The Schism further weakened the ideological and practical bases of papal authority. When the papacy attempted to return to Rome, factions among the cardinals disagreed, and during the Great Schism there were rival claimants to the papacy in both Rome and Avignon, and occasionally elsewhere too. The Avignon period was damaging to the papacy’s prestige and authority. For several decades (1309–1378) the popes were resident in Avignon. In the late 13th century, a conflict between France and the papacy opened a host of challenges to traditional forms of papal rule. They both built and reformed institutions while also newly articulating the ideology of papal leadership. The popes of this era were powerful and confident. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the so-called Papal Monarchy emerged. The “Investiture Controversy” presented the papacy with both challenges and opportunities. In the 11th century, reform-minded popes struggled to improve clerical morality and free the church from lay control. With the decline of Frankish authority in the 9th century, the popes were entangled in the tumultuous politics of Rome, and the western church was increasingly brought under lay control. The popes opened relations with various Germanic kingdoms and in the 8th century allied with the Franks. With the disappearance of the western Roman Empire, the emergence of a Byzantine Empire, and the sudden eruption of the Islamic caliphate, the papacy’s effective zone of authority shrank to western Europe. In the 4th and 5th centuries the papacy began to elaborate both a theology of leadership and a set of institutions, both of which proved controversial. The papacy emerged as a self-conscious institution in the 3rd century but functioned openly only after 313, when Constantine I granted Christianity toleration in the Roman Empire. These themes are always but somewhat differently evident in the major periods into which papal history can be divided. Fourth, papal history is the serial biography of the 328 men who have held the office (as of 2018), not counting a few dozen “antipopes” and the rival claimants during the Great Schism (1378–1417). Third, as a quasi-state, the papacy has entertained complex relations with numerous political entities-empires, kingdoms, principalities, and cities. Second, the papacy is an institution papal history must therefore treat the bureaus and offices by means of which the popes have exercised their authority. This central doctrine, which began emerging in the 3rd century, has been both powerful and controversial. The essential idea is that because Christ granted leadership to Peter, Peter’s successors inherit that leadership. First, it would take account of the “Petrine Idea,” the legitimation of papal leadership in both church and world based on the text of Matthew 16:16–18. ![]() A full history of the papacy would have four aspects. The papacy is the world’s oldest continuously functioning institution.
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