Pierre Roger (Clement VI) elected Pope

Pope Clement VI (1291 – December 6, 1352), born Pierre Roger, the fourth of the Avignon Popes, was pope from May 1342 until his death.

Clement was born in the village of Maumont, today part of the commune of Rosiers-d'Égletons, Corrèze, in Limousin, the son of the wealthy lord of Rosiers-d'Égletons.
He entered the Benedictine order as a boy, studied at the College de Sorbonne in Paris, and became successively prior of St. Baudil, abbot of Fécamp, bishop of Arras, chancellor of France, archbishop of Sens and archbishop of Rouen. He was made cardinal-priest of Santi Nereo e Achilleo and administrator of the bishopric of Avignon by Benedict XII in 1338, and was chosen to succeed him as pope at the conclave of 1342.
Like his immediate predecessors, he was devoted to France, and he demonstrated his French sympathies by refusing a solemn invitation to return to Rome from the city's people, as well as from the poet Petrarch. He however threw a sop to the Romans by reducing the Jubilee term from one hundred years to fifty. He also purchased the sovereignty of Avignon from Queen Joan I of Naples, for 80,000 crowns. The money was never paid, but Clement VI may have deemed that he gave the queen a full equivalent by absolving her from the murder of her husband.
Clement VI issued the Bull Unigenitus, January 27, 1343, in order to justify the power of the pope and the use of indulgences. This document was also used in the defence of indulgences after Martin Luther pinned his 95 Theses to a church in Wittenburg on October 31, 1517.
Clement VI reigned during the Black Death. This pandemic swept through Europe (as well as Asia and the Middle East) between 1347–1350, and is believed to have killed between a third and two thirds of Europe's population. During the plague, he sought the insight of astronomers for explanation. Jehan de Murs was among the team "of three who drew up a treatise explaining the plague of 1348 by the conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in 1341"...

Born 1291 in the castle of Maumont, department of Corrèze, France, elected pope, 7 May, 1342, at Avignon, where he died 6 December, 1352. At the age of ten he entered the Benedictine monastery of La Chaise-Dieu (Haute- Loire), where he made his religious profession. After devoting some time to study at Paris, he graduated as doctor and became professor in that city. Subsequent to his introduction to Pope John XXII by Cardinal Pierre Grouin de Mortemart, he rapidly rose from one ecclesiastical dignity to another. At first prior of Saint-Baudile at Nîmes, then Abbot of Fécamp in Normandy, he became Bishop of Arras and Chancellor of France in 1328, was promoted to the Archbishopric of Sens in 1329, and to that of Rouen the following year. In the latter city a provincial council, which promulgated several disciplinary decrees, was held under his presidency in 1335. He was created cardinal (1338) by Benedict XII, whom he succeeded as pontiff. One of the characteristic traits of his policy as head of the Universal Church was his excessive devotion to the interests of France and those of his relatives. His French sympathies impeded his efforts to restore and maintain peace between England and France, although his mediation led to the conclusion of a short general truce (Malestroit, 1343). Most of the twenty-five cardinals whom he created were French, and twelve of them were related to him. The King of France was given permission (1344) to Communicate under both kinds. Clement accepted the senatorial dignity offered him as "Knight Roger" by a Roman delegation, which numbered Petrarch as one of its members. He also granted their request for the celebration of a jubilee every fifty, instead of every hundred, years (Bull "Unigenitus", 1343), but declined their invitation to return to Rome. Greater permanency seemed to be assured to the papal residence abroad by his purchase of the sovereignty of Avignon for 80,000 florins from Joanna of Naples and Provence (9 June, 1348). A...

Clement VI, given name Pierre Roger, Roman Catholic Pope from the 7th of May 1342 to the 6th of December 1352, was born at Maumont in Limousin in 1291, the son of the wealthy lord of Rosières, entered the Benedictine order as a boy, studied at Paris, and became successively prior of St. Baudil, abbot of Fécamp, bishop of Arras, chancellor of France, archbishop of Sens and archbishop of Rouen. He was made cardinal-priest of Sti. Nereo ed Achilleo and administrator of the bishopric of Avignon by Benedict XII in 1338, and four years later succeeded him as pope. He continued to reside at Avignon despite the arguments of envoys and the verses of Petrarch, but threw a sop to the Romans by reducing the Jubilee term from one hundred years to fifty. He appointed Cola di Rienzo to a civil position at Rome, and, although at first approving the establishment of the tribunate, he later sent a legate who excommunicated Rienzo and, with the help of the aristocratic faction, drove him from the city (December 1347). Clement continued the struggle of his predecessors with the emperor Louis the Bavarian, excommunicating him after protracted negotiations on the 13th of April 1346, and directing the election of Charles of Moravia, who received general recognition after the death of Louis in October 1347, and put an end to the schism which had long divided Germany. Clement proclaimed a crusade in 1343, but nothing was accomplished beyond a naval attack on Smyrna (29th of October 1344). He also carried on fruitless negotiations for church unity with the Armenians and with the Greek emperor, John Cantacuzenus. He tried to end the Hundred Years' War between England and France, but secured only a temporary truce. He excommunicated Casimir of Poland for marital infidelity and forced him to do penance. He successfully resisted encroachments on ecclesiastical jurisdiction by the kings of England, Castile and Aragon. He made Prague an archbishopric in 1344, and three years later founded the u...