Papal tombs are a primary source for the study of papal politics. This chapter gives a chronological overview of papal burials, from early Christendom to the end of the fifteenth century. It addresses questions of burial preferences, church topography (especially in St. Peter’s and St. John Lateran in Rome), as well as the individual appearance of each monument. For the late Middle Ages, the importance of artists to formal innovation is underlined (Arnolfo di Cambio) and set in relation to the patron’s choice of traditions the monument is meant to refer to in its placement and appearance – to antique, French, or Italian models. The increasing number of funeral monuments for members of the Church hierarchy, as well as for laymen, kings, and nobles, starting in the thirteenth century, stiffened the competition in monumental burial and increased the need to develop appropriate papal features.

This chapter surveys the papacy’s struggles and historiography in the fourteenth and fifteen centuries, which were rich in far reaching events, questioning the “rhetoric” of crisis often attached to the period. Barred from Rome by widespread turmoil in Italy, seven consecutive popes – all of Gallic origin – resided at Avignon between 1309 and 1375. Criticized equally for “abandoning” Rome and for their perceived subservience to the French crown, the popes labored valiantly to end the Hundred Years War (albeit unsuccessfully) and to maintain an effective international ecclesiastical administration. The Schism (1378–1417) arose from the cardinals’ uncanonical attempt to depose the volatile Urban VI (r. 1378–89) and to elect Clement VII (r. 1378–94) in his place; eventually, three lines of popes (Roman, Avignonese, and Pisan) would bring deep divisions to Europe with their competing claims to legitimacy. The crisis only ended with the sui generis Council of Constance (1414–18) and the election of Martin V (r. 1417–31).

The third chapter traces how Petrarch imagines the place of the poet in the period between 1341 and 1353. It begins with Petrarch’s coronation oration as poet laureate of Rome, which has long been recognized as representing the poet’s status in an oscillating temporality between past and present. It argues that this tension in Petrarch’s self-representation is related to his ambiguous stance about appertaining to a city or being situated beyond it. In readings of the coronation oration, the letters surrounding the revolution of Cola di Rienzo, and his major texts on poetry, the chapter shows how Petrarch increasingly distances himself from association with urban environments as places of the masses, even as he becomes more directly involved in politics. With an ideal Rome as his city, he can claim a status that is above and beyond the vulgar concerns of the people of the city. Petrarch’s political language of vituperation against the people coincides with the language of his rejection of the vernacular. After a close reading of the poetics of place in Familiares 10.4 and the related Parthenias, the chapter concludes with an analysis of the defense of poetry in the Invective contra medicum.