Besides the ornamental sculpture of Notre-Dame-des-Doms, there is the Episcopal
Throne in the nave and fine marble capitals from the destroyed cloister, both historiated
and floral, which are now in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Avignon, as well as in
museums in Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, Lyon, Cambridge, New York, and Philadelphia.
Like Arles, this cloister has ornamented capitals on the garden side and mostly historiated
ones on the gallery side. The cloister was created in the late 1150s.
Whitney S.Stoddard
[See also: AVIGNON PAPACY; CLEMENT VI]
Borg, Alan. Architectural Sculpture in Romanesque Provence. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972.
Labande, Léon-Honoré. “L’église Notre-Dame-des-Doms d’Avignon.” Bulletin archéologique du
Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques (1906):282–365.
——. “Guide archéologique du congrès d’Avignon.” Congrès archéologique (1909).
AVIGNON PAPACY
. The Avignon papacy has suffered both from Petrarch’s description of it as “Babylon”
and from invidious comparisons with the reforming popes of earlier centuries. Recent
scholarship has offered a more balanced assessment of the 14th-century popes without
masking the complacency, fiscalism, and nepotism prevalent at Avignon. The papal court
was not an appendage of the French monarchy; but its ethos was predominantly French in
the largest sense, reflecting the origins of the popes and most of their cardinals.
A strong Capetian influence can be traced in the curia in the second half of the 13th
century, when several French popes reigned and the papacy became entangled in the
Angevin domination of Naples. The transfer of the papacy to Avignon, however, resulted
from the defeat of Boniface VIII (r. 1295–1303) by Philip IV the Fair and the king’s
domination of Clement V (r. 1305–14). Failing to elect one of themselves to succeed
Benedict XI (r. 1303–04), the cardinals had chosen the archbishop of Bordeaux, who
even before his coronation as Clement V acquiesced to Philip’s desire that the ceremony
be held in his presence at Lyon. Philip imposed his will on a timid and ailing pontiff. The
papal bull Clericis laicos (forbidding secular rulers from taxing clerics without papal
consent) was revoked, and Unam sanctam (asserting papal supremacy in temporal as well
as spiritual matters) was given an evasive interpretation. Only in helping deny the
imperial crown to Charles of Valois, Philip’s brother, did the pope frustrate the Capetian
king’s desires.
Clement never felt able to go to Rome, a dangerous city. While preparing for the
Council of Vienne (1311), he resided in Avignon in Provence, an Angevin fief just
outside France. The council condemned several errors, including those ascribed to the
béguines; but Clement had to wrest final consent to the dissolution of the Templars,
against whom Philip IV was proceeding, from a secret consistory. The canons of the
Council of Vienne were revised for inclusion in the Constitutiones clementinae, the last
official collection of medieval canon law. Its emphasis on orthodoxy, obedience, and
coercion of dissidents would be typical of the Avignon popes.
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