Religion The Avignon Papacy and Papal Fiscality

Type:

Book Chapter

Published:

2002

Publisher:

Routledge

Beyond all else contemporaries condemned the grasping nature of the Avignon popes, who found themselves requiring additional funds to support a burgeoning bureaucracy and to finance the Italian wars. This need was exacerbated by falling revenues from the papacy’s territorial possessions in Italy, due to the political upheaval there. Like any bishop, the pope derived his income from both temporal and spiritual sources, the latter of which were to become increasingly important. These originally consisted of nominal payments in recognition of papal authority, such as the census paid by a number of monasteries and Peter’s pence paid by certain countries. In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries popes levied occasional tenths of the assessed value of benefices to finance crusades, but most of the money collected went to lay rulers and was not used for its intended purpose. More lucrative were the exactions made in connection with the increasing practice of papal provision, or thepope’s direct appointment to dignities and benefices: common services paid by archbishops, bishops and abbots and annates paid by other provisors. The former amounted notionally to one-third and the latter to the whole of the assessed annual income, which was lower than the true value. In theory, the pope’s right to provide to any church was well worked out by now, but under John XXII the fiscal benefits of the practice were better realized. His constitution Execrabilis (1317) was enacted to end…

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