Clement V: The Pope Who Resigned and Moved to France

Pope Clement V didn’t exactly flee the scene like a runaway groom, but for someone handed the golden keys to Rome, he seemed remarkably uninterested in showing up. The year was 1305, and instead of charging triumphantly into the Eternal City, Clement kicked off his papacy in Lyon, held his coronation like a provincial bishop at a county fair, and quietly turned his back on Rome. It wasn’t a resignation, at least not officially. But you try explaining to seven centuries of historians why the pope decided Rome wasn’t worth the papal sandals.

Bertrand de Got, the man behind the pointy hat, came from Gascony, that rustic wine-soaked patch of land that makes people refer to it as ‘rugged’ or ‘authentic’ when what they really mean is full of goats and suspicion. He wasn’t even a cardinal when he got picked to be pope. The College of Cardinals had boxed themselves into a corner, and Bertrand looked enough like a compromise wrapped in ecclesiastical robes to calm everybody down. Plus, he had a few friends in high places. One in particular. A certain Philip IV of France, better known as Philip the Fair, though again, the fairness referred mostly to cheekbones and not policies.

Now Philip had a bit of a money problem. Specifically, he had none. Wars don’t pay for themselves, and neither do golden thrones or imported silk tunics. So naturally, he looked around for people with cash, and his gaze fell upon the Knights Templar. They were the Church’s equivalent of investment bankers with swords, and Philip owed them a lot. This situation was deeply inconvenient.

Clement, caught between royal eyebrows and divine duty, found himself nudged into one of the great ecclesiastical shakedowns in history. On a fateful Friday the 13th in October 1307 (yes, this is where that superstition probably got its teeth), the Templars across France were rounded up, accused of heresy, and tortured until they confessed to just about anything, including spitting on the cross and singing questionable sea shanties. Clement, despite initial hesitations that would’ve made a jellyfish look decisive, eventually signed off on their dissolution. The Church lost its warrior monks, Philip got the loot, and the rest of Europe started writing very angry letters.

With Rome still in its usual state of armed civic confusion and an entire city council’s worth of noble families trying to stab each other over basilicas, Clement decided to base himself somewhere more stable. Which brings us to Avignon. Lovely climate. Safe distance from Roman knives. And, conveniently, on land held by the King of Naples, who just happened to be a loyal supporter of Philip IV. All purely coincidental, of course.

So in 1309, the Bishop of Rome decided to not live in Rome. Instead, he settled in a charming corner of southern France, probably thought to himself, “Well, this will be temporary,” and promptly stayed there until death did them part. What followed was nearly seven decades of popes lounging in Avignon like ecclesiastical expats, sipping wine from papal goblets and commissioning frescoes like there was no such thing as a budget.

Back in Rome, things were less than thrilled. The locals missed their pope. The cardinals missed their influence. The Romans missed the money. And everyone else in Europe started asking awkward questions about whether the Holy See was now more French than holy.

Clement didn’t help matters by acting like a royal puppet. He packed the College of Cardinals with fellow Frenchmen, which didn’t so much raise eyebrows as launch them into the stratosphere. The papal court began to resemble the French royal court in miniature. Same language. Same politics. Slightly better incense.

Still, Clement V wasn’t just a yes-man. He had moments of real struggle. The papacy hadn’t exactly come with a manual, and he found himself constantly dodging political landmines. He tried to mediate between England and France during one of their many awkward squabbles, a task roughly as enjoyable as refereeing a family Christmas dinner after the sherry. He also had to deal with rebellious bishops, exasperated theologians, and the occasional outbreak of plague. You know, regular day job stuff.

And he was ill. Chronically. Not in the Elizabethan “he hath the vapours” sense but genuinely falling apart. Gout, fevers, mystery afflictions that would’ve made medieval physicians excitedly reach for their leeches. Clement spent much of his papacy being carried from one location to another, which made him look like a divine invalid touring his diocese on a sort of papal gurney.

His health got so bad that when he died in 1314, people weren’t even surprised. What did raise eyebrows was the funeral procession catching fire. Yes, fire. A dramatic flourish that Clement probably would have hated, being a man who spent most of his life trying not to attract attention.

After his passing, the popes stayed in Avignon. One by one they followed his lead, each building upon the French papal project until the place looked less like a temporary refuge and more like Vatican 2.0, now with extra gargoyles. They built a massive palace—a gothic marvel that screamed power and holiness with the subtlety of a cathedral-sized billboard. Rome sulked. Italy fumed. And eventually, everyone started whispering about corruption and the French stranglehold on the Church.

Clement V had kicked off a relocation that would shape the Church for nearly a century. When the papacy finally crawled back to Rome in 1377, it wasn’t so much a triumphant return as an awkward shuffle. The very next year, Pope Gregory XI died, and the cardinals couldn’t agree on a successor. Again. This time, things got messy enough that at one point there were two popes. Then three. Cue the Western Schism, a theological mud-wrestling match where everyone lost.

So, no, Clement V didn’t technically resign. He didn’t issue a dramatic parchment saying, “I quit, and I’m off to Provence.” But in spirit, in gesture, in the sheer cheek of never living in the city your title claims you run, he sort of did. He changed the meaning of what it meant to be pope. He shifted the centre of the Catholic world westward, just a bit, but with enough force to unbalance the entire system.

And what did he leave behind? An Avignon that became the most improbably glamorous city of papal history, complete with diplomatic drama, architectural marvels, and the kind of cuisine that made fasting feel optional. Clement himself faded into the background of this spectacle. He wasn’t a tyrant. He wasn’t a saint. He was more like a bureaucrat with gout who got very good at saying “yes” at the right time.

Which, as it turns out, is sometimes all it takes to reshape history.

His story doesn’t get embroidered into tapestries. It doesn’t get shouted from pulpits. But it does linger in the narrow streets of Avignon, in the faint incense of its chapels, and in the stone silence of the palace he never finished living in.

Pope Clement V may have avoided drama. History, however, did not return the favour.