Clement V elected, papacy pulled toward France

June 1305

The Gascon archbishop Bertrand de Got was crowned at Lyon with Philip IV at his elbow, a pope chosen to serve French interests from the start. Clement never saw Rome. Within four years he settled his court at Avignon, beginning the seventy-year 'Babylonian Captivity' that stripped the papacy of its Italian mystique and bound it to the Valois.