At that moment, indeed, France, in reality so near the top of the wheel of fortune, appeared at her lowest. Nations and men forget how quick that wheel revolves; and the Pope, beholding France his sole protector against the world, and France the prey of England, felt himself no longer safe at Avignon. In 1361 a company of freebooters had defeated the Papal troops at the very gates of the Papal city; the Pope had bought them off with a ransom, and had redoubled the fortifications. But he had realized his insecurity. It was evident that the real interests of the Church demanded the return of the Pope to Rome.
Urban made a courageous, a heroic effort. He dragged his reluctant Court of luxurious French Cardinals across the seas to Rome. But in that black and savage haunt of robbers, the Pope remembered Avignon too well. He came home at Christmas time in 1379; but it was only to die in the beautiful familiar palace; and, out of France, the faithful called his death the judgment of the Lord upon him who looks back from the plough.
A brighter epoch opened for his successor, Gregory XI. The genius of King Charles and his brothers, the Dukes of Anjou and Burgundy, had restored the fortunes of France; and Anjou, at any rate, was aware of the advantage which the House of France might reap from the partnership of a Pope at Avignon. For the Pope, of course, was a Frenchman and willing to assist in the triumph of his country, a triumph he could best assist by remaining at Avignon to further and inspire the policy of his king. Every tie, indeed, united to detain Gregory in Provence. He was no ascetic, indifferent to glory or to comfort; but an affectionate, natural man, loving his ease, loving his family, loving the land where he was born. At Avignon he dwelt among his friends, his kinsmen, his father the Comte de Beaufort, his mother, his four sisters. The stories of his Cardinals could only add to his own horror of that distant Italy whose language he could not speak. He was ill, and he dreaded the miasma of Rome; he needed the comforts of that Court whose luxurious memory should long survive in France. “You should have come to Europe a few years ago, before the Schism,” writes the anonymous author of Maître Jehan de Meun—