Pope Clement V

Bertrand de Got rose to lead the Catholic Church in 1305, a Frenchman taking the keys at a moment when Rome's grip was anything but certain. Within a few years he had relocated the entire Papacy to Avignon, a shift that would define the Church's geography for generations. Then came the Templars: Clement suppressed the order and allowed the executions that followed, erasing one of Christendom's most powerful institutions. He ruled the Papal States from French soil until his death on 20 April 1314, having redrawn the map of medieval power in ways that outlasted him.