Pope John XXII

Born Jacques Duèze in 1244, he was elected by a conclave in Lyon in August 1316 and settled into the princely court at Avignon. He clashed with Louis IV over imperial authority, which drove Louis to invade Italy and install an antipope; he issued bulls rejecting the Franciscan ideal that Christ and the apostles lived in absolute poverty, pushing William of Ockham to write against unchecked papal power. In July 1323 he canonized Thomas Aquinas after a three-year process. Late in life he preached that souls don't see God until the Last Judgment - a position so divisive he retracted it on his deathbed. He died in Avignon in December 1334, the longest-serving pope of the Avignon era.