After the death of Boniface, the College of Cardinals elected a new Pope, but he died within a year. After long deliberation and pressure from Philip IV, the College produced a Frenchman who came to the Papal throne In 1305 as Clement V. Never throughout his Papacy did Clement set foot In Rome nor Indeed Italy; Instead he moved between Lyons and Poitiers until March 1309 when he set up court at Avignon In Provence, which at that time technically lay outside the jurisdiction of the kings of France. Clement then went on to pack the College of Cardinals with Frenchmen; not surprisingly the next six Popes all resided at Avignon, and all were French.
This did not mean that Clement V was a puppet of Philip IV, rather the new Pope understood that If he was to achieve his Papal ambitions It would not be, as Boniface had insisted in Unam Sanctam, by trying to make Philip submit to his authority but by cultivating their relationship and securing Philip’s cooperation. Clement’s great ambition was a new crusade, but it would need the collaboration and leadership of the French king. The proposed venture had its difficulties, however, not least because since the fall of Ruad the Mongols had converted on masse to Islam, not to Christianity as had been hoped.
Another difficulty was presented by Philip himself. Clement succeeded in persuading the king to take the cross at the end of December 1305; he freed Philip from the distraction of local conflict by negotiating a peace between the French king and King Edward I of England; and he diverted 10 per cent of the Church’s income in France to Philip’s coffers to finance the new crusade. But in Philip’s view a prerequisite for a successful crusade was the merging of the two military orders, the Templars and the Hospitallers. Moreover, Philip would command the new order; it would become an instrument of France, for Philip’s propagandists also insisted that eventually his command should pass to one of his sons who likewise should succeed him as king of Jerusalem.
Then again, there was a large element of hypocrisy in these French plans; recovering the Holy Land was not really Philip’s priority, rather his ambition was to conquer the Christian Byzantine Empire and to establish himself on the ancient imperial throne at Constantinople.
World History
