As Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand de Got was a subject of the King of England,[3] but from early youth he had been a personal friend ofPhilip the Fair.
Following the death ofPope Benedict XI in July 1304, there was aninterregnum occasioned by disputes between the French and Italiancardinals. They were equally balanced in thepapal conclave, which was held atPerugia. Bertrand was elected Pope Clement V in June 1305 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 chroniclerGiovanni Villani reports gossip that he had bound himself to KingPhilip IV of France by a formal agreement before his elevation, made atSaint-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 atVienne, Bertrand was informally notified of his election and returned to Bordeaux.[4] At Bordeaux he was formally recognized as pope, with John of Havering offering him gifts from Edward I of England.[5] Bertrand initially selected Vienne as the site for hiscoronation, but after Philip IV's objections selectedLyon.[5] On 14 November 1305, Bertrand was installed as pope which was celebrated with magnificence and attended by Philip IV.[6] Among his first acts was the creation of nine French cardinals.[7]
DukeJohn II of Brittany led Clement's horse through the crowd during the coronation 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.[8]
Early in 1306, Clement V explained away those features of thePapal bullClericis Laicos that might seem to apply to the king of France and essentially withdrewUnam 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.[9] Clement spent most of the year 1306 at Bordeaux because of ill-health. Subsequently, he resided atPoitiers and elsewhere.
On Friday, 13 October 1307, hundreds of theKnights Templar were arrested in France, an action apparently motivated financially and undertaken by the efficient royal bureaucracy to increase the prestige of the crown. Philip IV was the force behind this move, but it has also embellished the historical reputation of Clement V. From the very day 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 reopenGuillaume de Nogaret's charges of heresy against the lateBoniface VIII that had circulated in the pamphlet war around the bullUnam sanctam. Clement V had to yield to pressures for this extraordinary trial, begun on 2 February 1309 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 1311, 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 atAnagni.[10]
In pursuance of the king's wishes, Clement V in 1311 summoned theCouncil of Vienne, which refused to convict the Templars of heresy. The Pope abolished the order anyway, as the Templars seemed to be in bad repute and had outlived their usefulness as papal bankers and protectors of pilgrims in the East.
False charges of heresy andsodomy 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]
In 1308, Clement ordered the preaching of a crusade to be launched against theMamluk Sultanate in the Holy Land in the spring of 1309. This resulted in the unwantedCrusade of the Poor appearing before Avignon in July 1309. Clement granted the poor crusaders an indulgence but refused to let them participate in the professional expedition led by theHospitallers. That expedition set off in early 1310, but instead of sailing for the Holy Land, the Hospitallersconquered the city of Rhodes from theByzantines.[13]
On 4 April 1312, a Crusade was promulgated by Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne. Another embassy was sent by Oljeitu to the West and toEdward II of England in 1313. The same year,Philip IV "took the cross", making the vow to go on a Crusade in theLevant.[14]
In March 1309, the entire papal court moved from Poitiers to theComtat Venaissin, around the city ofAvignon.[1] This move, actually toCarpentras, 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 anadir and theBasilica di San Giovanni in Laterano had been destroyed in a fire, was unstable and dangerous. But the decision proved the precursor of the longAvignon Papacy, the "Babylonian captivity" (1309–77), inPetrarch's phrase.[1]
Clement V's pontificate was also a disastrous time for Italy. ThePapal States were entrusted to a team of three cardinals, but Rome, the battleground of theColonna andOrsini factions, was ungovernable. In 1310, theHoly Roman EmperorHenry VII entered Italy, established theVisconti asvicars inMilan, and was crowned by Clement V's legates in Rome in 1312 before he died nearSiena in 1313.[11]
InFerrara, which was taken into the Papal States to the exclusion of theEste family, papal armiesclashed with theRepublic of Venice and its populace. Whenexcommunication andinterdict failed to have their intended effect, Clement V preached acrusade against the Venetians in May 1309, declaring that Venetians captured abroad might be sold into slavery, like non-Christians.[15]
In his relations to the Empire, Clement was an opportunist. He refused to use his full influence in favour of the candidacy ofCharles of Valois, brother of Philip IV, lest France became too powerful; and recognizedHenry of Luxemburg, whom his representatives crowned emperor at the Lateran in 1312. When Henry, however, came into conflict withRobert of Naples, Clement supported Robert and threatened the emperor with excommunication and interdict.[16] But the crisis passed with the unexpected death of Henry.[16]
Other remarkable incidents of Clement V's reign include his violent repression of theDulcinians inLombardy, which he considered a heresy, and his promulgation of theClementine Constitutions in 1313.[17]
Clement died on 20 April 1314.[18] According to one account, while his body was lying in state, a thunderstorm arose during the night and lightning struck the church where his body lay, setting it on fire.[a] The fire was so intense that by the time it was extinguished, the Pope's body had been all but destroyed.[20] He was buried at the collegiate church inUzeste close to his birthplace in Villandraut as laid down in his will.[19]
^Gábor Bradács, "Crusade of the Poor (1309)", in Jeffrey M. Shaw and Timothy J. Demy (eds.),War and Religion: An Encyclopedia of Faith and Conflict, 3 vols. (ABC-CLIO, 2017), vol. 1, pp. 211–212.
Maxwell-Stuart, P. G.Chronicle of the Popes: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Papacy over 2000 Years. London: Thames & Hudson, 1997.ISBN978-0-500-01798-2
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