CHAPTER XXVIII

In the Provençal countryside, where the Black Death spread, in addition to a few lucky farmers, two other groups of people also survived.

First of all, of course, the lords and nobles who huddled in the castle fortresses, their castles were generally far away from the densely populated cities, and relatively closed. If, as soon as the news of the plague spread, these lords had been subject to strict quarantine measures, forbidding merchants and travelers from entering, and forbidding their own people to go out without permission, the chances of survival would have been much higher—less than one in five people in the whole of Provence had survived the death frenzy of the Black Death; But the number of surviving nobles is slightly higher than this sad percentage.

Of course, even those noble lords who are still alive, in the current desperate situation of "dying as soon as they go out", can only hide in their houses and keep their doors closed, and let the unruly guests led by the traversers do whatever they want in their territory, and at the same time they are afraid that the militants will come and attack - not to mention how strong these strange militants are, whether they can fight or not, even if their castles are impregnable and well-guarded, as long as they are brought in by these outsiders in battle, the plague is brought in by these outsiders, These dead houses who are still alive will have to be called by the Lord together.

But although Levi and the others are all the way to the "three lights" (the house is burned down, the livestock is robbed, and the festival is gone), they are happy to move things and set fires, but after all, they are not a real bandit group. So, when they see the heavily guarded castles, they usually only get around them from a distance—it is too much trouble to negotiate with these vigilant and extremely neurotic fellows, and gradually dispel their guards, and the benefits to be gained are limited. However, once they encounter the kind of "castle of the dead" that has become a haunted house, they will also unceremoniously break into the door and empty anything of value inside: as the disciplined political commissar Guo said, this is not a devil entering the village, but a waste use

Then, even more frustrating, are the missionaries of the country churches and monasteries, and any catastrophe of destruction is often the perfect time for a pandemic of religious fanaticism. Although the pervasiveness of the Black Death was terrifying, there were still some fanatical priests who were not afraid of death walking the streets and alleys, mobilizing the masses, spreading faith, and tricking them into doing all kinds of inexplicable things: beating themselves with whips, torturing themselves and their families in all kinds of strange ways, donating all their property and their wives and children, and volunteering to make cattle and horses for the priests...... Hearing that Levi's gang of out-of-town guys actually came to "rob business" or "rob the Lamb of the Lord", those radical gods naturally did not have a good face.

On the road from Marseille to Avignon, for three days, there were mentally ill people shouting all kinds of strange slogans on both sides, and from time to time they appeared to oppose Livi and them, for the simple and absurd reason - "The plague is God's punishment for mankind, and those who can cure the disease must be heretics and devils"

Of course, after seeing the living "angels" performing miracles, and the armed knights and warriors in full armor, most of these fanatic gods still regained their senses and knelt down one after another, and even many of them immediately turned into hardcore fanatical followers of "Saint Levi". But in addition to these guys who know the times, there are also many granite-headed diehards, even if they look at the angel standing in front of them, they insist that this is an illusion or a devil, and they are about to hit it with a fierce fist, in short, they are completely unable to communicate normally.

Fortunately, although the Europeans of these years believed in the Virgin Mary, the idea of the Virgin Mary like the White Lotus was not very popular, and in the face of these fanatical religious madmen, no one in Levi's team was very loving, shouting that "harsh treatment will force more people into enemies." We should treat them with tolerance, try to meet their demands, respect their personal beliefs, and reflect on what mistakes we have led them to resist......." Instead, according to the typical medieval way of thinking, the killing of them decisively adopted a policy of humanitarianism, and both the minor priest and the archbishop were bound up and burned to ashes as heretics, so they did not cause any trouble.

Especially after leaving Marseille for more than sixty kilometers, they also met on the road a cardinal who had escaped from the city of Avignon to escape the plague. The cardinal seemed to have heard a little about the "miracles" of Marseille, so he was quite arrogant at first, and as soon as they met, he angrily accused Levi of betraying the right way and worshipping heresy...... But when a group of winged angels floated above his head and threw strings of thunder at his feet, they were immediately frightened and full of ugliness.

