364

THE GLORY OF CHRISTENDOM

POPESAWAYFROMROME 365
Avignon and lived luxuriously there though he does not seem to have been personally avaricious, 25 gave
particular offense to the "Spiritual Franciscans" who in turn gave particular offense to him. He had
condemned them and their practices in two bulls in 1317 and another in 1323. 1 In his Appeal of
Sachsenhausen issued in May 1324, Louis of Bavaria took their side, accusing John XXII of a fixed
determination to destroy "perfect poverty," along with denying the necessity of papal recognition of the Holy
Roman Emperor, calling the Pope an oppressor in Italy and even a heretic, and demanding a council27
But neither hard words nor soft would move Pope John XXII from the position he had taken. On July
4, 1324 he declared Louis was not and would never be Emperor, and that he would be deprived of Bavaria
and all his other fiefs if he did not give up his imperial claims by October 1. For more than two years Louis
sought a compromise. Frederick of Austria was amenable, but the Pope was not. Once convinced of this, in
1327 Louis appeared with Marsilio of Padua at an assembly of Ghibellines in Trent on the northern border of
Italy. He declared Pope John XXII unworthy of his office and withdrew recognition of him as Pope. He
swore to lead an army into Italy and to Rome. The Pope responded immediately, ordering Louis to leave Italy
within two months and appear at Avignon on October 1 for sentence, depriving him of his imperial fiefs,
condemning him as a public supporter of heretics, and excommunicating Marsilio of Padua along with a
number of Louis' other closest associates. 28
In May 1327 the angry imperial claimant came to Milan where he received the storied old Iron Crown of
Lombardy. The next January the Pope proclaimed a crusade against him (there were still traces of the
crusading ideal left, enough to captivate a king of France in the next decade, but such proclamations did not
improve their chances of survival). That same month Louis arrived in Rome and was crowned in St. Peter's.
Marsilio of Padua was in attendance. None other than old "Sciarra" Colonna, who had done his best to take the
life of Pope Boniface VIII, placed the imperial diadem on Louis' head. We may see the hands of Marsilio and
Sciarra in Louis' next and wildest statement a few days later, declaring Pope John XXII "deposed by Christ"
and deprived of clerical orders by Louis' authority. An antipope was set up, the "Spiritual Franciscan" friar
Pietro Rainalducci of Corbara, who took the name "Nicholas V." Marsilio was put in charge of Rome, where he
persecuted the clergy who refused to cooperate with Louis and with him, and fed the prior of the Augustinians
at San Trifone to the lions in the Capitol, just as the persecuting emperors of Rome had done. But in August,
the traditional dying month for Germans in Rome, they all left the city, while the antipope amused
Mollat, Popes atAvignon, p. 14. 26Ibid, p. 16.
2
'Ibid, p. 26; Cambridge Medieval History, III, 120-121.

Mollat, Popes atAvignon, pp. 97-98; Cambridge Medieval History, VII, 119, 123.
28

himself by condemning a dummy of Pope John XXII as a heretic, depriving it of its insignia of office and
"turning it over to the secular arm."29
In the year 1328 the Franciscan philosopher William of Ockham, whose nominalist doctrine that the
attributes and actions of God were impenetrable to human reason, therefore in effect denying the whole science
of theology which St. Thomas Aquinas had devoted his life to advancing, escaped from Avignon where he had
been imprisoned for heresy because of his doctrine. After going first to Italy, by 1330 he had made his way to
Emperor Louis' court at Munich. Evidently he found its intellectual atmosphere pleasing, for he remained there
for the rest of his life, some twenty years.3°
Meanwhile there had been unsettling political changes in both England and France. Edward II, an
essentially incompetent ruler, had virtually turned his government over to a father and son both named Hugh
Despenser. The Despensers' accumulation of lands for themselves and their virtually complete control of
access to the king increasingly angered the rest of the nobility. In August 1321 the barons marched on London
and forced Edward to banish both Despensers from the kingdom, an action hitherto taken only against foreign-
born noblemen. But neither Despenser actually left English-ruled territory; the elder went to Bordeaux in
Gascony, part of the hereditary domain in France of the English monarchs whose title derived from that of
Eleanor of Aquitaine, while the younger found refuge in one of the English Channel ports where he was
protected by some of the King's men. In December Edward revoked the decree for their exile; in March 1322
he proclaimed the leading nobleman in the country, the Earl of Lancaster, and his chief adherents rebels and
traitors for negotiating with the Scots. Taken by surprise, Lancaster was captured after a battle, convicted
under martial law with no opportunity to defend himself, and executed. So were 62 other noblemen; the
vindictive Edward (or Despenser) also imprisoned many of their wives and children and even several of their
mothers. The nation sullenly accepted this outcome for the time being, but resentment against the bumbling but
vicious king was now too deep to be eradicated.
1

In the same year as Edward II's executions, King Philip V of France died as unexpectedly as had his
brother. Like his brother, he left no sons. Though he had five daughters instead of his brother's one, it was now
accepted in France that women could not inherit the throne. Therefore Philip's brother Charles took the throne
without protest as King Charles IV. He too had no sons, but he was young and could still beget them. No one
imagined that all
ollat, Popes atAvignon, pp. 206, 208-210, 212-213, 216-217; Cambridge Medieval History, VII, 123-124.
3°
McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 509.

Natalie Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II, 1321-1326 (Cambridge, England, 1979), pp. 27-64;
31

McKisack, Fourteenth Century, pp. 61-70.