Pope Gregory XI

Gregory XI moved the papacy back from Avignon to Rome in 1377 and died fourteen months later, leaving the return unconsolidated and the church about to split in two. He was a Frenchman, made a cardinal at nineteen by his uncle Clement VI, and was the last French pope and the last of the seven who had ruled from Avignon since 1309. The Avignon papacy was not a captivity in any literal sense - the popes went willingly and governed the church efficiently from there - but it was widely seen as a French appendage, and the taxation required to run it made the machinery unpopular across Europe. Two people are usually credited with persuading him to go: Catherine of Siena, who came to Avignon in 1376 on a diplomatic errand from Florence and told him to his face, and his own conviction that the Papal States were being lost. He had spent his pontificate fighting the war of the Eight Saints against Florence, and his legate Robert of Geneva had massacred several thousand people at Cesena in 1377 using Breton mercenaries. He entered Rome in January 1377 to a city in ruins and a population that had not had a pope in living memory. He died in March 1378. The Roman crowd surrounded the conclave demanding an Italian; the cardinals elected Urban VI, then declared the election invalid under duress and elected Robert of Geneva as Clement VII, who returned to Avignon. Europe had two popes for the next thirty-nine years, and briefly three. Catherine of Siena was canonised in 1461 and made a Doctor of the Church in 1970. Gregory XI is buried in Santa Francesca Romana in Rome. He condemned nineteen propositions of John Wycliffe in 1377, which is the beginning of the process that reached Jan Hus.

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