GREGORY XI, Pope. - Pierre Roger de Beaufort, son of Guillaume de Beaufort and Marie Chambon, b. in 1329.
At the age of 42, elected pope unanimously on 30 Dec. 1370, he took the name G. XI. He was crowned on 5 Jan. 1371, the last of the seven French popes of Avignon. At 12 he was a canon of Rodez and of Paris; at 19 his uncle, Clement VI, had created him cardinal deacon with the title of S. Maria Nova. As cardinal, rather than live amid the splendor of the Avignon court, he preferred to devote himself to study: he was at Perugia, where he studied law under the guidance of Pietro Baldo degli Ubaldi.
As pontiff, he reformed monastic orders, among them the Fratelli Pescatori; he intervened in the East in defense of pilgrims, conceiving the idea of a Crusade, which was never however carried out. His policy succeeded in bringing about peace between Charles IV and Louis of Hungary and between the duke of Bavaria and the count of Savoy. He tried, in vain, to reconcile France and England, since he sensed that only a Franco-English peace would make possible the realization of two great designs: the return of the Holy See to Rome and the Crusade; but his action in this regard was opposed by the king of France himself, Charles V.
Petrarch had already several times wished for this return, and the Romans themselves had addressed to G. heartfelt invitations accompanied by the vow and the prediction of St. Bridget; but in Italy two great powers opposed the return: the Visconti and Florence. G. tried in vain to overthrow the Visconti lordship, and against Florence, which looked unfavorably on the consolidation along its borders of the State of the Church, so well set in motion by Albornoz, on 31 March 1376 he launched the interdict. Very soon many cities, until then loyal to the Pontiff, began to rebel, joining the Florentine League. G. understood that temporal power in Italy was vanishing, if he remained any longer in Avignon; St. Catherine of Siena, whom the Florentines had meanwhile sent to the Pontiff as mediator, overcame the last resistance of his soul, and on 13 Sept. 1376 G. left Avignon, entering Rome, welcomed by the rejoicing population, on 17 Jan. 1377. Death overtook him on 27 March 1378. He was buried in S. Maria Nova, where Pier Paolo Olivieri, on the commission of the Roman Senate, erected a monument to him in 1589.
Bibliography5 works
Romualdo Paolucci