But scared pee is scared pee, not admitting it or not admitting it - although the living angel stood in front of him with an angry face, although the lightning cast by the angel had exploded at his feet, the cardinal still had a dead duck and refused to admit that the thing in front of him was an angel

No way, you have to know what religious people are most afraid of? The first fear is that there are a large number of believers who have apostasy or become atheists, and the second fear is, of course, that the true God has descended to earth -- as the saying goes, "the closer you are to God, the less religious...... They may be happy to make a clay sculpture and wood carving, and spend a lot of money to decorate it with gold and beauty, so as to help themselves fool the believers into donating money and materials to beautiful women, but they absolutely cannot bear that this clay sculpture suddenly becomes a living thing, and asks for this and that, and gives orders to themselves.

Indeed, medieval Europeans were known for their devotion to their faith, and the clergy of the Church proclaimed themselves "servants of the Lord." But the problem is that if there had been an angel sent by God to decree his will, the Holy See's first reaction would have been: "...... The stake is ready, and the Inquisition is ready to send the birdman bitch who claims to be an angel on his way."

Of course, it is difficult to say who will send whom on the road next. As long as the magic power of this "angel" is powerful enough to resist the decrees of the Church, there will soon be many pious priests and nuns who will lose their temperance and cut off the heads of those die-hard bishops to come to repentance...... Otherwise, how do you think Protestantism came to be?

Therefore, in view of the fact that this granite-headed cardinal is really unable to communicate and cannot act as a bridge between the traverser and the Holy See, Knight Levi, who has been accustomed to seeing death in recent years, can only regretfully blast this cardinal into slag with a big fireball after looking down for a while......

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In short, the people turned into bandits, burning villages, looting things, extorting and barbecuing people along the way, emptying countless abandoned villages, castles and monasteries, burning a large number of heretics, and everywhere they passed, flames and black smoke soared into the sky, like devils crossing the border...... But no matter how much they walked, they finally approached the destination of their trip, the "holy place" of Avignon, where Pope Clement VI was stationed.

-- In 1348, the year of the Black Death, the papal residence of the Catholic Church in Europe was not in Rome, the eternal city of Italy, but moved to Avignon, Provence, France, in 13o9, known as the "Prisoner of Avignon".

This was initially due to a bitter conflict between the French king Philip IV and Pope Boniface VIII at the end of the 13th century, when Philip IV was a belligerent monarch in French history. In order to unify France and to pay for the war against England, Philip IV, who was strapped for money, tried to tax the clergy of the Church, who had been exempt from taxation until now, which naturally infringed on the interests of the Church.

The new Pope Boniface VIII, who had just killed the previous pope in a coup d'état, was also a powerful figure, and immediately issued an encyclical in 23 years declaring that the secular monarch had no right to exercise any power over the church and the clergy, thus directly provoking a fierce struggle with Philip IV.

In the following years, the two sides continued to fight and attack, and each other won and lost. Finally, as the saying goes, when all power is concentrated in one person, the great mind disappears - and, in many cases, it is not really necessary to concentrate all power in one person, but to make that person think that all power is concentrated in himself, and to turn him into a crazy brain...... Desperate for victory, Boniface VIII, despite the fact that the authority of the Church had been greatly reduced since the defeat of the Crusades, was ready to tear his face directly, first exterminate the King of France, declare that he was no longer a Christian, and that anyone could rebel reasonably and legally, and then launched a crusade to attack Paris

This not only seriously overestimated the existing appeal of the Catholic Church, but also pushed the Church to the precipice of hostility against all the princes of Europe.

Therefore, the French king Philip IV, who got the news, decided to strike first with the implication and acquiescence of other princes and many powerful factions in Italy, and played a frog jumping tactic, and in 13o3 directly crossed the sea, attacked the Papal States, and under the leadership of the local Italian powerful faction and the opposition within the church, he attacked the villa of Pope Boniface VIII in one fell swoop. The invaders unceremoniously stripped Boniface VIII of his clothes, chained him like a dog, paraded and beaten him in the streets of Rome in public, and did everything they could to insult him, and finally the pope to death.

