Church History, Volume 2 (of 3)Kurtz, J. H. (Johann Heinrich)
History
Church History, Volume 2 (of 3)
Kurtz, J. H. (Johann Heinrich)
Church history
§ 110.3. After two years’ murderous strife between the Italian
and French cardinals, the French were again victorious, and
elected at Lyons =John XXII.=, A.D. 1316-1334, son of a shoemaker
of Cahors in Gascony, who was already seventy-two years old.
He is said to have sworn to the Italians never to use a horse
or mule but to ride to Rome, and then to have taken ship
on the Rhone for Avignon, where during his eighteen years’
pontificate he never went out of his palace except to go into
the neighbouring cathedral. Working far into the night, this
seemingly weak old man was wont to devote all his time to his
studies and his business. The weight of his official duties
will be seen from the fact that 60,000 minutes, filling 59 vols.
in the papal archives, belong to his reign.--In Germany, after
the death of Henry VII. there were two rivals for the throne,
=Louis IV. the Bavarian=, A.D. 1314-1347, and Frederick III.
of Austria. The pope, maintaining the closest relations with
Robert of Anjou, his feudatory as king of Naples and his
protector as Count of Provence, and esteeming his wish as
a command, refused to acknowledge either, declared the German
throne still vacant, and assumed to himself the administration
of the realm during the vacancy. At Mühldorf in A.D. 1322
Louis conquered his opponent and took him prisoner. He sent
a detachment of Ghibellines over the Alps, while he made himself
master of Milan and put an end to the papal administration
in Northern Italy. The pope in A.D. 1323 ordered him within
three months to cease discharging all functions of government
till his election as German king should be acknowledged and
confirmed by the papal chair. Louis first endeavoured to come to
an understanding with the pope, but soon employed the sharp pens
of the Minorites, who in May, 1324, drew up a solemn protest
in which the king, basing his claims to royalty solely on the
election of the princes and treating the pope as one who had
forfeited his chair in consequence of his heresies (§ 112, 2),
appealed from this false pope to an œcumenical council and a
future legitimate pope. John now thundered an anathema against
him, declared that he was deprived of all his dignities, freed
his subjects from their allegiance, forbade them, under pain
of anathema, to obey him, and summoned all European potentates
to war against the excommunicated monarch. Louis now sought
Frederick’s favour, and in A.D. 1325 shared with him the royal
dignity. In Milan in A.D. 1327 he was crowned king of Lombardy,
and in A.D. 1328 in Rome he received the imperial crown from
the Roman democracy. Two bishops of the Ghibelline party gave
him consecration, and the crown was laid on his head by Sciarra
Colonna in the name of the Roman people. In vain did the pope
pronounce all these proceedings null and void. The king began a
process against the pope, deposed him as a heretic and antichrist,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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