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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.