Foundations of the Anglican Church LXIV

The Chapel Royal at Saint James Palace

The dissolution of the monasteries and the confiscation of their lands, buildings, and treasure was the most successful part of Henry’s raid on Church wealth to increase the wealth of the Crown, but it was not his first nor his only successful scheme to enrich the royal treasury from the Church’s immense wealth. 
To recap the problem: the Church had immense wealth—approximately one third of the land in England belonged to the Church and its revenues (mostly rents from tenants) went to the Church and did so without being taxable by the Crown.  The Crown, on the other hand, was desperately short of funds.  Henry was transforming England from a feudal kingdom to one of the first modern nation states (along with Spain and France, England’s traditional rivals/enemies.)  Henry knew he needed a Navy if he was to expand England’s trade and explore for both new markets and natural resources for manufacturing.  He also needed a Navy if he was to be able to defend England, particularly from Spain whose vast American Empire had required her to develop an unparalleled naval fleet.  Henry was not, for the most part, interested in foreign wars but he also needed a standing army if the Crown were to hold its own against the threats of the feudal nobility that were determined to preserve their traditional prerogatives against the centralized Government Henry was building.  To build that governmental machinery, Henry cultivated a new class of civil servants—drawing not on the old feudal families that had traditionally been ministers of state, but on the rural gentry and urban business classes whose sons had been sent to university to study law.  Henry vastly expanded the Civil Service to make royal government more efficient.  Where was he to get the resources to pay for this new England?  There could be no new taxation without Parliamentary consent.  The nobility in the House of Lords did not support the King because his plans were undermining their power.  The Commons were reluctant to vote new taxes because the burden fell on them and on their home constituency. They wanted the advantages of expanded government—increased commerce, more efficient judicial processes, better national security and defense—but they didn’t want it to come from their pockets. (I know: this does sound like a Democratic President with a Republican Congress and its fears of “big government,” but as Quoheleth said, “there is nothing new under the sun.”)   Henry had to look for existing wealth he could tap and the Church was replete with it. 
Henry began by seizing a number of ecclesiastical properties.  As mentioned in a previous post he took Wolsey’s country palace at Hampton Court, upriver from London, but he also took his London residence, York Place, which he renamed Whitehall and which became Henry’s principal London Residence. The problem in taking York Place, however, was that it wasn’t Wolsey’s personal property but the property of the Archbishopric of York (Wolsey was Archbishop of York) and which by right should have gone to Edward Lee, the next Archbishop of York for his use in London. Henry also seized Durham House, the London residence of the Bishops of Durham, from his submissive bishop of Durham, Cuthbert Tunstall.  This was not a punishment—Tunstall signed the Oath of Supremacy without complaint—and the King promised Tunstall Coldharbour in return, but never delivered on the promise.  Henry also disbanded the Leprosarium of Saint James and built a palace of the same name on the site.  The Palace of Saint James, though not used as the residence of the Sovereign since the accession of Victoria in 1837, remains in use today. Prince Charles long had his London residence there before moving to Clarence House.  The body of Charles’ ex-wife, Diana, lay there before her funeral in 1997. And their grandson, Prince George was baptized there this past October.     
