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Avignon and its papacy, 1309-1417. Popes, institutions and society . By Joëlle Rollo-Koster . Pp. xiv + 314 incl. 2 maps and 1 table. Lanham , Md: Rowman and Littlefield , 2015. £49.95. 978 1 4422 1532 0
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From 1309 to 1417, the popes resided not in Rome, but in the small Provençal town of Avignon. It was Clement v who first decided to settle the papacy here, but the choice to make Avignon a more permanent abode was confirmed by John xxii and his successor, Benedict xii, who was also the first to transform Avignon's former episcopal palace into the mighty fortress that visitors see today. The Avignon period was instrumental in the professionalisation and centralisation of the papal administration. Throughout their pontificates, the Avignon popes worked hard to enable the return of the curia to Rome. However, the political situation in Italy, especially the ongoing war with cities such as Milan and Florence, made this virtually impossible. Shortly after Pope Gregory xi did return to Rome, in 1378, a schism ensued, prolonging Avignon's papal role by making it the seat of one of the two (and sometimes three) competing Roman pontiffs until the schism was finally ended in 1417.
For a long time, the only accessible one-volume monographs on this period were Guillaume Mollat, Les Papes d'Avignon (1912, trans. into English in 1963) and Yves Renouard, La Papauté ￃ Avignon (1954, trans. into English in 1970). Since then, major research has contributed to our understanding of this period. Bernard Guillemain's La Cour Pontificale d'Avignon (1962) studied the inner workings of the papal court; works by David Flood...