Chapter 59. The Papal Monarchy: From Canossa to Avignon, the Western Schism and the Borgias

Between the Gregorian reform of the 1070s and the Renaissance, the Roman see turned from a client of emperors into a sovereign power. It deposed kings, ran a continental legal system, held territory and raised armies. The library’s sources read this change in two main ways. In Sacred Foundations, the political scientist Anna Grzymała-Busse argues that the medieval papacy’s rivalry with monarchs, and its legal and administrative inventions, gave European states their templates for sovereignty, representation and the rule of law. A second group of works tells the same centuries as a history of scandal and greed: Michael Kerrigan’s Dark History of the Catholic Church, Brenda Ralph Lewis’s Dark History of the Popes and Avro Manhattan’s openly anti-Catholic The Vatican Billions. Charles Freeman’s intellectual history, the Encyclopedia of World History and the illustrated Vatican Secret Archives add narrative and chronology. Vatican Secret Archives is written from inside the Vatican archive tradition and keeps that institutional viewpoint.

Gregory VII and the claim without limits

Grzymała-Busse places the turning point in the 1050s, when the church, “after centuries of control by temporal rulers”, asserted its autonomy, and the western church centralised under an elected pope [Grzymała-Busse, Sacred Foundations, #62062]. Its programme was summed up in one document: “In 1075, Gregory drew up the Dictatus Papae, a collection of twenty-seven papal privileges and prerogatives, including the exclusive right of the pope to use imperial insignia and the insistence that princes kiss the feet of the pope, and the pope’s alone… The Dictatus declared that there were no limits to papal authority, either within or beyond the” church [Grzymała-Busse, #62062]. Freeman also stresses how new the claim was: “Nothing, however, could have prepared western Europe for the astonishing Dictatus Papae of 1075 issued by Hildebrand, now Pope Gregory VII (1073–85)”. He adds that Gregory, like his sixth-century namesake, believed “the Last Judgement at hand” and was alarmed by simony: “I find hardly any bishops who conform” to the canons [Freeman, The Reopening of the Western Mind, #64786].

Freeman also credits Gregory with a doctrine that the crusades would later put into practice: “One of the papal policies that Gregory VII had developed further was the right of Christians to use warfare in the cause of their religion.” He adds: “Of course, in line with Gregory’s insistence on papal absolutism it was left to the papacy to decide what was a suitable war or not” [Freeman, #64786]. Chapter 60 traces how this idea became the crusade.

The Investiture Conflict, Canossa and Worms

“The Investiture Conflict began after Gregory VII prohibited lay investiture in 1075 as part of his broader reform program,” Grzymała-Busse writes. It “first pitted Pope Gregory VII against Henry IV (r. 1054–1105)” and lasted “from 1075 to 1122”. At its core were “the mutually constituted powers of popes and German emperors”. Before the reform, popes had delegated worldly rule to emperors and relied on imperial protection, which limited their authority over their own clergy [Grzymała-Busse, #62062]. The neutral reference account dates the open break to 1076 and Henry IV’s excommunication, and ends it with the Concordat of Worms (1122) between Callixtus II and Henry V. Under the concordat bishops swore fealty to the monarch, who held authority “by the lance”, while the church kept the right to invest them with ring and staff [Wikipedia: Investiture Controversy].

The editors of a Romanian edition of Anselm of Canterbury give a concise chronology. In 1073 Gregory VII was elected, and his pontificate aimed “exclusively” at freeing the church from lay authority. In 1077 the conflict “reached its apogee: through the penance at Canossa the king obtained the lifting of the excommunication only, then, through unfounded claims, to reopen the conflict with the papacy”. Gregory VII died “in exile, at Salerno”, in 1085 [Anselm de Canterbury, De ce s-a făcut Dumnezeu om, #75060, editors’ chronology]. Vatican Secret Archives marks the two endpoints with captions: “CANOSSA CASTLE, where Henry IV humbled himself before Pope Gregory VII”, and “CONCORDAT OF WORMS, 1122, ended the Investiture Controversy”. It notes that the dispute “did not end until 1122, when Pope Callixtus II and Emperor Henry V signed the Concordat of Worms” [Vatican Secret Archives, #68123].

In Grzymała-Busse’s reading, the conflict’s main legacy was legal. Law replaced theology as the justification for each side’s position, popes had superior documentation and expertise, and secular rulers responded by hiring legal experts of their own. Frederick I Barbarossa, for example, used legal argument to claim superiority [Grzymała-Busse, #62062]. She notes that the papal curia was the first to make “the written word the central medium for conducting business” when formal expression otherwise took the form of symbolic action [#62062]. She also shows how much the papacy depended on alliances. “Urban II (r. 1088–99) and Pascal II (r. 1099–1118), threatened with schisms, found it expedient to favor the Normans: when Roger I conquered Sicily, Urban recognized him” [#62062].

