Pope clement v biography samples

Head of the Catholic Church from to

Pope Clement V (Latin: Clemens Quintus; c.&#; – 20 April ), born Raymond Bertrand de Got (also occasionally spelled de Guoth and de Goth), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 5 June to his death, in April He is remembered for suppressing the order of the Knights Templar and allowing the execution of many of its members.

A Frenchman by birth, Clement moved the Papacy from Rome to Avignon, ushering in the period known as the Avignon Papacy.

Early career

Raymond Bertrand was born in Vilandraut, Aquitaine, the son of Bérard, Lord of Villandraut.

Bertrand studied the arts at Toulouse and canon and civil law at Orléans and Bologna. He became canon and sacristan of the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux, then vicar-general to his brother Bérard de Got, the Archbishop of Lyon, who in was created Cardinal-Bishop of Albano and papal legate to France.

He was then made Bishop of St-Bertrand-de-Comminges, the cathedral church of which he was responsible for greatly enlarging and embellishing, and chaplain to Pope Boniface VIII, who made him Archbishop of Bordeaux in

As Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand de Got was a subject of the King of England, but from early youth he had been a personal friend of Philip the Just.

Clement V reigned as pope from to He was the first pope of the "Babylonian Captivity," when the papacy was located in Avignon, France. He became archbishop of Bordeaux in His election to the papacy in followed the pontificate of Boniface VIII and the short rule of Benedict XIduring which a long quarrel between France and the papacy culminated in Boniface's capture and mistreatment by henchmen of the French king, Philip IV, at Anagni, Italy, in

Election

Main article: – papal conclave

Following the death of Pope Benedict XI in July , there was an interregnum occasioned by disputes between the French and Italian cardinals. They were equally balanced in the papal conclave, which was held at Perugia.

Bertrand was elected Pope Clement V in June and crowned on 14 November. Bertrand was neither Italian nor a cardinal, and his election might have been considered a gesture towards neutrality.^{[citation needed]} The contemporary chronicler Giovanni Villani reports gossip that he had bound himself to King Philip IV of France by a formal accord before his elevation, made at Saint-Jean-d'Angély in Saintonge.

Whether this was true or not, it is likely that the future pope had conditions laid down for him by the conclave of cardinals.

Two weeks later at Vienne, Bertrand was informally notified of his election and returned to Bordeaux.

Clement V reigned as pope from to He was the first pope of the "Babylonian Captivity," when the papacy was located in Avignon, France. He became archbishop of Bordeaux in His election to the papacy in followed the pontificate of Boniface VIII and the brief rule of Benedict XIduring which a prolonged quarrel between France and the papacy culminated in Boniface's capture and mistreatment by henchmen of the French king, Philip IV, at Anagni, Italy, in

At Bordeaux he was formally commended as Pope, with John of Havering offering him gifts from Edward I of England. Bertrand initially selected Vienne as the site for his coronation, but after Philip IV's objections selected Lyon. On 14 November , Bertrand was installed as pope which was celebrated with magnificence and attended by Philip IV.

Among his first acts was the creation of nine French cardinals.

At Clement's coronation, John II, Duke of Brittany was foremost the Pope's horse through the crowd during the celebrations. So many spectators had piled atop the walls that one of the walls crumbled and collapsed on top of the Duke, who died four days later.

Pontificate

Clement V and the Knights Templar

Early in , Clement V explained away those features of the Papal bullClericis Laicos that might seem to apply to the king of France and essentially withdrew Unam Sanctam, the bull of Boniface VIII that asserted papal supremacy over secular rulers and threatened Philip's political plans, a radical change in papal policy.

Clement spent most of the year at Bordeaux because of ill-health. Subsequently, he resided at Poitiers and elsewhere.

On Friday, 13 October , hundreds of the Knights Templar were arrested in France, an activity apparently motivated financially and undertaken by the efficient royal bureaucracy to increase the prestige of the crown.

Philip IV was the force behind this relocate, but it has also embellished the historical reputation of Clement V. From the very time of Clement V's coronation, the king charged the Templars with usury, credit inflation, fraud, heresy, sodomy, immorality, and abuses, and the scruples of the Pope were heightened by a growing sense that the burgeoning French State might not wait for the Church but would proceed independently.^[10]

Meanwhile, Philip IV's lawyers pressed to reopen Guillaume de Nogaret's charges of heresy against the late Boniface VIII that had circulated in the pamphlet war around the bull Unam sanctam.

Clement V had to yield to pressures for this remarkable trial, begun on 2 February at Avignon, which dragged on for two years. In the document that called for witnesses, Clement V expressed both his personal conviction of the innocence of Boniface VIII and his resolution to satisfy the king.

Finally, in February , Philip IV wrote to Clement V abandoning the process to the future Council of Vienne. For his part, Clement V absolved all the participants in the abduction of Boniface at Anagni.^[10]

In pursuance of the king's wishes, Clement V in summoned the Council of Vienne, which refused to convict the Templars of heresy.

The Pope abolished the order anyway, as the Templars seemed to be in awful repute and had outlived their usefulness as papal bankers and protectors of pilgrims in the East.

False charges of heresy and sodomy set aside, the guilt or innocence of the Templars is one of the more difficult historical problems, partly because of the atmosphere of hysteria that had built up in the preceding generation (marked by habitually intemperate language and extravagant denunciations exchanged between temporal rulers and churchmen), partly because the subject has been embraced by conspiracy theorists and quasi-historians.^[11]

Crusades and relations with the Mongols

See also: Franco-Mongol alliance

Clement sent John of Montecorvino to Beijing to preach in China.^[12]

Clement engaged intermittently in communications with the Mongol Empire towards the possibility of creating a Franco-Mongol alliance against the Muslims.

