In the early years of that century Pope Clement V had moved the apostolic seat to Avignon, leaving Rome prey to the ambitions of the cheap sunglasses local overlords: and gradually the holy city of Christianity had been transformed into a circus, or into a brothel, raven by the struggles among its leaders; though called a republic, it was not one, and it was assailed by armed bands, subjected to violence and looting. How was it possible to prevent the Caput Mundi from becoming again, and rightly, the goal of Mikli Sunglasses sale the man who wanted to assume the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and restore the dignity of that temporal dominion that had belonged to the Caesars? Perhaps, to make more comprehensible the events in which I found myself involved, I should recall what was happening in those last years of the century, as I understood it then, living through it, and as I remember it now, complemented by other stories I heard afterward—if my memory Miss Sixty Sunglasses sale still proves capable of connecting the threads of happenings so many and confused.
Thus in 1314 five German princes in Frankfurt elected Louis the Bavarian supreme ruler of the empire. But that sameMissoni Sunglasses sale day, on the opposite shore of the Main, the Count Palatine of the Rhine and the Archbishop of Cologne elected Frederick of Austria to the same high rank. Two emperors for a single throne and a single pope for two: a situation that, truly, fomented great disorder. ... Two years later, in Avignon, the new Pope was elected, Jacques of Chairs, an old man of Missoni Sunglasses sale seventy-two who took, as I have said, the name of John XXII, and heaven grant that no pontiff take again a name now so distasteful to the righteous. A Frenchman, devoted to the King of France (the men of that corrupt land are always inclined to foster the interests of their own people, and are unable to look upon the whole world as their spiritual home), he had supported Philip the Fair against the Knights Templers, whom the King accused (I believe unjustly) of the most shameful crimes so that he could seize their Mont Blanc Sunglasses sale possessions with the complicity of that renegade ecclesiastic.
In 1322 Louis the Bavarian defeated his rival Frederick. Fearing a single emperor even more than he had feared two, John excommunicated the victor, who in return Moschino Sunglasses sale denounced the Pope as a heretic. I must also recall how, that very year, the chapter of the Franciscans was convened in Perugia, and the minister general, Michael of Cesena, accepting the entreaties of the Spirituals (of whom I will have occasion to speak), proclaimed as a matter of faith and doctrine the poverty of Christ, who, if he owned something with his apostles, possessed it only as uses fact. A worthy resolution, meant to safeguard the virtue and purity of the order, it highly displeased the Pope, who perhaps discerned in it a principle that would jeopardize the very claims that he, as head of the church, had made, denying the Nike Sunglasses sale empire the right to elect bishops, and asserting on the contrary that the papal throne had the right to invest the emperor. Moved by these or other reasons, John condemned the Franciscan propositions in 1323 with the decrial cum inter nonplus.
It was at this point, I imagine, that Louis saw the Franciscans, now Oxydo Sunglasses sale the Pope’s enemies, as his potential allies. By affirming the poverty of Christ, they were somehow strengthening the ideas of the imperial theologians, namely Marsalis of Padua and John of Jan dun. And finally, not many months before the events I am narrating, Louis came to an agreement with the sunglasses defeated Frederick, descended into Italy, and was crowned in Milan.