20 Most Evil People of the 14th Century CE

Key Facts

Other names	Robert of Geneva
Born	1342
Location
Bloodline
Married
Children
Position	Pope (1378-1394)
Died	September 1394

Background

He was the son of Amadeus III, Count of Geneva, and was born in Geneva, in what is now Switzerland, in 1342.

Appointed Protonotary Apostolic in 1359, he became Bishop of Thérouanne in 1361, Archbishop of Cambrai in 1368, and a cardinal on 30 May 1371.

Principally a military leader, in 1377, while serving as papal legate in upper Italy (1376-78), in order to put down a rebellion in the Papal States, known as the War of the Eight Saints, he personally commanded troops lent to the papacy to destroy the small city of Cesena in the territory of Forlì, which resisted being added to the Patrimony of Peter for the second time in a generation; there he allegedly authorized the massacre of 4,000 civilians, an atrocity even by the rules of war at the time, which earned him the nickname butcher - or executioner of Cesena.

Elected pope at Fondi on 20 September 1378 by the French cardinals in opposition to Urban VI, he was the first antipope of the Western Schism, the second of the two periods sometimes referred to as the Great Schism, which lasted until 1417. France, Scotland, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Portugal, Savoy, Denmark, Norway, and some minor German states acknowledged his authority. Unable to maintain himself in Italy, he took up his residence at Avignon in the southern French Comtat Venaissin, where he became dependent on the French court.

He died in September 1394 and was succeeded by Pope Benedict VIII (1394-1423).

Most Evil Crimes

List of most evil crimes

Type	Year	Crime
		Of crimes against humanity: (1375) Cesena 2500-5000 inhabitants of Cessna are massacred under future Clement VII for revolting against papal authority; women are raped and children ransomed.


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