Well, welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

On this episode, let's take a trip together.

Let's travel to Avignon right along the Rhone River.

And let's go back in time.

Let's go back to the 1300s.

Avignon is in modern-day France, but in the 1300s it was in the Kingdom of Arles, which

was squarely in the Holy Roman Empire.

Now if there had been news feeds back in the 1300s, Avignon would have dominated them.

From 1309 to 1376, it was the home of the Pope.

That's right, all during this time, the Popes were not in Rome, but they were in Avignon.

And 1305, Clement V was elected Pope, with no little intrigue surrounding that.

And he initially set up his papacy at Potier, and instead of moving to Rome and taking

up residence there, he moved the entire papal court and curia officials to Avignon.

Seven successive Popes stayed there.

They were all French.

This was a time of French domination of the Roman Catholic Church.

Of the 134 Cardinals, 111 of them were French.

The papal palace where the Pope lived there along the Rhone River was a fortress.

And over this time it was under constant construction as each successive Pope expanded their base.

This was a time of centralization of power and of heavy taxation.

The papacy was looking more and more like a king's court than an ecclesiastical organization.

It was a time of a great deal of the selling of indulgences.

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