Everything about Avignon Pope Clement Vii totally explained
Robert of Geneva (
1342–
16 September 1394) was elected to the papacy as
(Anti-)Pope Clement VII by the French
cardinals who opposed
Urban VI, and was the first
Avignon antipope of the
Western Schism.
Biography
He was the son of
Amadeus III, Count of Geneva, and was born in
Geneva, in what is now
Switzerland, in 1342. Appointed
Protonotary Apostolic in 1359, he became
Bishop of Thérouanne in 1361,
Archbishop of Cambrai in 1368, and a
cardinal on
30 May 1371.
In 1377, while serving as papal legate in upper Italy (1376-78), in order to put down a rebellion in the
Papal States, known as the
War of the Eight Saints, he personally commanded troops lent to the papacy by the
condottiere John Hawkwood to reduce the small city of
Cesena in the territory of
Forlì, which resisted being added to the
Patrimony of Peter for the second time in a generation; there he allegedly authorized the massacre of 4,000 civilians, an atrocity even by the rules of war at the time, which earned him the nickname
butcher - or executioner of Cesena.
Elected pope at
Fondi on
20 September 1378 by the French cardinals in opposition to
Urban VI, he was the first
antipope of the
Western Schism, the second of the two periods sometimes referred to as the Great Schism, which lasted until 1417. France, Scotland, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Portugal, Savoy, Denmark, Norway, and some minor German states acknowledged his authority. Unable to maintain himself in Italy, he took up his residence at
Avignon in the southern French
Comtat Venaissin, where he became dependent on the French court. He created excellent cardinals but donated the larger part of the Pontifical States to
Louis II of Anjou, resorted to
simony and extortion to meet the financial needs of his court, and seems never to have sincerely desired the termination of the schism.
He died at Avignon on
16 September 1394.
Eventually it was determined that he'd be recorded as an antipope rather than as a pope. Uncertainty over who the legitimate pope might be during the time of the Western Schism gave rise to the legal theory called
Conciliarism, which claimed that a general council of the church was superior to the pope and could therefore judge between rival claimants.
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