Papacy began 30 December 1370 Successor Pope Urban VI Papacy ended 27 March 1378 Predecessor Pope Urban V | Consecration 3 January 1371 Education University of Perugia Name Pope XI Ordination January 2, 1371 | |
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Created Cardinal 29 May 1348
by Clement VI Birth name Pierre Roger de Beaufort Died March 27, 1378, Rome, Italy Similar People Pope Urban VI, Pope Clement V, Pope Martin V | ||
Pope Gregory XI | Wikipedia audio article
Pope Gregory XI (Latin: Gregorius; c. 1329 – 27 March 1378) was Pope from 30 December 1370 to his death in 1378. He was the seventh and last Avignon pope and the most recent French pope. In 1377, Gregory XI returned the Papal court to Rome, ending nearly 70 years of papal residency in Avignon, France. His death shortly after was followed by the Western Schism.
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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, 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.
John Wycliffe's 19 reformation articles on church-related items as he wrote in his On Civil Dominion and 21 proposed reformation articles of Johannes Klenkok's Decadicon that he wrote against the Sachsenspiegel law-book. The Decadicon was submitted to Pope Gregory XI in the early part of the 1370s by French canonist and cardinal of the Curia Pierre de la Vergne. Gregory formally condemned fourteen articles of the Sachsenspiegel in 1374 and nineteen propositions of Wycliffe's On Civil Dominion in 1377.
His decision to return to Rome is supposedly attributed in part to the incessant pleas, demands, and threats of Catherine of Siena. A return had been attempted by Gregory's predecessor, Urban V, but the demands of the Hundred Years' War brought him north of the Alps again, and Avignon was still the seat of the Bishop of Rome. The project of returning again to Rome 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. The return of the Curia to Rome began on 13 September 1376 and was concluded with the arrival of Gregory XI on 17 January 1377.
Death
Gregory XI did not long survive this trip, dying in Rome on 27 March 1378. He was buried the following day in the church of Santa Maria Nuova. 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. The Italian chosen was Urban VI. Soon after being elected, Urban gained the Cardinals' enmity. The cardinals withdrew from Rome to Fondi, where they annulled their election of Urban and elected a French pope, Clement VII, 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.