Avignon: the papacy in France

The quarrel between Boniface VIII and Philip IV of France ended the papacy’s independence for seventy years. Grzymała-Busse writes that the dispute used “far greater complexity and maturity of concepts” than the earlier imperial conflict, since Gregory VII had not yet used the notion of plenitudo potestatis [#62062]. The Encyclopedia of World History records that “Pope Clement V, heavily influenced by King Philip IV, moves the papacy to Avignon, France”. It defines the “Avignonese papacy” as the reign of eight popes who ruled from Avignon until 1378 in a fortified palace “and lived in luxury”. It adds that, because the move was forced, the period “is also called the Avignonese Captivity, or Exile” [Social, Encyclopedia of World History, #5204, “Avignonese papacy”].

Kerrigan gives the political background. Nicholas IV was drawn into Colonna and Angevin politics. Celestine V abdicated after five months in 1295, was hunted down by his successor and died in prison. The kidnapping attempt of 1303, the “Outrage” organised by Sciarra Colonna and Guillaume de Nogaret, preceded Boniface’s death. Clement V, formerly Archbishop of Bordeaux, “never so much as visited Rome”, transferred the papal seat to Avignon in 1309 and created nineteen French cardinals [Kerrigan, Dark History of the Catholic Church, #71131, ch. 4]. Two errors in the library edition should be noted: it calls Boniface VIII “Boniface III”, and in the same chapter it dates Charlemagne’s coronation to 774. Kerrigan quotes Petrarch’s attack on Avignon as “the false guilt-laden Babylon, the forge of lies, the horrible prison, the hell on Earth”. He also reports, as a rumour of the time, that Gregory XI “was widely believed to have been Clement VI’s son” [#71131, ch. 4].

On the return to Rome, Kerrigan offers a political explanation: “the return to Rome when it came was not to be dictated by religious reasons but by the Church’s mounting fear that it might lose its lands in Italy. Instability in the country encouraged Pope Gregory XI to intervene before one of the warring aristocrats decided to help himself to the Papal States – those territories supposedly gifted to the Church under the ‘Donation of Constantine'” [Kerrigan, #71131, ch. 4]. Gregory went to Rome in 1377 and died there in 1378. Under pressure from the Roman crowd, the cardinals elected the Italian Urban VI.

The Western Schism

Kerrigan writes that Urban VI’s zeal as a reformer alienated the cardinals, and that “Charles V accordingly endowed his own ‘Pope’, Clement VII… this new ‘Western Schism’ carved western Christendom in two.” The Council of Pisa (1408) “made matters even worse – for a time the Church boasted not just two Popes but three” – until Martin V was recognised in 1417 [Kerrigan, #71131, ch. 4]. The encyclopedia describes the effect: “The following 40 years were characterized by almost constant warfare between pope and anti-pope, in which the Papal States were the chief playground. The schism left no one sitting on the fence. Having unparalleled impact on political allegiances, it reshaped European geopolitics, changing cultural boundaries and paving the way for the upcoming Reformation” [Social, #5204, “Avignonese papacy”]. It lists the Roman line as Urban VI, Boniface IX, Innocent VII and Gregory XII, and the Avignon line as Clement VII and Benedict XIII.

The sources do not agree on the dates. Vatican Secret Archives states that “the Western Schism (1387–1417) began shortly after the return of the papacy to the Eternal City” and was “ended by the Council of Constance”, which elected Martin V [Vatican Secret Archives, #68123]. Grzymała-Busse, the encyclopedia’s own chronology and the usual reckoning all date the start to 1378. The 1387 figure is probably a transposition. Grzymała-Busse’s edition contains a slip of its own: it attributes the 1376 return to “Gregory IX” rather than Gregory XI [#62062].

Kerrigan adds the human cost: with two or three popes each appointing bishops and excommunicating the others, believers could not know whether their marriages, baptisms and burials were valid [#71131, ch. 4]. He also reports that the last Avignon claimant, Benedict XIII (Pedro de Luna), tried to bolster his legitimacy through mass conversion of Spain’s Jews. When this failed he banned the Talmud, closed synagogues and outlawed trade between Jews and Gentiles; these measures were rescinded in 1418 [#71131, ch. 4]. Kerrigan quotes Edward Gibbon on the deposed anti-pope John XXIII: “The most scandalous charges were suppressed; the Vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy and incest.”

Grzymała-Busse draws a political conclusion: “The Great Schism showed popes to be petty politicians vying for power, rather than men of God.” It “further empowered secular rulers. Kings negotiated with popes and councils, sent representatives, and concluded treaties”. They gained control over church hierarchy and property in their realms, and the English Parliament restricted appeals and payments to Rome [Grzymała-Busse, #62062]. Her wider argument, developed in her chapter on parliaments, is that conciliar practice, in which councils of representatives judged rival popes, became a model for representative government.