In addition to seizing London properties belonging to bishops and abbots—most of which he turned to his private use—Henry forced cash settlements from the hierarchy.  In 1530 Convocation, the assembly of bishops and abbots, were charged with violations of the Statutes of Praemunire.  In the 14^th century Parliament passed a number of laws limiting papal power in England.  The Statute of Provisors (1306) forbad the sending out of England of revenue for any sort of tax, tribute, or fee imposed by a religious authority.  This would mean that such fees as Peter’s Pence, annates, or any fees paid to the Holy See were illegal.  (Annates were the monies paid to the Holy See when a cleric was appointed to his office—usually the first year’s salary.  In other words, a Bishop, a Cathedral Dean, an Abbot or another Churchman whose appointment required a papal confirmation was required by the Holy See to send to Rome the equivalent of his salary for his first year in office.  These amounts could be quite considerable.  The Statute of Provisors forbad this as well as other fees being sent abroad.)   
The 1353 Statute of Praemunire forbad filing an appeal to any Court outside England, including the Papal Court.  Thus it was forbidden to send any matter—such as a petition for annulment—to Rome for settlement.  In addition to annulments (which were rare) there were many cases where bishops or lower clergy appealed to Rome to settle matters of jurisdictional dispute or other questions that could not be handled by English courts—civil or ecclesiastical.  A further statute passed in 1393 forbad appealing to Rome or paying the Holy See for papal bulls, excommunications, or the translation of a prelate from one benefice to another.  These laws, along with several others that had been designed to limit the growth of Papal power in England but which had never been seriously enforced, compromised the entire hierarchy.  Every single Bishop and Abbot, as well as most Cathedral deans, had sent the required monies to Rome to obtain the bulls authorizing their consecration or abbatial blessing.  Every one of them had paid their annates.  Many of them had paid the fees that allowed them to transfer from one deanery to a better paying one, or one diocese to a wealthier one. Many clergy—not only bishops, abbots, and deans—had filed suits in a Roman Court.  The entire hierarchy stood guilty of a breach of law and the punishment declared them outlaws and the properties escheat to the Crown.  Moreover, not only were they to be punished, but their notaries and advisors were guilty and subject to punishment as well.  As I said, these laws had never been enforced but now Henry turned to Parliament—whose laws these were—and Parliament graciously decreed that should the clergy pay a fine of £118,000, punishment would be waived. 
Using the pension of £5 per annum paid to monks of suppressed abbeys in the 1537-41 dissolution of the monasteries as a guide, £118,000 would be worth approximately 475 million dollars in today’s cost of living.  (It is very difficult to give an accurate translation of cost from 1530 Tudor England to 2014 United States.  The actual value of the pound sterling, based on its silver content, would not be so high as to equal 475,000.000 USD 2014—perhaps the value would be about £27,500,000 in today’s British currency, or about 44,000.000 USD.   But you need to remember that a respectable 1540 salary for an English worker with which to support his family might be £8 a year.  Taking that as a base to translate the Pound Sterling for cost of living impact, you would come up with £295,000.000 or 475,000,000 USD.) 
This payment of £118,000 was only the beginning of Henry’s looting the Church coffers. A 1532 Act of Parliament reduced the amount of money sent to Rome for Annates and other fees to 5%.  1534 was a banner year for the Royal Coffers.  In the winter of that year, Parliament decreed that all monies formerly sent to Rome were now to go to the royal coffers.  In March that same year Parliament decreed that the Peter’s pence was no longer to be sent to Rome.  Later in the spring, Parliament then passed An Act Concerning the Archbishop of Canterbury, declaring that the power of dispensation formerly belonging to the Pope was now derived from the King’s authority and was to be exercised by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It further decreed that the King was to be given 2/3 of any revenue from dispensations. That same spring it then taxed the clergy ten percent of their income to the Crown.  The Act of Supremacy passed in November 1534 and generally considered the definitive break with Rome granted the Crown all monies formerly sent to Rome.  By this point, Henry had squeezed the Dioceses and secular clergy dry and so he then turned to the religious with the suppression of the monasteries. 

