Pope John XXII

Jacques Duèze reigned as John XXII from 1316 to 1334, the second and longest-serving of the Avignon popes, and he was seventy-two when elected after a conclave that took over two years. He was a lawyer from Cahors and an administrator of formidable capacity. He reorganised papal finance so thoroughly that the papacy's income under him exceeded that of most kingdoms, largely through fees, annates and the sale of offices, and he lived accordingly at Avignon. His pontificate produced two long quarrels. The first was with the Spiritual Franciscans, who held that Christ and the apostles had owned nothing; John declared the doctrine heretical in 1323, which turned a dispute about poverty into a confrontation with much of his own order and drove William of Ockham into opposition. The second was with Louis IV of Bavaria over the imperial election, which ended with John excommunicating Louis, Louis invading Italy, and an antipope being set up in Rome. He also pursued heresy and sorcery vigorously, licensing inquisitors against both. Near the end of his life he preached that the souls of the blessed do not see God until the Last Judgement, which caused an uproar among theologians, and he retracted it on his deathbed. He is one of the very few popes to have been accused of heresy by his own university of Paris. He is also the pope of the legend that he was an alchemist, on the strength of a treatise falsely attributed to him and of the very large fortune he left. He was succeeded by Benedict XII, who formally settled the beatific vision question against him within a year.

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