The Renaissance popes and the families

Lewis describes the Renaissance papacy as a prize contested among dynasties: “Several rich and famous families, including the Medici, the Barberini, the Orsini and the della Rovere, provided the Church with popes from their own ranks, but the most notorious of them all were the Borgias” [Lewis, Dark History of the Popes, #62536]. She narrates the 1492 conclave in detail. Rodrigo Borgia “swamped the cardinals with offers he was sure they would find impossible to refuse”, including bishoprics, lands, abbeys, castles, governorships, church offices, gold and jewels. “The biggest bribe of all” went to Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, who was offered Borgia’s own office of Vice-Chancellor and the palace now called Palazzo Sforza Cesarini. Lewis concludes: “Cheating on a truly shameless scale had, of course, taken place but the cardinals who fell for the Borgia bribes were giving nothing away and the new pope had himself been very careful to leave behind no proof” [Lewis, #62536]. Once in office, Alexander VI surrounded himself with relatives, “the only people he could really trust” [#62536].

Kerrigan’s account is similar. Callixtus III, the first Borgia pope (1455–58), “had actually conducted himself fairly blamelessly”. Innocent VIII had two acknowledged sons; the diarist Infessura reports him cancelling an edict against clerical concubinage and counting 6,800 prostitutes in Rome. Kerrigan calls Alexander VI “a one-man argument for Reformation” [Kerrigan, #71131, “Borgia Beginnings”]. Freeman records how much papal influence had fallen by the early seventeenth century. “In a confrontation between Pope Paul V and Venice in 1606 over the extent of papal prerogatives in the city, the local clergy, led by the theologian and ardently republican statesman Paolo Sarpi, took the side of Venice. Among the clergy only the Jesuits supported the pope” [Freeman, #64786].

The economics of salvation and the licence to conquer

Freeman describes the change in indulgences: “Indulgences originally involved some form of onerous act, such as a pilgrimage, but later they could be bought for cash, the scandal that gave rise to Martin Luther’s protest” [Freeman, #64786]. Manhattan builds a broader thesis on this. His first chapter, “The historical genesis of the Vatican’s accumulation of wealth”, argues that “the splitting of Christianity” was “accelerated by its policy of acquisition of temporal riches” [Manhattan, The Vatican Billions, #64831, ch. 1]. On indulgences and relics he writes: “more often than not, they served their purpose in the mobilization, control and use of the vast masses of men, armies and nations, none of which might otherwise have been mobilized with such ease and fluidity by successive popes. In the struggles of the papacy with the temporal powers… they played a paramount role”, putting “men, riches and armies at will into the hands of the popes” [Manhattan, #64831]. He claims that Alexander VI authorised his penitentiaries to commute pilgrimage days for a quarter of the expense saved [Manhattan, #64831]. Grzymała-Busse reaches a related but more measured conclusion: papal fiscal “avarice, even if necessary, cost the church moral authority”, which produced “a lurching spiral” of declining revenues and authority [#62062].

The papal monarchy’s claim to dispose of the world reached overseas. Kerrigan writes that the Church’s role in the Atlantic slave trade “was strictly secondary” but that it freely gave “permission”, “most notably in Pope Nicholas V’s bull or pronouncement Dum Diversas”. He quotes it as granting the kings of Spain and Portugal “full and unhindered licence to attack, seek out, take captive and make conquest of the Saracens and Pagans, as well as any other infidels and foes of Christ, wherever they may be found… and to take them into perpetual slavery” [Kerrigan, #71131, “Mixed Signals on Slavery”]. He describes the Church’s position on slavery as “veering back and forth between unreflecting acceptance and bland discouragement”, with a consensus that enslavement could be justified if it brought a pagan into contact with the faith [Kerrigan, #71131, “Mixed Signals on Slavery”]. These grants link the papal politics of this chapter to the colonial expansion treated later in the study.

Key points

• Gregory VII’s Dictatus Papae (1075) listed 27 papal prerogatives, including the sole use of imperial insignia and princes kissing only the pope’s feet. Grzymała-Busse reads it as a claim of authority without limits; Freeman credits Gregory with the papal right to decide which wars were holy.
• The Investiture Conflict ran from the 1075 ban on lay investiture, through Canossa (1077) and Gregory’s death in exile at Salerno (1085), to the Concordat of Worms (1122). Grzymała-Busse holds that it moved disputes from theology to law.
• Urban II, threatened with schism, recognised the Norman Roger I in Sicily.
• Clement V moved the papacy to Avignon under Philip IV. Kerrigan attributes Gregory XI’s return to fear of losing the Papal States, the lands supposedly granted by the Donation of Constantine.
• The Western Schism produced rival lines in Rome and Avignon (and a third at Pisa) and, in the encyclopedia’s words, forty years “characterized by almost constant warfare between pope and anti-pope”, which paved the way for the Reformation. Vatican Secret Archives dates it 1387–1417; the other sources say 1378.
• Grzymała-Busse: the schism showed popes as “petty politicians vying for power, rather than men of God” and strengthened kings and representative institutions.
• Lewis describes the 1492 Borgia election as won by “cheating on a truly shameless scale”. Freeman records that only the Jesuits backed Paul V against Venice in 1606.
• Freeman traces indulgences from penance to cash. Manhattan argues that wealth and indulgences split Christendom and mobilised armies for the popes. Kerrigan cites Dum Diversas as a papal licence to conquer and enslave.