Saint Peter's Basilica and Martin Luther.

This fresco in one of the Roman basilicas is the only

surviving depiction of Old St' Peter's which was torn

down by Julius II to build the current St, Peter's.

Well, the Rome of Julius II was a busy place.  The south-west pier of what was to be the central dome was rising up behind and towering over Old Saint Peter’s.  This would be one of the four piers that would support the central dome.  The old basilica was still standing and in fact being used, but the plan was for the new one was to grow up around and over it.  As his rival (and nemesis) Bramante was supervising the building plans, Michelangelo was collecting marble in a vast workyard –wagonload upon wagonload of marble from Cararra, tons of marble, to be used for the 40 larger-than-life figures that were to adorn the tomb.  Julius was expanding the Vatican Palace and hiring Raphael—a friend of Bramante’s—to decorate the suite of rooms that he had built for himself overlooking the Belvedere courtyard.  Meanwhile, Raphael and Bramante were conspiring together to bring down Bramante’s rival, Michelangelo and they persuaded the pope to abandon, at least for the present, the project  of his tomb have Michelangelo, a sculptor and not a painter, fresco the ceiling of the chapel that Julius’ uncle, Pope Sixtus IV, had built some thirty years before.  Michelangelo was not happy about this change in project—he was even more dedicated to the tomb project that Julius, its future occupant (or so Julius thought).  All this was enormously expensive.  The first year’s construction cost over 12,000 ducats.  The second year’s building more than doubled that to just under 30,000.  To give you an idea of cost—a middle class family income might be about 40 ducats a year.  That would translate to approximately 15,000,000 the first year and 35,000.000 the second.  This is not to complete the church—far from it.  The Church was to take approximately 105 years to complete and while every year’s projects may not be as intensive as this first year, all they had to show at this point—50,000,000 spent—is one pier of the dome!  And that doesn’t include the work on the palace or the tomb.  And there are other projects going on all over Rome—though many are being paid for my various cardinals and princes who, like the pope, were vying for displays of power and wealth. 
     So where is the money going to come from to pay for this basilica?  Welll, there were various sources of income.  The Papal States, like other nations, have taxes.  They also have monopolies on certain items.  Central Italy—the Papal States—contained some of the richest alum mines in the world and alum was a necessity for the dying of cloth and Europe’s economy rested heavily on the cloth trade.  But still—this was barely enough.  Well there were a wide variety of fees coming in to Rome.  Every Archbishop, bishop, abbot, cathedral dean, and other major official needed to have his election or appointment confirmed by the Holy See.  He was expected to pay the “annate”—the first year’s income from his new post—to the Holy See.  Moreover, during the time the see or abbacy or deanery had been empty—its income was frequently appropriated by the Holy See.  Money was flowing into Rome from every part of Europe!  Lots of money!  Renaissances are not cheap!  When kings and dukes and minor nobles needed to have a marriage annulled—well there were fees for that sort of thing.  A university or a cathedral or a monastic foundation required a certain privilege that exempted them from a particular law or obligation or gave them some honor over their peers—it could be arranged, for a price. During the reign of Julius II, a young Augustinian friar was sent down to Rome from Germany on business for his congregation.  Entering the city through the Flaminian Gate—he fell to his knees on the site of today’s Piazza del Popolo (in front of the Church and monastery of Santa Maria del Popolo where he would live for his stay in Rome, and cried “Hail, Holy Rome—thrice Holy for the Blood of the Martyrs shed here.  When he left Rome a month later he had a different opinion. “Everything is for sale in Rome,” he would declare.  And indeed it was!!!  This was the visit of Martin Luther and it established a direct connection between the construction of Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Reformation.      

