The Avignon Popes and Their Chancery. Collected Essays #816677

The popes’residence at Avignon in the fourteenth century contributed to a remarkable degree to the centralization of the government of the church and the elaboration of the bureaucracy of the papal court. The present volume illustrates and elucidates these developments insofar as they concern the papal chancery and the production of documents issued in the name of the pope.
It contains essays published over more than thirty years in academic journals, Festschriften and conference proceedings. Although the essays were published in a wide range of places, they almost all have a single theme. They appear now in a revised form: new sources have been discussed, references to more recent secondary literature added, and errors corrected. On the other hand, two essays are published for the first time, one on autograph letters of the Avignon popes, the other on papal licences which permitted the appointment of a private confessor who could grant the beneficiary a plenary indulgence at the point of death.