The phrase 'Babylonian Captivity of the Church' — the standard European literary description of the 14th-century Avignon papacy — was substantially fixed by which Italian poet?
Petrarch had grown up in Avignon (his exiled Florentine father moved there in 1311) and had taken minor clerical orders in the Avignonese curia. He spent four decades writing both inside and against the papal court that funded his scholarly career. The phrase had been used by earlier authors (Marsilius of Padua in the 1320s) but Petrarch fixed it as the canonical European literary description — adopted by every subsequent historiographic tradition including the Protestant Reformation polemic of 150 years later. Dante did not use the phrase. Boccaccio wrote about the plague, not the papacy. Catherine pressed the same Roman-return position but in different language.
Read the full story →Francesco Petrarca grew up in Avignon when his exiled Florentine father followed the papal court there in 1311. He spent four decades in and out of the city while writing the most famous polemical attacks on the Avignon papacy ever produced — coining the phrase "Babylonian captivity" that has defined the period since.
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