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.