the head of a small army of mercenaries and playing local rivalries, Albornoz methodically reconquers the lands of the Church. The table below summarizes the major stages of this reconquest, which extends from 1354 to 1360.

In a few years, the Papal Italy is once again under the authority of the Holy See.^[43][44] Albornoz, briefly recalled in 1357 then sent back to Italy, completes the work: it is he who, more than any other, materially makes the papacy's return possible.

The Egidian Constitutions (1357)

On 29 April 1357, at Fano, Albornoz promulgates the Constitutiones Sanctæ Matris Ecclesiæ, called the Egidian Constitutions. They replace the mosaic of local customs with a uniform code of administrative law for all the Papal States.^[45][46] Their solidity is such that they will remain the fundamental law of the Church's states until 1816 — nearly five centuries. Once again, the imprint of the jurist pope is evident: the reconquest is not only military, it is legislative.

Cola di Rienzo, the tribune

The most dramatic episode of this reconquest is that of Cola di Rienzo, the former tribune of Rome who had dreamed of restoring the ancient republic there. Excommunicated and imprisoned under Clement VI, he is released, absolved and sent back to Rome with Albornoz to serve pontifical authority.^[47][48] Having become senator, he quickly sinks into violence and excess: he is massacred by the Roman crowd on 8 October 1354. Innocent VI had put his hopes on him; the venture ends abruptly, but Rome nonetheless returns, little by little, into the fold of the Church.

Charles IV, the Empire and the Golden Bull

In December 1354, Innocent VI authorizes Charles IV of Luxembourg to descend into Italy. On 5 April 1355, Easter Day, Cardinal Pierre Bertrand de Colombier, the pope's legate, crowns Charles IV emperor in Rome; the emperor, as agreed, leaves the city the same day so as not to cause disturbance.^[49][50] But in 1356, the Golden Bull — the Empire's fundamental law that governs the imperial election by the seven prince-electors — omits any mention of papal confirmation. Innocent VI protests, unable to prevent it.^[51][52] The Empire emancipates itself from Roman tutelage; the jurist pope records, powerless, a turning point in the constitutional history of the West.

Arbiter of the Hundred Years' War: the Treaty of Brétigny (1360)

After the French disaster at Poitiers (1356) and the capture of King John the Good, it is largely thanks to the diplomatic efforts of Innocent VI that the Treaty of Brétigny is concluded on 8 May 1360 between France and England.^[53][54] The Avignon pope here fully plays his role as the common father of Christendom: above crowns, he works for peace. The truce will be fragile, but it suspends for a time the bleeding of the Hundred Years' War.

The Great Companies and the Ramparts of Avignon

Peace between kings has a perverse effect: it frees the mercenaries. Idle, the Great Companies of mercenaries ravage Provence. In 1357, Arnaud de Cervole, called “the Archpriest”, threatens Avignon itself; in 1360, other bands seize Pont-Saint-Esprit, a few leagues from the pontifical city.^[55][56] Innocent VI reacts as a man of government: he has Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin fortified, erecting the powerful ramparts that still encircle the old town today. When force is not enough, he pays ransom or has the crusade preached against the pillagers.^[57]

The Offer of Union from Byzantium

Pressed by the Turkish advance, the Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos offers Innocent VI to reunite the Greek Church with Rome in exchange for military aid. The pope, cautious, does not follow up: the experience of unions of convenience, concluded under political pressure and later disavowed by the Greek clergy, counseled reserve.^[58] The episode shows the lucidity of a canonist who distinguishes true union from diplomatic union.

Saint Bridget of Sweden

While Innocent VI governs from the Rhône, a great mystic of the North, Saint Bridget of Sweden (1303–1373), resident in Rome since 1349, multiplies revelations in which she urges the Avignon popes to return to the tomb of Peter and to reform the Church. Her messages are addressed successively to Innocent VI, to Urban V and to Gregory XI.^[59][60] The Swedish visionary, as Saint Catherine of Siena would do later, embodies the prophetic conscience of Christendom: the pope, she repeatedly tells him, must cease to govern the Church in exile.

