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Edward II at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 that assured Scotland's independence for the next three hundred
years.l7b
The other beacon was lit by a poet, not a warrior: Dante Alighieri of Florence. Expelled from his beloved
city in 1302, condemned in absentia to death by burning and an exile for the rest of his life, profoundly
disappointed by the failure of Emperor Henry VII in Italy, Dante-guided by his shining vision of Beatrice, whom
he had loved so much and who had died so young-did not succumb to bitterness, but rose to a summit of beauty
and glory rarely matched and never exceeded in Western literature, in the Divine Comedy which he began to
write probably in 1307, completing the "Inferno" and beginning the "Purgatorio" by 1314. t" In addition to its
extraordinary literary merits, the Divine Comedy depicts the world-view of the High Middle Ages with
unmatched thoroughness and clarity. 178 That world-view is shaped above all by the thought of St. Thomas
Aquinas. In his book De Monarchia, written during Emperor Henry VII's ill-fated sojourn in Italy from 1311 to
1313, Dante sums up that world-view with a serenity all the more striking when contrasted with the destructive
tumult around him, its Christian essence forever immune to the nemesis of power:
Ineffable providence has set two ends for man to strive towards: the beatitude of this life, which consists in
the operation of his own virtue and is figured in the earthly paradise, and the beatitude of eternal life, which
consists in the enjoyment of the vision of God, to which man's own virtue cannot ascend unless assisted by divine
light, which is to be understood by the heavenly paradise.... We come to the first by the teaching of philosophy, if
we follow it by exercising the moral and intellectual virtues; to the second by spiritual teaching, which transcends
human reason, if we follow it by exercising the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. 179
THE GLORY OF CHRISTENDOM

9
Popes Away From Rome (1314-1347)
(Popes John XXIII 1316-34; Benedict XII 1334-42; Clement VI 1342-52)
"St. Peter's godchild, Avignon, who saw the saint's bark ride at anchor in her haven and who bears his keys at her
battlemented girdle..
." -
Alphonse Daudett
The move of the Popes to Avignon in France, where they maintained their residence for the seventy-two
years from the consecration of Clement V to the return of Gregory XI to Rome, was a grave error of judgment,
though not the unmitigated evil excoriated by Petrarch in his furious passages calling Avignon a "hell upon
earth."2 For the Pope belongs in Rome, as every visitor to St. Peter's knows. There lie the bones of the prince of
the Apostles; there was the seat of the ancient empire won for Christ under the sign of the cross in the sky that
was given to Constantine. Wherever the Pope may go, wandering or fleeing or driven, he remains the Bishop of
Rome-and never was Rome more shamefully neglected than during these seventy-two years when ancient
buildings were quarried for their stone and famous churches gaped open so that cattle ambled through in the very
naves of St. Peter's and the Church of St. John Lateran.3 In the tumults of the years we have been chronicling,
many Popes had been unable to maintain a continuous residence in Rome; but none remained far away for long.
The definitive transfer of their seat to Avignon by an unbroken series of French Popes, with only an occasional
vague mention of the possibility of returning to Rome, not only aroused profound resentment in Italy but called
into question the Pope's impartiality as the spiritual leader of Christendom in every country whose interests
clashed with those of France-most notably England as the Hundred Years War began its long and bloody course.
Most of the Avignon Popes were not, however, in fact excessively deferential to the kings of France. Even
Clement V, weak and often overborne by Philip the Fair, was not his creature and resisted him to the best of his
--176
Barrow, Robert Bruce, pp. 216, 228-231, 240-242, 245, 290-332; Scott, Robert Bruce, pp. 81-82,86-87,90,93-102.
177 Holmes, Florence, Rome, Renaissance, pp. 233-249.
t7sSee C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (Cambridge, England, 1967).

179De monarchia III, 15, cited in Holmes, Florence, Rome, Renaissance, pp. 249-250.

Cited in Guy Mollat, The Popes at Avignon (New York, 1963), p. 279. ZLudwig von Pastor, History of the Popes,
Volume I (London, 1923), p. 64. 316id., I, 69.
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