Images du pouvoir pontifical dans les livres de Clément VII et Benoît XIII

Abstract

Images of pontifical power in the books of Clement VII and Benedict XIII. If the vitality of the illuminated manuscript collection at the court of Avignon during the Great Schism is well known, one can nonetheless ask questions about the influence of political issues at the time on their iconographic content. An examination of some of the large manuscripts ordered by Clement VII and Benedict XIII indicates the identity of the pontiff being demonstrated most frequently by the heraldic system. On the other hand, the protective figure of Saint Peter is scarcely used, and the ambivalent image of God the Father as pope only appears very late in the manuscripts of Benedict XIII. A volume of the Historia ecclesiastica nova of Ptolemy of Lucca, ordered by the last Avignon pope and completed in 1401, nevertheless includes a remarkable iconographic series of the entire line of popes, from Peter to Boniface VIII. The artist Sancho Gontier created a homogeneous gallery while nonetheless emphasising the personality of each pope, thereby underlining better the continuity of the apostolic See. Such a programme is exceptional. It is rather in the manuscripts of the great prelates that one can find representations demonstrating pontifical power. It appears that this picture largely escaped the control of the Avignon curia, but contributed perhaps to its fight to defend its legitimacy.