The Gregorian Reform--Mixed Successes

A Medieval Bishop sits enthroned
holding his crozier or episcopal staff

There were three main projects to the Gregorian Reform: the imposition of celibacy, the elimination of simony, and breaking the imperial or royal authority over bishops.  This final point is referred to as “The Investiture Controversy” and we discussed it briefly in our last posting with the example of William of Saint-Calais, Bishop of Durham, in the reign of William Rufus of England.  We will look at the Investiture issue more in this posting.  But before we do, let’s review the first to goals.
      The Gregorian Reform managed to impose clerical celibacy as the universal law for the Western Church. That is to say, by the end of the eleventh century it was known and accepted as law that clergy above and including the Order of Subdeacon in the Western Church were to be celibate.  Accepted does not mean, however, that the law was enforced, much less complied with.  As mentioned in some earlier posts (July 20, 21, 23, 24, 27, August 9), clerical marriage—of a sort of common-law variety—remained somewhat the norm until the reforms of the Council of Trent.  We often refer to the practice of the clergy having a less than formal (that is to say church-blessed) union as “clerical concubinage” but it should be considered more as common law marriage as the relationships tended to be permanent, exclusive (faithful), fecund (child-bearing), and if not public nor were they secret.   It is only after the sixteenth century that celibacy, though not necessarily chastity, became the practice as well as the law.
      Simony, the purchasing and selling of Church offices, did not have a better fate.  One does not come across it as much after the Gregorian Reform, at least by that name, but in fact it persisted under various guises and indeed still persists in the Church today under the camouflage of well accepted practices.  We will see that in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance huge amounts of money as well as promises of lucrative positions were shelled out to the Cardinal-Electors by papal wanna-bes every time there was a conclave.  When we look at the situation at the time of the Protestant Reformations we will examine the issue of “annates”—the practice of giving the Holy See the first year’s income from one’s new position in return for papal confirmation of the election or appointment.  Can you imagine giving to the Holy See the entire income of the Diocese of Winchester in England for, let us say, 1532?  Or the Archdiocese of Cologne?  One can see why so many supported the breaks with Rome just to keep that  money local.   Today too—and many Catholics are surprised (and even shocked) that it is customary for a newly elevated prelate ranging from Cardinals down through Monsignors in developed societies such as our own to give the Holy See (I refrain from saying “The Pope”) a handsome gift in acknowledgement for their appointment.  Such honorariums can range anywhere from a million dollars for a more important appointment to perhaps ten or fifteen thousand for the monsignoral purple belly-band.  In the case of Cardinals or bishops, these gratuities are usually offered by their dioceses to thank the Holy See for providing new leadership and, to be fair, the gifts offered newly named monsignors by their friends help defray the offering the new domestic prelate or chaplain to His Holiness or whatever makes to our friends across the seas.  Moreover the gifts and fees accruing to a major prelate (not a monsignor) make their gifts to the Holy See affordable.  For example, when a bishop visits a parish for confirmation or comes to a religious community to perform an ordination—priestly or diaconal—the normal gratuity would be between five hundred and a thousand dollars.  Even a casual visit to the parish merits an “Irish hand-shake.” One East Coast Archbishop, when complimented on some expensive cufflinks  that matched his arch-episcopal ring (all three holding a Roman coin from the time of Jesus—also the time of Herod the Great), said “Oh, when you’re an archbishop you don’t pay for these things.”    No, I guess you don’t.  And so it is indeed right and just that the Holy See should be thanked for facilitating a step up into a more gracious life-style.     As Thernadier was inclined to sing in Les Miserables: “But nothing gets you nothing Everything has got a little price!”  It can be argued that this provides necessary income for the Holy See which always has a terrible time balancing its budget—an even tougher time than the United States Government, though more successful than the Feds in the end.  I buy that.  The problem isn’t the financial transaction; the problem is the lack of transparency.  But Catholic Church finances are notoriously non-transparent, excepting for some religious orders of women who are way ahead of the pack in knowing what the Church needs today for genuine Reformation. 
     Well—on to the Investiture Conflict.  You know, I don’t think we have time for that today after all.  Let me set it up and we will continue it in the next posting.   The problem is that, as I described yesterday, the custom had arisen of the Emperor, or a King, or even a major nobleman “investing” bishops and abbots in their respective empires, kingdoms, or duchies with the insignia of office.  This implied that the prelate received his jurisdiction and authority not from God (or from God’s Church) but from the secular lord.  Indeed, the problem was even more serious.  In fact it was usually the Emperor, King, or major noble who instructed the cathedral chapter (or in the case of abbots, the monastic chapter) for whom to vote in the election.  Church offices were in the gift of the political authority and this threatened the independence of the Church.  It also, and this was even more to the point, threatened the loyalty of the bishop or abbot to the Holy See should a dispute arise between the secular power and the Church, as it indeed often did.  Thus Gregory VII—who is my second favorite pope in history—undertook to break this practice of imperial/royal investiture and so he took on the Emperor, Henry IV.  But that is for our next posting.        

The Roots of the Reformation III: Long before Luther

Howden Minster, an English
pre-Reformation Chuch

John Wycliffe is another proto-Protestant—one of those religious leaders who anticipated Luther in calling for a reform of the Church and whose preaching and teaching led to the formation, not of an alternative Church or community of believers, as with Peter Waldo and his Waldensians, but of groups of followers who existed as a dissenting movement that technically remained within the Catholic Church but without subscribing to many of its doctrines. 

Wycliffe, born 1328, was a Yorkshire man from the North of England which always had a different religious tradition than London and the southern counties, a tradition that looked less to Rome for leadership and a stronger sense of both Englishness and of the distinctive “Ecclesia Anglicana” heritage.  He was a scholar at Baliol College, Oxford where he studied mathematics, natural philosophy (the physical sciences), English and Roman Law, English history, theology and Philosophy.   This was an amazing spectrum of studies and he could well be called a Renaissance man although there was as yet no Renaissance, at least in England. Philosophically, he was a disciple of Ockham and the Nominalists and as such he was what we would call today, a deconstructionist.   He rejected “realism” and thus such doctrines as “transubstantion” did not sit easy with him.  Indeed, the one source of authority he recognized was The Bible—to which he had great devotion and which he managed to have translated in its entirety to English (from the Latin Vulgate) so as to be accessible to the common people.  His study of scripture convinced him that many of the doctrines of the Church—such as papal supremacy—were unsubstantiated by Scripture or even contrary to it.  Moreover, he differed from Catholic orthodoxy on several other points.  Influenced by the ancient Donatist doctrines, for example, he believed that the efficacy of the sacraments depended on the worthiness of the minister.

