Antipope Clement VII

Robert of Geneva ordered the massacre at Cesena and then, as Clement VII, became the first pope of the Great Schism. He was of the comital house of Geneva, related to most of the ruling families of France and Savoy, made a bishop at nineteen and a cardinal at about thirty. Gregory XI sent him to Italy as legate in the war of the Eight Saints, where the papacy was trying to hold its territories against a Florentine-led coalition. At Cesena in February 1377, after the townspeople killed some of his Breton mercenaries, he promised an amnesty, brought John Hawkwood's company inside the walls, and had the town put to the sword; contemporaries put the dead between two and five thousand, and the episode was known across Europe as the Cesena bloodbath. A year later Gregory XI was dead, the Roman crowd surrounded the conclave demanding an Italian pope, and the cardinals elected Urban VI. Urban proved so violent and erratic towards them that within months the same cardinals declared the election void as made under duress, and elected Robert instead. He took the name Clement VII and withdrew to Avignon. Europe divided along political lines - France, Scotland, Castile, Aragon and Naples for Avignon; England, the Empire, Hungary and most of Italy for Rome - and the schism outlasted him by twenty-three years, ending only at the Council of Constance in 1417. He is counted an antipope, which is a judgement made afterwards by the side that won; the Medici pope who took the same name in 1523 is Clement VII in the official list. John Hawkwood, the English mercenary who carried out the Cesena massacre for him, afterwards changed sides to Florence and is buried in its cathedral. Catherine of Siena wrote against Clement in the strongest terms. He died at Avignon in 1394 and the cardinals there elected Benedict XIII rather than end the schism.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history