In April , the Mongol Ilkhan ruler Öljaitü sent an embassy led by Buscarello de Ghizolfi to Clement, Philip IV of France, and Edward I of England. In , another Mongol embassy led by Tommaso Ugi di Siena reached European monarchs.

Clement V Bertrand de Got was born to a wine-making family in France, before rising to grow the Archbishop of Bordeaux no relation to the King of Beers. His older brother had been a cardinal and a vintner, and Bertie had lived the good life as a medieval bishop -- studying statute, the arts, and the science of grapes, with theology almost an afterthought. Philip known as "the Fair" for his David Lee Roth-like locks had been making life miserable for Pope Boniface VIII, with whom the monarch had differed over the issue of whether priests should pay taxes. Boniface was of the opinion that rendering unto Caesar was strictly for losers.

However, no coordinated military deed was forthcoming and hopes of alliance petered out within a few years.^{[citation needed]}

In , Clement ordered the preaching of a crusade to be launched against the Mamluk Sultanate in the Holy Land in the spring of This resulted in the unwanted Crusade of the Impoverished appearing before Avignon in July Clement granted the poor crusaders an indulgence but refused to let them participate in the professional expedition led by the Hospitallers.

That expedition set off in early , but instead of sailing for the Spiritual Land, the Hospitallers conquered the city of Rhodes from the Byzantines.^[13]

On 4 April , a Crusade was promulgated by Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne.

Another embassy was sent by Oljeitu to the West and to Edward II of England in The matching year, Philip IV "took the cross", making the vow to go on a Crusade in the Levant.^[14]

Relations with Rome

In Rally , the entire papal court moved from Poitiers to the Comtat Venaissin, around the urban area of Avignon.

This move, actually to Carpentras, the capital of the territory, was justified at the time by French apologists on grounds of security, since Rome, where the dissensions of the Roman aristocrats and their armed militia had reached a nadir and the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano had been destroyed in a energy, was unstable and dangerous.

But the decision proved the precursor of the long Avignon Papacy, the "Babylonian captivity" (–77), in Petrarch's phrase.

Clement V's pontificate was also a disastrous time for Italy. The Papal States were entrusted to a team of three cardinals, but Rome, the battleground of the Colonna and Orsini factions, was ungovernable.

In , the Holy Roman EmperorHenry VII entered Italy, established the Visconti as vicars in Milan, and was crowned by Clement V's legates in Rome in before he died near Siena in ^[11]

In Ferrara, which was taken into the Papal States to the exclusion of the Este family, papal armies clashed with the Republic of Venice and its populace.

When excommunication and interdict failed to possess their intended effect, Clement V preached a crusade against the Venetians in May , declaring that Venetians captured abroad might be sold into slavery, prefer non-Christians.^[15]

Later career and death

In his relations to the Empire, Clement was an opportunist.

Clement V (born c. , Bordelais region, France—died April 20, , Roquemaure, Provence) was the pope from to who, in choosing Avignon, France, for the papal residence—where it flourished until —became the first of the Avignonese popes.

He refused to use his full influence in favour of the candidacy of Charles of Valois, brother of Philip IV, lest France became too powerful; and recognized Henry of Luxemburg, whom his representatives crowned emperor at the Lateran in When Henry, however, came into fight with Robert of Naples, Clement supported Robert and threatened the emperor with excommunication and interdict.

But the crisis passed with the unexpected death of Henry.

Other remarkable incidents of Clement V's reign include his violent repression of the Dulcinians in Lombardy, which he considered a heresy, and his promulgation of the Clementine Constitutions in ^[17]

Clement died on 20 April According to one account, while his body was lying in state, a thunderstorm arose during the overnight and lightning struck the church where his body lay, setting it on fire.^[a] The energy was so intense that by the time it was extinguished, the Pope's body had been all but destroyed.

He was buried at the collegiate church in Uzeste close to his birthplace in Villandraut as laid down in his will.

See also

Notes

References

Sources

• Baumgartner, Frederic ().
  Pope Clement V was the th pope and one of several popes born in France. He reigned for more than eight years and is known for a papal bull issued against the Knights Templar. This article looks at his election and other details about the pope. Pope Clement V was born sometime around in the Kingdom of France to a family who had a close relationship with the Church.

  Behind Locked Doors: A History of the Papal elections. Palgrave Macmillan.

• Bombi, Barbara (). Anglo-Papal Relations in the Early Fourteenth Century: A Study in Medieval Diplomacy. Oxford University Press.
• Chamberlin, E.

  R. ().

  Pope Clement V (Latin: Clemens Quintus; c. – 20 April ), born Raymond Bertrand de Got (also occasionally spelled de Guoth and de Goth), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 5 June to his death, in April

  The Bad Popes. New York: Barnes & Noble. ISBN&#;.

• Davidson, Basil, The African Slave Trade revised ed., , Boston&#;: Brown Little
• Duffy, Eamon. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ISBN&#;
• Howarth, Stephen.

  The Knights Templar. New York: Barnes and Noble, ISBN&#;

• Le Moyne de La Borderie, Arthur (), Histoire de Bretagne, J. Plihon et L. Hommay
• Menache, Sophia (). Clement V. Cambridge University Press.

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• Richard, Jean, Histoire des croisades, Fayard, ISBN&#;

Further reading

• Maxwell-Stuart, P. G. Chronicle of the Popes: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Papacy over Years. London: Thames & Hudson, ISBN&#;

External links