Despite his lack of strict religious orthodoxy, he was recognized for his academic brilliance and Archbishop Simon Islip appointed him head of Canterbury Hall—an Oxford foundation which was meant to provide education for twelve priests or candidates for priesthood from the Archdiocese of Canterbury.  Islip’s successor, Simon Langham, replaced Wycliffe with a monk, however, and while Wycliffe appealed his case to the papal court the appeal was unsuccessful.  This may account in part for Wycliffe’s turning against both monasticism and the papacy.  

Like many of the Oxbridge dons, Wycliffe was supported by being given “a living” or “a rectory” which meant he was pastor of a parish which paid a handsome salary—handsome enough both to support him in his academic work and to pay for a “vicar” to actually live in the parish and tend to its pastoral needs.  Wycliffe held a number of rectories in his life but probably actually ministered only in the last two-- Ludgershall, Buckinghamshire and Lutterworth in Leistershire.  But from these rectories, when he was no longer teaching at Oxford, he issued a series of pamphlets and other materials that attacked corruption in the Church.  His Donatism shown through in his affirming that the “real” Church was not the represented  by the hierarchy and the visible society of baptized believers, but the association of those believers, known only to God, who were to be saved.  This naturally led him to a doctrine of predestination in which God not only knew but determined who would  be saved and who was to be lost.

Wycliffe not only undermined traditional Catholic Doctrines, but he directly assailed the papacy.  Remember that through most of this time the papacy was located at Avignon, just across the Rhone River from the realms of the King of France but very much under his influence.  The popes were mostly French at this time, as were the majority of the cardinals.  And the French were the enemies of the English.  This was not only the time of the Avignon papacy but of the Hundred Years War between France and England.  Wycliffe’s anti-papal polemics found a patriotic ear among the English. Wycliffe assailed the papacy for its wealth and claimed that various practices such as annates were simply simony.  Annates were the practice by which a man elevated to an ecclesiastical post—bishop, Archbishop, Abbot, even a canon or somewhat minor official—paid the pope the first year’s revenues of his new position.  We will hear much about them in this series.  Simony is the crime/sin of buying and selling Church office.   

As much as Wycliffe hated the papacy he hated monasticism even more.  He was a secular priest and he resented to claims to holiness that the monks made when often they were not only no better than himself and other parish priests, but when in fact they led lives far more indolent.  Initially supported by the Mendicant Orders—who themselves were often in mutual hatred with the Monastic Orders—Wycliffe soon turned on them too for their lack of holiness.  Read the medieval literature, Chaucer, Boccacio and others, and you will see that monks were seen to be lazy gluttonous characters more given to sleep and drink than to prayer, and friars (the mendicants) were womanizers and cheats.  These caricatures did not come out of thin air.  Not all monks were lazy and not all friars were lechers, but there was a need—a serious need—for reform in the clergy. 

The English Church, like the Church most place sin Europe, had great wealth in the centuries before the Reformation.  Bishops and Abbots, by virtue of their office, were great landowners and peers of the Realm.  Generations of bequests, donations, endowments, and monastic dowries—all usually made in grants of income-producing land and properties—made abbeys, cathedrals, and even parish churches very wealthy.  Great Lords and simple yeoman farmers alike were constrained in giving a tenth of the produce of their fields and orchards to the clergy in tithes.  The clergy had other customary charges that brought them revenue—the burial cloths and candles from funerals, wedding and christening fees, stipends for the blessing of fields and vineyards and orchards, and mass offerings.  While parish vicars were often underpaid, rectors of churches—often absentee—could usually count on a handsome income and as for canons, bishops, and other prelates, want was not at their doors.  Wycliffe—himself the holder of comfortable benefices—proposed the sending out of “poor priests” who would preach the gospel to the poor and evangelize the ordinary English man or woman. It would have been a brave step because the Church was losing its credibility fast among the middling sort of folk.   

