414

THE GLORY OF CHRISTENDOM

SHADOWAND LIGHTNING 415
leads her child whither she will, by showing him her breasts, so I led him to Rome by my prayers. But
what does he do now? Now he turns his back on me and not his face and would leave me. And a false
and evil spirit would entice him to do this. For it wearies him to do his duty, and he is longing for ease
and confort. He is longing for his own country, and his carnally minded friends urge him to depart, for
they think more of his temporal welfare and conform more to his will than to the will of God and to
what serves the glory of God and the everlasting good of the Pope.... If he should succeed in getting
back to his own country he will be struck such a blow that his teeth will shake in his mouth. His sight
will be darkened and all his limbs will tremble.... The friends of God will no longer include him in their
prayers, and he will be called to account to God for what he did and what he did not do. Z
Men remembered St. Bridget's prophecy when Pope Urban V, returning to Avignon in September 1370, was
stricken with a mortal illness in November and died six days before Christmas. Yet he remained the first Pope at
Avignon who had returned to Rome, despite weakening at the end. The ultimate verdict of the Church was that his
life as a whole had demonstrated heroic sanctity; in 1870 he was beatified.'
The conclave to elect his successor was short and harmonious. It met ten days after Urban V's death; the
following morning Cardinal Pierre Roger de Beaufort, a brilliant and upright canon lawyer only 42 years old, noted
for modesty and piety though of a weak physical constitution, was unanimously elected as Pope Gregory XI."
Within a few days of his consecration St. Bridget was writing him that the Mother of God had said to her:
If Pope Gregory will come to Rome and will return to Italy to stay there and like a good shepherd will
take upon himself the cause of the Church, then like a good Mother ... I will give him joyful warmth at
my breast, which is the love of God, and fill him with the milk of piety and prayer. And I will pray to
my Son for him, that He will send His Holy Spirit to Gregory and pour it into the depths of his heart....
For it is the will of God that he shall humbly bring back the Chair of Peter to Rome. And that he may
not let himself be mocked or deceived by anyone I foretell him this: If he does not obey, he shall be
made to feel the rod of justice, his days shall be shortened, and he shall be called to judgment.g5
St. Bridget followed up with a still more peremptory letter in March when she learned that the new Pope was
hesitating, with his Avignon counsellors strongly advising against his going to Rome.' The return of Pope Urban V to

Jorgensen, St. Bridget of Sweden, II, 221. g3Mollat, Popes at Avignon, p. 58.
14 Ibid., p. 59.
SS
Jorgensen, St. Bridget of Sweden, II, 224. 861bid, 11, 226.
Avignon and the renewed influence of the Pope's French counsellors and cardinals had accentuated the hostility to
papal authority which had been growing elsewhere in Europe, and particularly in England now at war again with
France. The English Parliament in 1371 passed a bill requiring that only laymen, not clerics, hold the highest offices
in the state; Edward III signed and enforced it, dismissing his Chancellor and Treasurer who were bishops. In 1372
King Edward prohibited English bishops from making any payments to Rome. In 1373 Prince Edward browbeat the
Archbishop of Canterbury at a council which considered and rejected the request of Pope Gregory XI for a crusade
tax, despite the striking victory of the Turks over the Serbs in the Battle of the Marica River in 1371, followed
immediately by their conquest of Macedonia, rendering Serbia tributary, and pushing northward through Serbia to
Bosnia and Dalmatia $7
In October 1372 the monasteries of Cologne in Germany agreed to refuse payment of the papal tithe on their
revenues, declaring:
In consequence of the exactions with which the Papal Court burdens the clergy, the Apostolic See has
fallen into such contempt that the Catholic Faith in these parts seems to be seriously imperilled. The
laity speak slightingly of the Church, because, departing from the customs of former days, she hardly
ever sends forth preachers or reformers, but rather ostentatious men, cunning, selfish, and greedy.88
In May 1372 Pope Gregory XI announced at a meeting of his cardinals that he intended to return "very
shortly" to Rome, and St. Catherine of Siena was later to reveal that he had taken a private vow before his election
that he would go to Rome if he became Pope." But he was irresolute, yielding to pressure from the cardinals to stay
in Avignon, while the condition of the Church and Christendom worsened. The Hundred Years War went on, with no
end in sight. The English Prince John of Gaunt had now laid claim to Castile, by virtue of his marriage to the elder
surviving daughter and heir of Pedro the Cruel, and in the latter half of 1373 he was marching an army across France
to try to reach it, though his force arrived at Bordeaux so weakened that he could not go on to invade Castile. 9° What
was left of the Byzantine Empire had become tributary to the Ottoman Turks; when the son of Emperor John V and
the son of Ottoman Sultan Murad rebelled jointly against their fathers and were
g7
Mollat, Popes atAvignon, p. 163; Packe, Edward III, pp. 288-289; Barber, Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine,
p. 230; Nicol, Last Centuries of Byzantium, p. 286; Fine, Late Medieval Balkans, pp. 379-380; Gibbons, Ottoman
Empire, pp. 146-147.
88
Ludwig von Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, Volume I (London, 1923), p. 91.
89
Mollat, Popes at Avignon, p. 162; Undset, Catherine of Siena, p. 186.

Russell, English Intervention in Spain, pp. 168-169, 175, 187, 192-193, 204, 207, 216-217; Packe, Edward III, pp.
9°

280, 283.