The Papacy in the Late Middle Ages
Pope John XXII (1316-1334)
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| Pope John XXII |
Yes, you read that right. There was a two-year period after the death of Clement during which there was no pope. The pope is, after all, simply the Bishop of Rome, and there can be vacancies there even as in any other bishopric. Sometimes, when the politics of the College of Cardinals are especially complicated, the election of a new pope can take a long time. The picture is a conventionalized portrait that doesn't do the man's character justice.
The College was now dominated by the French, but the French were by no means united. There were ten Gascons, thanks to Pope Clement, and eight Italians, plus six from elsewhere. The factions spent weeks arguing over where the conclave should be held, then fought so bitterly that it dissolved without resolution. And they refused to meet again for two years. Only pressure from Philip V of France finally got them together again, and they finally elected Jacques d'Euse, a native of Cahors, in southern France.
John had a celebrated and long-running dispute with the Spiritual Franciscans (also called the Fraticelli, or Little Brothers), who were engaged in a bitter dispute with the rest of the Franciscan order. John sided with the more numerous Conventual Franciscans and had several Fraticelli doctrines condemned as heretical. He then pursued them and had some burned at the stake. A small note: Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose makes use of this dispute, though it's set slightly later. The quarrel between the Conventuals and the Spirituals went on for many decades.
John is known for another dispute, this one political. He deeply objected to Lewis of Bavaria being elected King of the Romans, and did everything he could to undermine Lewis. Because he also would not support Frederick, some accused the pope of trying to rule the Kingdom of Italy himself by keeping the imperial position vacant. John actually excommunicated Lewis in 1324. This provoked a storm of debate, but no tangible results. Lewis struck a deal with Frederick and that was that. But the literary debate produced some outstanding and important works, the most important of which was the Defensor Pacis by Marsiglio of Padua. Meanwhile, Lewis went to Rome and was crowned by a member of the Colonna family, and then announced the pope was deposed. John ignored this, just as Lewis ignored John.
As you might have gathered, when Pope John decided he was right, there was no changing his mind. This tended to get him into trouble and to create strife in the areas of theology and politics, but it likewise served him well in the administration of the Church. John brought order and method to papal finances, legal procedures, and administration.
When he was elected, the papacy was nearly broke. John laid claim to a huge number of annates and within just a few years had a good reserve in the treasury. He also made sure that the income from vacant sees made its way to the treasury. This was typical of his innovations: the income had always supposed to go to the pope, but his predecessors were lax. They kept poor records and simply didn't collect. John made sure to collect. Similarly, he took existing secretarial offices and made sure they did their work efficiently.
The result was the creation of the first real papal government. The bottom line was money, of course, and those who came after found it both necessary and expedient to keep the apparatus in place. Some popes used the papal bureaucracy effectively, some did not, but they would always have it to call upon, if their skills and temperments inclined them to do so.
The usual criticism leveled is that John created a bureaucracy that could be prone to abuse and corruption. This is true, but John can hardly be blamed for this. He himself was rather a severe fellow, a workaholic who was uninterested in worldly pleasures and who was likewise uninterested in the avenues of corruption. He ran a tight ship and there was no room for such nonsense. The nonsense crept in later.