Pope Gregory XI Returns Papacy to Rome

Context

The Avignon Papacy began in 1309 when Pope Clement V, a Frenchman, relocated the papal court from Rome to Avignon in southern France. Successive popes, all French and often closely tied to the French crown, remained there for the next sixty-eight years, prompting widespread criticism that the Church had become a captive of French royal interests rather than an independent spiritual authority centered in Rome.

Earlier efforts to restore the papacy to Italy included Pope Urban V’s brief return to Rome from 1367 to 1370, after which he retreated once more to Avignon. By the time Gregory XI succeeded Urban in late 1370, Italian city-states were restive, the Papal States faced challenges from local lords such as the Visconti of Milan, and voices within the Church, including the mystic Catherine of Siena, pressed for a permanent relocation to reaffirm Rome’s historic role.

French monarchs, particularly Charles V, and many members of the College of Cardinals preferred the security and influence available in Avignon, setting the stage for a contentious decision when Gregory determined to move.

What Happened

Gregory XI, born Pierre Roger de Beaufort and the seventh and final French pope of the Avignon line, had received repeated appeals from Catherine of Siena urging him to return the papal court to Rome to strengthen the Church’s independence and help resolve conflicts in Italy. After weighing these pressures against opposition from King Charles V and the majority of the cardinals, Gregory resolved to act.

The return journey began on September 13, 1376, when the pope departed Avignon despite protests. He proceeded to Marseille, embarked by sea on October 2, and reached Corneto on December 6, remaining there while preparations were made in Rome. On January 13, 1377, he left Corneto, landed at Ostia the following day, and traveled up the Tiber to the monastery of San Paolo fuori le Mura.

On January 17, 1377, Gregory made his solemn entrance into the city of Rome, reestablishing the papal residence in its traditional seat after nearly seventy years of absence.

Aftermath

Gregory’s presence in Rome was brief and troubled; within months he temporarily withdrew to Anagni amid ongoing strife with Italian factions. He died in Rome on March 27, 1378, at about age forty-eight or forty-nine.

His death precipitated the election of the Italian Urban VI, whose contentious reign prompted several cardinals to withdraw and elect the French antipope Clement VII, who returned to Avignon and initiated the Western Schism that divided European allegiance between rival popes until 1417.

Legacy

The return of the papacy to Rome under Gregory XI marked the definitive end of the Avignon residency and reasserted Rome as the institutional center of the Western Church, even though the immediate aftermath produced the prolonged crisis of the Western Schism. Historians view the event as a partial restoration of papal autonomy from secular, especially French, dominance, while also illustrating the persistent tensions between national monarchies and ecclesiastical authority.

Although antipopes continued to claim legitimacy from Avignon and elsewhere during the schism, the papacy has remained based in Rome ever since, shaping the governance and symbolic identity of the Catholic Church for subsequent centuries.