The Popes of Avignon: A Century in Exile

About this book

Like the finest medieval tapestry this narrative history masterfully weaves together the sweeping events surrounding what has become known as the "Babylonian captivity" of the popes into the broader story of 14th-century Europeone of the most turbulent times in the continents history. It was a time of fear ferocity and religious agony which saw the suppression of the Knights Templar and the Cathars the first onslaught of the plague and the beginning of the Hundred Years War. The century also produced some of the greatest writers and artists in the western tradition including Giotto Boccaccio Petrarch and Chaucer. Central to this period was the movement of the papal seat from Rome to Avignon in the south of France where seven successive popes held power from 1309 to 1377. The drama intrigue and tumult associated with the papacy in exile forms the perfect lens through which to clearly see a Europe making the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.