4 stories mention Pope Gregory XI on DeadlyCurious.
Catherine of Siena was an unschooled Dominican tertiary from a substantial Sienese dyer's family who became one of the most influential European Catholic figures of the 14th century. Her substantial 1376 personal mission to Avignon helped persuade Pope Gregory XI to end the seventy-year Avignon papacy. She was 29.
Read the story →Catherine of Siena was a 14th-century lay Dominican mystic from a Tuscan dyer family. She had no formal education and never learned to write. She wrote (through dictation) several hundred letters to political and religious leaders, walked from Siena to Avignon in 1376, and persuaded Pope Gregory XI to return the papacy to Rome.
Read the story →The Palais des Papes at Avignon was the residence of the seven Avignon popes between 1335 and 1377. It is the largest Gothic palace in Europe — about 15,000 square metres of floor area, with walls up to 50 metres tall. The French Revolution turned it into a barracks. Most of the original interior was lost.
Read the story →The Great Western Schism (1378–1417) followed directly from the seventy-year Avignon papacy. Rival lines of popes at Rome and Avignon (and later at Pisa) excommunicated each other and divided the Catholic Christian world along approximately Anglo-French political lines for a generation.
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