John XXII

(1249–1334)

   Pope.

   John was born Jacques Duèse in Cahors, France. He was educated at the University of Paris and was appointed Bishop of Fréjus in 1300, Bishop of Avignon in 1310, Cardinal Bishop of Porto in 1312, and was elected Pope in 1316. He was the first of the Avignon Popes and is remembered as an excellent administrator. None the less his reign was troubled by a variety of conflicts. He ruled against the thesis that the poverty of Jesus and his disciples was absolute and he supported the order of Friars Minor in an acrimonious dispute with the Franciscan Spirituals. He excommunicated the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria in 1324, in retaliation for which Lewis organised the Ghibelline League. The allies seized Rome and set up the Spiritual Franciscan Nicholas V as antipope between 1328 and 1330. Lewis also encouraged marsiglio of padua who had written his Defensor Pacis against papal power. At the end of his life, John XXII was involved in a doctrinal controversy on the nature of the beatific vision. This was only finally settled in the reign of Benedict XII.

   J.N.D. Kelly (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (1986).