- Clemont V’s moving the College to Cardinals to Avignon undermined Boniface’s papal bull Unam sanctam because the move to Avignon gave the French direct power to influence the Cardinals (and directly the papacy) who were stationed there. a) Revelation 17 is about the mystery woman riding a beast with “seven heads and ten horns”; they represent people who constantly sin and are doomed to go to Hell when they die (“The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to ascend from the bottomless pit and go to destruction” (Rev 17:8)). It goes on to say that the beast will challenge the “lamb” and that the lamb will ultimately win because the lamb represents God and that “he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful’” (Rev 17:14). b) The Petrarch uses Revelations 17 to draw attention to the fact that the women described was “drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus” (Rev 17:6). In other words, her sin consumed the goodness of the faithful. She had their blood on her hands. The Petrarch compares this to the Avignon Papacy, basically calling it a sham. The Papacy commits the sin of being controlled by secular forces (i.e., the French Monarchy) since it is stationed in France and is easily influenced there. The story of Revelations 17 illustrates the morality of the Avignon Papacy because it points out that the Papacy there is engaging in sin by being directly influenced by a secular force (i.e.: the King of France). c) The Petrarch chose to interpret the Avignon Papacy through an apocalyptic lens because he thinks that letting secular forces influence the Papacy will undermine the power of the Pope (and he is absolutely correct). This would effectively lead to the decline in Papal power. Petrarch thinks that learning about this specific time would have a positive influence on a Christian’s spiritual growth because a Christian’s greatest aspiration in life is to abstain from sin and follow in the teachings of God and Jesus Christ and to live a pure life with what would be called “Christian values.”