On
20 December after a conclave which had lasted seven the
cardinals unanimously elected Jacques Fournier, to succeed John
XXII. Athis coronation in the Dominican priory at Avignon on 8
January, 1335 he took the name of Benedict XII.
He was a native of Saverdun in the county of Foix, a
Cistercian monk, a master of the University of Paris a
distinguished theologian who had played a leading part in the
controversy occasioned by John XXII's teaching about the fate of
departed souls. As Bishop first of Pamiers and later of Mirapoix
he had also distinguished himself by the zeal he showed in the
pursuit of heretics.
A true monk, continuing to wear the habit even after his
election as pope, austere in his private as in his public life,
Benedict XII was to show the same zeal in his attempts, never
fully successful, to reform the papal court and the religious
orders and to bring peace to the warring princes of Europe.
From the very beginning of his pontificate Benedict XII
renounced war as an instrument of policy. Neither to defeat the
aggression of the emperor in Italy nor to defend the Papal
States was he prepared to have recourse to arms. With Louis of
Bavaria he at once entered into negotiations which were to
continue to the end of the pontificate, and if no lasting peace
was made between pope and emperor this was due rather to the
opposition and the mistrust of the kings of France and England
than to any lack of good will on the part of the pope. The
attitude of the German princes was intransigent. In 1338 at
Rense they repudiated the claims made by Clement V and John
XXII, declared the Empire totally independent of papal control,
and rejected all the censures by which the two popes had
attempted to vindicate their claims to suzerainty. In this the
princes were supported by the German Church. In Germany the
emperor acted on occasion as though he were possessed of
spiritual as well as temporal authority, annulling the marriage
of Margaret, the heiress of the Tyrol, and providing her and his
son with dispensations from the impediment of affinity so that
they might marry.
Benedict XII worked with some success to prevent the
disastrous conflict between France and England later to be
called the Hundred Years War, which was just beginning, and on
three occasions he was able to bring about a truce or a
temporary cessation of the fighting. But it was the business of
reform within the Church that was the pope's chief concern.
Avignon was notorious for the peculation and the dishonesty
of many of the papal clerks, and for the swarms of benefice
seekers and absentee bishops and clergy who infested the papal
court. Within a month of his election Benedict XII ordered all
diocesan bishops resident at Avignon, and all the clergy having
benefices with care of souls, to return at once to their duties
under pain of deprivation. The abuse of granting abbeys to
non-resident abbots was abolished. In December 1335 the pope
revoked all the favors known as "expectatives", grants of
benefices when they should fall vacant. The mere threat of
inquiry and reform in the different departments of the papal
government, and above all in the office of the pope's marshal,
is said to have brought about a general flight of the guilty
from Avignon. The office of the Penitentiary, which dealt
chiefly with absolution from reserved sins and ecclesiastical
censures and with dispensations, was completely reorganized. A
new staff of secretaries was created to deal with the pope's
secret correspondence, and a new system established of
registering all privileges and favors in order to eliminate
forgeries.
A monk himself and a diocesan bishop for many years before
his election to the papacy, Benedict XII was well aware that
almost all the religious orders at this time were in need of
reform. The Cistercians had long since abandoned much of their
primitive austerity, the rigid observance of poverty and the
excellent system of regular visitation and of general chapters.
The pope renewed these rules, severely limited the abbots'
rights of disposing of monastic property, and ordered all
Cistercian monasteries to maintain students of theology in the
universities.
The most radical reforms were introduced into the Benedictine
order. Thirty-one provinces were established, and each province
was ordered to hold a triennial chapter for the maintenance of
discipline. Other rulings of the pope dealt with the restoration
of the common Iife in the monastery, the care of the property,
and the courses of monastic studies.
Benedict XII was particularly critical of the Franciscans and
imposed on the order a new constitution which was very ill
received and finally abolished by his successor. With the
Dominicans the attempted reform was eves less successful; the
pope was openly resisted by the Master General, and the
controversy was still unsettled when Benedict died on 25 April,
1342.
The pope's reform of the religious orders appears to have
failed because he attempted to do too much too quickly, to make
too many regulations and changes at once and without the men and
the machinery to see that the proposed reforms were put into
practice. All that he did aroused a tremendous antipathy. He was
blamed for his alleged avarice, for being stubborn and
hard-hearted, for his animosity toward the orders of the friars.
Like every reformer Benedict XII made mistakes and he made
enemies; but there can be no doubt of his integrity, of his
personal sanctity, and his ardent desire to purify the Church
and restore the declining prestige of the papacy.
This biographical data is from
"The Popes" edited by Eric John. Published by Hawthorn Books,
Inc of New York.
