Urban V

Guillaume de Grimoard, who reigned as Pope Urban V, was born in 1310 at the castle of Grizac in the Gévaudan region of Languedoc, in the Kingdom of France. He came from the local nobility: his father was seigneur of Grizac and his mother belonged to the house of Montferrand. He entered the Benedictine Order at the nearby priory of Chirac and studied canon law at Montpellier, Toulouse, Paris, and Avignon, taking a doctorate and later teaching in several of those schools. His brother Anglic de Grimoard also entered the Church and would later be made a cardinal. Grimoard’s reputation was that of a learned, austere monk rather than a court prelate.

Before his election he held a series of monastic and diplomatic posts. He served as vicar-general in the dioceses of Clermont and Uzès, became abbot of Saint-Germain d’Auxerre in the early 1350s, and in 1361 was named abbot of the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Marseille. The Avignon popes used him as nuncio and legate in Italy, including missions connected with the Kingdom of Naples and the Italian communes. While he was still in Italy as a papal envoy, and while he was not yet a cardinal, the conclave elected him pope on 28 September 1362 after the death of Innocent VI. He was consecrated bishop and crowned at Avignon, taking the name Urban V.

His pontificate (1362–1370) belonged to the Avignon period but was distinguished by reform and by the most serious attempt of that era to restore the papacy to Rome. He tried to restrain luxury at the curia, to limit simony and pluralism, and to foster learning. He issued the 1364 bull that confirmed the foundation of the University of Kraków, supported other studia generalia, and established a college at Montpellier. He encouraged missions in Eastern Europe and the Balkans and attempted, with little lasting success, to organize a crusade. In 1367, against the wishes of many French cardinals, he left Avignon and entered Rome. There he undertook restorations at the Lateran and St. Peter’s, received the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, and in 1369 received the Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos, who made a personal profession of Catholic faith that did not produce a durable reunion of the churches.

Italian unrest, war with the Visconti of Milan, disorders in the Papal States, and pressure from the French party in the Sacred College led him to leave Rome in 1370 and return to Avignon, where he arrived in September and died on 19 December 1370. He was first buried at Avignon; in keeping with his own wish his remains were later translated to the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Marseille. Urban V was remembered for remaining close to Benedictine simplicity as pope and for relatively limited nepotism, though he did elevate his brother to the cardinalate. He was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1870. His feast is kept on 19 December.