Wycliffe’s rants were popular for a variety of reasons.  The popes were unpopular due to their alliances with England’s enemies; the Church did control great wealth and vast lands in a society where many were, or perceived themselves to be, on the margins of survival; the clergy needed reform; the English bible nourished people spiritually and rendered the ministrations of the clergy somewhat superficial.    Wycliffe also had a protector in the King’s uncle John of Gaunt who was extremely influential, especially during King Richard’s minority. 

Wycliffe’s ideas were condemned by a synod of English bishops in 1382 but he was not deprived of his living and no action was taken against him in his life time.  He suffered a stroke while attending mass on the Feast of the Holy Innocents in 1384 and died three days later.  But that is not the end of the story. 

We will see that many of his themes—especially the authority of scripture,  popular religion and the role of the Bible, and the wealth of the Church,  will continue to surface and threaten the hegemony of the hierarchical Church.  The failure of the Church to heed the calls to Reform will eventually lead to the struggle of the Reformation.  Hus’ doctrinal ideas on the Eucharist, on the nature of the Church as a “spiritual reality,” on the need for ministers to be men of integrity in order to minister effectively, on scripture alone, and on predestination will survive and later even return with a vengeance.  We will see what happens when the Church fails to “read the signs of the Times” as John XXIII called it to do when he called a Council in our own times.   

Avignon--the pope's home away from Rome.

When the papal court first settled in Avignon, JohnXXII at first took up residence in the Domincan friary. Avignon was not an unimportant city and the major mendicant orders had friaries and churches inside the city but the Dominicans—very strong in what is today southern France because of their preaching crusades against the Cathars—had the largest and most grand. John was not to stay there for long, however, as he was a man of great dreams and viewed the papacy as a world power both in the religious and political dimension. John and his successor Benedict XII undertook the building of a grand palace on a rocky promontory that dominated the city and overlooked the Rhone river below. In many ways the palace created the papacy as we know it. it was an enormously expensive undertaking and one that never seemed—like so many building projects—to come to an end. To fund the palace it became necessary to centralize much of the finances of the Church and centralized finances created a central bureaucracy. The popes began charging taxes and assessments on abbeys, dioceses, and a host of administrative positions. A man (or in the case of an abbess, a woman) who expected to be confirmed in a position to which they had been elected or appointed had to pay a fee—usually an “annate” (the first year’s income of the position) to the papal chancery. Thus a man elected bishop of London by the Cathedral Chapter of his diocese (in this case the Cathedral of Saint Paul’s London) and wanting the pope to confirm the election had to pay the entire first year revenues of the bishopric of London to the papal court. That could amount to the modern equivalent of millions of dollars in larger and more important sees. An abbot or abbess would have to pay the year’s revenues attached to their position. A canon in a cathedral—say Trier or Bologna—would have to pay his first year’s salary—much less than a bishop’s but it adds up fast as the cash comes rolling in. The Master General of the Dominicans wants to grant a Doctorate to a friar teaching in Palermo—he needs to pay a fee to the papal chancery. The Abbot of a monastery in Denmark wants permission to wear the miter—there is a fee for that too. Nothing was free. And it wasn’t only a matter of money, but of power. Those chancery-rat scribes receiving and answering petitions have a lot of discretion in what to pass on quickly and what to lose at the bottom of the pile (as they still do today). People far more important than they are importuning them to speed up their business, offering money and favors for help in getting things done quickly. And each, to show his relative importance, affects a style of dress more elaborate and more courtly than the next fellow. Meanwhile, the palace continues to rise, larger and larger. The original palace, called the palais vieux (old palace) kept being expanded and expanded again into what is now called the palais neuf (new palace). One can see it today. (It is a great tour—and if you can get the night torchlight tour, by all means take it—but only after you have seen the inside in good daylight.)
The central chamber of the palace is the la grande chapelle, the principal chapel where papal ceremonies were held. The guides tell you that it is the same dimensions of today’s Sistine Chapel in the Vatican (which had not been built when this chapel was constructed) but, to be honest, it appears much larger. That may be because of the lack of decoration in the Avignon chapel which could trick the eye into thinking it larger, but frankly I believe the guides are wrong. But there are wonderful series of chambers and courtyards and halls throughout the palace. The popes left Avignon in 1377 to return to Rome, but within two years the Avignon (anti-)popes of the great schism had returned and lived in the palace until 1403. We will eventually do more on the role of Avignon in the Western Schism.

The image today is the great chapel in the papal palace at Avignon