Next, Philip IV took advantage of the defeat of Boniface VIII and forcibly installed a French bishop as pope two years later, naming him Clement V. But the problem is that the previous papal position has always been monopolized by Italians, and when they learned that a gringo had come to seize power, the papacy in central Italy was in an uproar, and many Italian bishops openly declared that they wanted to get rid of this French pope in the face of such an undisguised death threat, and poor Pope Clement V did not dare to go to the Vatican in Rome to take office, lest he would die an unknown death as soon as he arrived in the Papal States.

But since he became the pope, he still had to go to the Holy See to take office, otherwise it would be tantamount to automatic absenteeism and resignation. The countermeasure that Clement V came up with was to think backwards: I will not go to the mountains, let the mountains come to me, since the Italian cardinals do not welcome me over, I will move the whole Holy See to France, and after gaining the home advantage, and with the support of the French king, we will see who we are to rectify whom

Thus, from 13o9 onwards, with the great assistance of the King of France, the Catholic Church was moved to Avignon, and all subsequent popes were French. It was not until 1377 that Pope Gregory XI got rid of French control and moved the Holy See back to Rome - but this was not the final end of the Holy See of Avignon: only a year later, Gregory XI died of illness, and Avignon and Rome each elected two new popes, and the German gentry of the Holy Roman Empire) also intervened and elected a third new pope, which led to a long-term confrontation between the three popes of the German, French and Italian peoples, attacking each other, and breaking out the "Great Schism of Catholicism" that lasted for 40 years...... By the end of the "Rebellion of the Three Popes", Avignon had served as the papal residence for more than a century, and it could be said to be the religious shrine in medieval Europe after Rome.

Although the origin of the holy place of Avignon, no matter how you look at it, there is no sacredness to save all beings, only ♂ ♂ naked conquest and killing, and power play...... Moreover, the era of the "Prisoner of Avignon" is also recognized as an important historical turning point in the decline of the Catholic Church in Europe. In any case, the presence of the Catholic Church and the spending power of the high-ranking members of the Church did greatly revitalize the economy of Avignon, a small city of six inner cities, and caused a great deal of wealth to flow into the city from France, Germany, Italy, and even further afield, stimulating the city's development and prosperity - if nothing else, the pilgrims and emissaries who came and went to the Pope every year brought Avignon huge tourism revenues.

Thus, decades after the Church settled, this unremarkable country town on the banks of the Rhône had grown rapidly to a population of about 50,000, and by the standards of medieval Europe, it was already a first-class city, almost on a par with Marseille, the capital of Provence.

The people of Avignon, on the other hand, proudly considered themselves to have replaced the citizens of Rome as the closest people in this world to God and the Kingdom of Heaven.

Unfortunately, when the Black Death struck from the port of Marseille, the divine power of the Catholic Church could not keep the disease out of the city.

- After a brief and pointless struggle, Avignon was devoured by death.

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On the outskirts of Avignon, on the banks of the Rhône, Knight Levi and other people stood on the embankment, looking at the surging river, silent.

At this moment, between the rolling waves of the Rhône, there are countless rotting and swollen corpses of people and animals, the number of which is so large that it has even silted up the river and formed "floating islands" composed of corpses. And the originally clear river water was also stained with a disgusting smell of so many corpses, and the scene was so horrible that it was like a hellish river Styx, which made people want to vomit and cover their noses when they saw it.

Between the villages and fields on both sides of the Rhône, there is also no smoke and rotting corpses. There were no farmers working in the fields, only wild weeds, no pedestrians or caravans on the roads, and no sails of ships on the river...... The crowd walked through it, but it was as if they were walking through the silent wilderness.

- Although it was supposed to be one of the richest, most abundant, and most densely populated areas in France

And above the heads of their group, there are a large number of crows croaking and gathering and circling all day long, as if waiting for something......

“…… Alas, it seems, the situation in Avignon is even more terrible than in Marseille."

After staring at it for a long time, Knight Levi finally broke the silence first, "...... Come into the city, this place is still waiting for us to save it."

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