The Avignon Popes
Explore the seventy years when the popes resided not in Rome but in Avignon. This period of French influence over the papacy, sometimes called the Babylonian Captivity, saw both scandal and sanctity as the Church navigated a turbulent political landscape.
Exile onthe Rhône
In 1309, Pope Clement V moved the papal court from Rome to Avignon in southern France. What began as a temporary measure became a seventy-year residence that profoundly shaped the medieval Church. Seven popes would reign from Avignon before Gregory XI finally returned to Rome in 1377.
The Avignon papacy was a period of contradictions. The popes built a magnificent palace and created an efficient bureaucracy, yet critics like Petrarch condemned their absence from the Eternal City. All seven Avignon popes were French, leading to accusations of subservience to the French crown. Yet the period also saw genuine reform efforts and the continuation of papal spiritual authority.
St Catherine of Siena famously urged Gregory XI to return to Rome, seeing the papal absence as a wound to the Church. When he heeded her call, the Avignon period ended - but its aftermath, the Western Schism, would prove even more traumatic for Christian unity.
At a Glance
“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”
St Catherine of Siena
Letter urging Gregory XI to return to Rome
Rome and the Papacy
The Avignon period revealed how deeply the papacy was tied to Rome. The popes' return was not merely political but spiritual - a recognition that the successor of Peter belongs in the city of Peter's martyrdom.