maintenance of the two brothers, they were obliged to think of some
profession for their subsistence; they therefore entered the church; and
Avignon was the place, of all others, where preferment was most easily
obtained. John XXII. had fixed his residence entirely in that city since
October, 1316, and had appropriated to himself the nomination to all the
vacant benefices. The pretence for this appropriation was to prevent
simony--in others, not in his Holiness--as the sale of benefices was
carried by him to an enormous height. At every promotion to a bishopric,
he removed other bishops; and, by the meanest impositions, soon amassed
prodigious wealth. Scandalous emoluments, also, which arose from the
sale of indulgences, were enlarged, if not invented, under his papacy,
and every method of acquiring riches was justified which could
contribute to feed his avarice. By these sordid means, he collected such
sums, that, according to Villani, he left behind him, _in the sacred
treasury_, twenty-five millions of florins, a treasure which Voltaire
remarks is hardly credible.

The luxury and corruption which reigned in the Roman court at Avignon
are fully displayed in some letters of Petrarch's, without either date
or address. The partizans of that court, it is true, accuse him of
prejudice and exaggeration. He painted, as they allege, the popes and
cardinals in the gloomiest colouring. His letters contain the blackest
catalogue of crimes that ever disgraced humanity.

Petrarch was twenty-two years of age when he settled at Avignon, a scene
of licentiousness and profligacy. The luxury of the cardinals, and the
pomp and riches of the papal court, were displayed in an extravagant
profusion of feasts and ceremonies, which attracted to Avignon women of
all ranks, among whom intrigue and gallantry were generally
countenanced. Petrarch was by nature of a warm temperament, with vivid