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others. He had a certain ‘idol’ in which a ‘diabolical spirit’ was To avoid impending charges of murder, Pope Calixtus II enclosed whom he was in the habit of consulting ... a strange (1119-24) desecrated the alleged tomb of St Peter and fled to voice answered him" (A History of the Popes, Dr Joseph McCabe, Constantinople with "silver panels from the doors", "thick plates C. A. Watts & Co, London, 1939). of gold" that had covered the altars and "a solid gold statue" (A In 1303, Pope Boniface VIII was seized at Anagni, to where he —_—_—-History of the Popes, McCabe, op. cit.). had fled, and was delivered to Paris to be tried. Sciarra Colonna The last recorded pope to be evicted from Rome was Eugenius and his embittered family were at the French court and a General IV (1431-47), who spent most of his nine-year exile living in the Council was convened at the University of Paris. Before five brothels of Naples (Diderot's Encyclopédie). archbishops, 22 bishops, many monks and friars, Boniface VIII In 1309, under the papacy of Clement V (1305-14; Bertrand de jeered habitually at religion and morals, and made this remarkable Got, 1264-1314), the Romans expressed so much displeasure at statement: papal criminality that the whole Christian bureaucracy was "There was no Jesus Christ and the Eucharist is just flour and _ physically evicted from Rome to the city of Avignon in southern water. Mary was no more a virgin than my own mother, and there France. It was there that the popes resided permanently for seven is no more harm in adultery than in rubbing your hands together." decades until 1377, in palaces built behind stone fortifications, (A History of the Popes, where they created a McCabe, ibid.) complicated bureaucratic administration. In Jewish circles the expulsion was called "the Babylonian captivity of the popes", and the mounting resentment against the papacy that flooded Europe was justified. Famous Italian scholar and statesman Francesco Petrarch (1304-74) lived for years on the outskirts of Avignon and compiled a mass of detail about the papal lifestyle that fell under his observation. He left one of the most amazing pictures of Church sordidness that is to be found in any literature available on the Christian religion. He was the greatest intellectual writer of his age, and _ powerful sovereigns of the day competed for his presence at imperial courts. In his book Letters without a Title, He was transferred back to Rome with a strong escort provided by the Orsini family, who feared papal troops would attempt to free him. He was in so tempestuous a rage that respectable chroniclers of the time say that he went insane and committed suicide. That is improbable, but he died in prison a month later in October 1303, probably of poisoning or strangulation, not of "the shock of the brutal assault on him" as the Church opines (The Popes: A Concise Biographical History, op. cit., p. 239). His enemies spread abroad a report that, in his last moments, he had confessed his league with the demon and died with flames issuing from his mouth. The battlements in the background are the remains of the fortress Palace of the Popes at Avignon, built during the reigns of Benedict XII and Clement VI. It securely housed the papal court and administrative centre until 1377. The extravagances The havoc and scandal 2nd the fiscal system of the papal court were severely criticised petrarch described the papal leading to and resulting from the by mainstream Europe. court at Avignon as "boiling, internal and external papal wars, the blood, terror and viciousness, seething, obscene, terrible...a fountain of dolour where Jesus and the unspeakably debased social conditions which made it all Christ is mocked, where sesterce [money] is adored, where possible in the name of Christ can be but faintly imagined. honesty is called foolishness and cunning called wisdom. ..all this The unpopularity of the popes was such that over the centuries you may see heaped up there" (Letter Var. VII). He said that many of them were murdered or driven from Rome by mobs or _ Avignon surpassed in vice any city of antiquity, and no one knew imperial enemies. For a total period exceeding 240 years between mediaeval life and literature better than Petrarch. He gives details 1119 and 1445, popes were regularly and forcibly evicted from of the obscene gaiety of life in the papal court that "raged like a Rome, reigning variously in Avignon, Anagni, Orvieto, Viterbo, moral pestilence...a school of falsity, and a temple of heresy" Siena, Florence, Pisa and Perugia. (Letter Misc. XVID. As early as 1119, for example, the locals revolted against Pope A friend of the Colonnas, Petrarch was invited to address the Gelasius II (1118-19), who fled to Gaeta in southern Italy by Senate in Rome, and on Easter Sunday 1341 he arrived in the rowing down the River Tiber in a dinghy. As he escaped, the capitol clad in the robes of his friend and admirer, King Robert of angry crowd ran along the river's edge, hurling stones, arrows and Naples. There he delivered a powerful indictment against the foul abuse at the rapidly disappearing pope. Avignon popes and their cardinals, saying, in summary, that they Similarly, Pope Gregory VIII (1187) was so hated for his crime were "...swept along in a flood of the most obscene pleasure, an of blinding his opponents (as was Pope Adrian III, 884-85) that —_ incredible storm of debauch, the most horrible and unprecedented the locals tied him backwards on a camel and paraded him shipwreck of chastity. The attachment of the popes to Avignon is through the streets of Rome, screaming vulgarities at him and due to the fact that they have built there, as it were, a paradise of pelting him with rocks until he was dead (Diderot's pleasure, a celestial habitation in which they dwell without a god Encyclopédie). as if they were to continue to dwell there forever" (Letter VIID. Popes banished from Rome 44 = NEXUS www.nexusmagazine.com FEBRUARY — MARCH 2007