The Avignon Papacy Contested: An Intellectual History from Dante to Catherine of Siena

The Avignon papacy (1309-1377) represents the zenith of papal power in Europe. Over the approximately seven decades during which the pope and his curia sojourned in Southern France, the Church was subjected to an ambitious process of centralization. The institutional bureaucracy swelled out, and the Avignonese popes exercised their power more straightforwardly than ever before. However, the pope's claimed supremacy over secular rulers roused bitter resistance in various groups of people. What may be labelled as a literary war broke out, which engaged a series of critics and intellectuals from different traditions and cultures, and from every corner of Europe. The Avignon Papacy Contested explores how six of the most authoritative voices in the fourteenth century responded to the Avignon papacy: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Marsilius of Padua (1275-1342), William of Ockham (1287-1347), Francis Petrarch (1304-1374), Birgitta of Sweden (1303-1373), and Catherine of Siena (1347-1380). Two of these six great thinkers were branded heretics (Marsilius and Ockham), two were later canonized (Birgitta and Catherine), and two became leading models for future generations of humanists (Dante and Petrarch). What they all had in common was an intense critique of the waxing secular power of the Avignon papacy.--