Petrarch and the “Babylon of the West”

The humanist Petrarch, who lived for a long time in Avignon, does not show the saint's gentleness. In his Letters Without a Title (Liber sine nomine) and in the famous “Babylonian sonnets” of the Canzoniere (CXXXVI–CXXXVIII), he castigates the papal court as the new Babylon, a source of all vices, and calls for the return to Rome.^[61][62]

“Fountain of sorrow, dwelling of anger, school of errors and temple of heresy; once Rome, today a false and perverse Babylon, for whom one weeps and sighs so much.” — Petrarch, Canzoniere, sonnet CXXXVIII^[63]

His invectives belong to moral polemic and should be read with restraint: Avignon was not the hell he describes. But, joined to Bridget's voice, his complaint expresses a truth the reforming pope could not ignore: the Avignon provisional arrangement had lasted too long.

A papal jurist, Innocent VI also watches over the faith. He prosecutes the Fraticelli, those dissident Franciscans who, in the name of absolute poverty, rejected the Church's authority and veered into illuminism; several are imprisoned, some condemned.^[64][65] The visionary Franciscan John of Roquetaillade (Johannes de Rupescissa), prophet of the new age and author of apocalyptic writings, is kept in prison in Avignon, where the pope has him watched and examined without condemning him to death.^[66][67] Innocent VI's firmness illustrates the Catholic balance: the Church welcomes authentic charism, but discerns and contains prophetic enthusiasm when it drifts toward revolt or error.

The Plague of 1361

In 1361, the plague strikes Avignon again. The epidemic carries off nine cardinals and many court officials, depriving the aging pope of his best advisers.^[68] Stricken with gout, worn out by ten years of governance and wars, Innocent VI enters his final months.

The Charterhouse of Val-de-Bénédiction

As early as 2 June 1356, Innocent VI had founded, at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, on the other bank of the Rhône, a charterhouse dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, which would take the name Notre-Dame-du-Val-de-Bénédiction.^[69][70] This choice of an order devoted to silence and contemplation says more than any speech about the deep part of this man of law: he wished to rest not in a prestigious basilica, but beside the most austere monks of Christendom.

The Gothic Tomb

Innocent VI dies on 12 September 1362 in Avignon and is buried in his charterhouse. His marble tomb, surmounted by a recumbent effigy and a finely carved Gothic canopy — attributed to Thomas de Tournon and Barthélemy Cavailler —, is one of the masterpieces of 14th-century funerary sculpture; desecrated then restored, it still exists today in the charterhouse church.^[71][72]

Innocent VI offers the mirror image of his predecessor. Where Clement VI was the pope of splendor, of the arts and of conspicuous nepotism, Innocent VI was the pope of austerity, of law and of reform. That the Church could move, in a single conclave, from the “Magnificent” to the reformer, reveals a fundamental truth: the Petrine office does not depend on the temperament of the man, and Providence knows how to raise up, after pontificates of prestige, those of restoration.^[73][74]

His most enduring act, however, is neither the reconquest by Albornoz nor the Treaty of Brétigny: it is his refusal to accept the cardinals' capitulation. By asserting that the fullness of pontifical power is of divine right and not a human concession, this jurist from Limousin held, sixty years before the Western Schism and conciliarism, the line that Vatican I would solemnly define.

“Despite his nepotism, Innocent VI counts among the best of the Avignon popes.” — The Catholic Encyclopedia, article “Pope Innocent VI”, 1910^[75]

Such is the happy paradox of this pontificate: a man without brilliance or original genius, but a faithful servant of the office, who left the Church healthier, his States reconquered and the road to Rome finally open for his successors.

• Pope Clement VI (1342-1352) — the “Magnificent Pope,” the sumptuous predecessor whose style Innocent VI reversed.
• Blessed Urban V (1362-1370) — the successor who, after Albornoz’s reconquest, briefly brought the papacy back to Rome.
• The Papacy of Avignon (1309-1377) — the large dossier on the seven popes of the Rhône.
• The Great Western Schism (1378-1417) — the crisis and conciliarism heralded by the 1352 capitulation.
• The Council of Trent (1545-1563) — the major reform of the clergy anticipated by Innocent VI’s fight against absenteeism and pluralism.
• Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) — the prophetic voice who, after Bridget of Sweden, obtained the definitive return to Rome.

Ignispedia article — category Church History, series “The Popes”. Sourcing: Holy See, Catholic Encyclopedia (1910), Encyclopædia Britannica, Enciclopedia dei Papi (Treccani), Guillaume Mollat (1965), Bernard Guillemain (1962), Constitutiones Aegidianae (1357), Catechism of the Catholic Church, Revelations of Saint Bridget of Sweden, Petrarch’s Canzoniere.