Seeking Legitimacy: Art and Manuscripts for the Popes in Avignon from 1378 to 1417
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SEEKING LEGITIMACY: ART AND MANUSCRIPTS FOR THE POPES IN AVIGNON FROM 1378 TO 1417 Cathleen A. Fleck Pressured by the French king and Roman politics, the 14th-century popes shift ed the Church’s capital from Rome, their long-established center of power, to Avignon by 1309.1 Aft er the papacy returned to Rome in 1377, an opposition papacy established itself back in Avignon. Th is move caused the Great or Western Schism in the Catholic Church (1378–1417), the longest span in which more than one individual claimed to be pope. Th is paper will discuss how each pontiff in Avignon during the Schism left his mark on the city, on the palace, and on the papal art and book collections.2 To grasp the place of art in relation to the popes in Avignon from 1378, an introduction to their papal predecessors is necessary. Clement V (1305–14) instigated the move of the papacy to Provence.3 His decision to remain in Avignon created a chain reaction of alterations to the city, not least of them the infl ux of people to form and serve his court. John XXII (1316–34), former Neapolitan courtier and Avignon bishop, established a large bureaucracy to support his court.4 He took over the Avignon episcopal palace as the pope, redecorating and build- ing around it.5 He also began actively to replace the papal library that 1 For basic references on the popes at Avignon, see Guillaume Mollat, Th e Popes at Avignon, 1305–1378, trans. Janet Love, 9th ed. (London, 1949); Bernard Guillemain, La cour pontifi cale d’Avignon (1309–1376): Étude d’une société (Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome) 201 (Paris, 1962); and Bernard Guillemain, Les papes d’Avignon (1309–1376) (Paris, 1998). 2 For Rome and its art during this same period, see Loren Partridge, Th e Art of Renaissance Rome (London, 1996); Meredith Gill, “Th e Fourteenth and Fift eenth Cen- turies,” in Rome, ed. Marcia B. Hall (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 27–106; Diega Giunta, “La ‘Navicella di Pietro’ e gli eventi del soggiorno romano di Caterina da Siena nell’arte fi gu- rativa,” in La Roma di santa Caterina da Siena, ed. Maria Grazia Bianco (Rome, 2001), pp. 119–47; and Léon Homo, Rome médiévale 476–1420: Histoires—civilisazion—vestiges (Paris, 1956), pp. 263, 269, 279. 3 See Sophie Menache, Clement V (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 23–30; and Mollat, Th e Popes at Avignon, pp. 3–8. 4 See Mollat, Th e Popes at Avignon, pp. 9–25. 5 John XXII used a French painter from Toulouse, Jean Dupouy, to decorate his chapel and audience hall; see Dominique Vingtain and Claude Sauvageot (photography), 240 cathleen a. fleck never arrived in Avignon. Benedict XII (1334–42) and his successor Clement VI (1342–52) fi rmly settled in the city on the Rhône River.6 Th ey constructed a new papal palace to replace the bishop’s manor in two segments: Benedict XII’s massive fortress and Clement VI’s elegant chateau.7 Th is large palace and the art and books within it played an integral role in establishing the popes’ presence, manifesting their power and wealth, and affi rming their authority in the new papal capital.8 Th e next pope, Innocent VI (1352–62), was a legal scholar who used his time trying to cleanse the papal court of luxury and corruption and, through his legate, trying to regain papal authority in his states in Italy.9 Despite his austerity, he too spent money to decorate the existing palace and to procure books. (Blessed) Urban V (1362–70) came to the papal throne as a devout Benedictine, a respected canon law professor, and a skilled diplomat.10 He attempted to use all of those skills towards garnering peace in many parts of Europe, not least in Rome. He did manage to return to the Eternal City from 1367–70, but the instability of the Papal States forced him back to Avignon. Despite his interest in leaving Avignon: Le palais des papes (Le ciel et la pierre) 2 (Saint-Léger-Vauban, 1998), pp. 99–101, 119–20. He used a French architect as well; see Enrico Castelnuovo, Un pein- tre italien à la cour d’Avignon: Matteo Giovannetti et la peinture en Provence en XIVe siècle, trans. Simone Darses and Sylvie Girard (Paris, 1996), p. 45. On John’s role in establishing a bureaucracy, see Castelnuovo, Un peintre Italien, pp. 25–26. He also constructed a papal palace outside of Avignon at Pont-de-Sorgues; see Valérie Th eis, “La fi gure du pape bâtisseur d’après les chroniques de Baluze,” in Monument de l’histoire: Construire, reconstruire le Palais des Papes, XIVe–XXe siècle, ed. Dominique Vingtain (Avignon, 2002), p. 30. 6 See Mollat, Th e Popes at Avignon, pp. 26–36, 37–43. On Clement VI, see Diana Wood, Clement VI: Th e Pontifi cate and Ideas of an Avignon Pope (Cambridge, 1989). 7 For the most recent and thorough publications on the palace’s construction, decoration, and history, see Monument de l’histoire, ed. Vingtain; and Vingtain and Sauvageot, Avignon. On the pre-history of papal palaces, see Enrico Castelnuovo and Alessio Monciatti, “Préhistoire du Palais des Papes,” in Monument de l’histoire, ed. Vingtain, pp. 116–21. For the most thorough early publication on the palace, see Léon Honoré Labande, Le Palais des papes et les monuments d’Avignon au XIVe siècle, 2 vols. (Marseille, 1925). 8 Radke discussed this aspect of the physical and symbolic in 13th-century papal palaces; see Gary Radke, “Form and Function in Th irteenth-Century Papal Palaces,” in Architecture et vie sociale: L’organisation intérieure des grandes demeures à la fi n du moyen âge et à la Renaissance, ed. Jean Guillaume (De Architectura/Colloque) 6 (Paris, 1994), pp. 11–24. Regarding the attitudes of contemporary papal chroniclers to the building of the palace, see Th eis, “La fi gure du pape bâtisseur,” pp. 30–34. 9 See Mollat, Th e Popes at Avignon, pp. 44–51. 10 See Mollat, Th e Popes at Avignon, pp. 52–58..