§ 10. THE LATER AVIGNON POPES. 105
king opposed the plan and was supported by the cardinals in a body. Only three Italians were left in it. Urban started for the home of his spiritual ancestors in April, 1367. A fleet of sixty vessels furnished by Naples, Genoa, Venice, and Pisa conducted the distinguished traveller from Marseilles to Genoa and Corneto, where he was met by envoys from Rome, who put into his hands the keys of the castle of St. Angelo, the symbol of full municipal power. All along the way transports of wine, fish, cheese, and other provisions, sent on from Avignon, met the papal party, and horses from the papal stables on the Rhone were in waiting for the pope at every stage of the journey. ^
At Viterbo, a riot was called forth by the insolent manners of the French, and the pope launched the interdict against the city. The papal ledgers contain the outlay by the apothecary for medicines for the papal servants who were wounded in the melee. Here Albernoz died, to whom the papacy owed a large debt for his services in restoring order to Rome. The legend runs that, when he was asked by the pope for an account of his administration, he loaded a car with the keys of the cities he had recovered to the papal authority, and sent them to him.
Urban chose as his j'esidence the Vatican in preference to the Lateral!. The preparations for his advent included the restoration of the palace and its gardens. A part of the garden was used as a field, and the rest was overgrown with thorns. Urban ordered it replanted with grape-vines and fruit trees. The papal ledger gives the cost of these improvements as 6,621 gold florins, or about $15,000. Roofs, floors, doors, walls, and other parts of the palace had to be renewed. The expenses from April 27, 1367, to November,
1 Kirsch : Ruckkehr, etc., pp. xii, 74-90. During the stop of five days at Genoa, Urban received timely help in the payment of the feoffal tax of Naples, 8000 ounces of gold. Kirsch, in his interesting and valuable treatment, publishes the ledger entries made in the official registers, deposited in Rome and Avignon and giving in detail the expenses incurred on the visits of Urban and Gregory XL Gregorovius, VI. 430 sqq., gives an account of Urban's pilgrimage in his most brilliant style.
106 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
1368, as shown in the report of the papal treasurer, Gaucelin de Pradello, were 15,559 florins, or $39,000.1
During the sixty years that had elapsed since Clement V. fixed the papal residence in France, Rome had been reduced ahnost to a museum of Christian monuments, as it had before been a museum of pagan ruins. The aristocratic families had forsaken the city. The Lateran had again fallen a prey to the flames in 1360. St. Paul's was desolate. Rubbish or stagnant pools filled the streets. The population was reduced to 20,000 or perhaps 17,000.'-^ The return of the papacy was compared by Petrarch to Israel returning out of Egypt.
Urban set about the restoration of churches. He gave 1000 florins to the Lateran and spent 5000 on St. Paul's. Rome showed signs of again becoming the centre of European society and politics. Joanna, queen of Naples, visited the city, and so did the king of Cyprus and the emperor, Charles IV. In 1369 John V. Palseologus, the Byzantine emperor, arrived, a suppliant for aid against the Turks, and publicly made solemn abjuration of his schismatic tenets.
T1ie_oldjlays^eeraed to have returned^ but Urban was not satisfied. He had not the courage nor the wide vision to sacrifice his own pleasure for the good of his oflfice. Had he so done, the disastrous schism might have been averted. He turned his face_ba,ck towards Avignon, where he arrived " at the hour of vespers," Sept. 27, 1370. He.survived his return scarcely two months, and died Dec. 19, 1370, universally beloved and already honored as a saint.