Pope Clement V
pope of the Catholic Church from 1305 to 1314 (1264–1314)
Pope Clement V (Latin: Clemens V; born Bertrand de Got, died 20 April 1314) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 1305 until his death. He is remembered for suppressing the order of the Knights Templar and allowing the execution of many of its members. A Frenchman by birth, Clement moved the Papacy from Rome to Avignon, ushering in the period known as the Avignon Papacy.
Early career
Bertrand de Got was born at Villandraut, then part of the province of Guyenne, in the mid-thirteenth century to an influential Gascon family. He was the third son of Béraud de Got, lord of Villandraut, and Ida de Blanquefort. Bertrand studied the arts at Toulouse and canon and civil law at Orléans and Bologna. He became canon and sacristan of the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux, then vicar-general to his brother Bérard de Got, the Archbishop of Lyon, who in 1294 was created Cardinal-Bishop of Albano and papal legate to France. He was then made Bishop of St-Bertrand-de-Comminges, the cathedral church of which he was responsible for greatly enlarging and embellishing, and chaplain to Pope Boniface VIII, who made him Archbishop of Bordeaux in 1297.
As Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand de Got was a subject of the King of England, but from early youth he had been a personal friend of Philip the Fair.
Election
Following the death of Pope Benedict XI in July 1304, there was an interregnum occasioned by disputes between the French and Italian cardinals.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Pope Clement V” as pope of the Catholic Church from 1305 to 1314 (1264–1314). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as pope of the Catholic Church from 1305 to 1314 (1264–1314). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q131463. VIAF identifies the subject as 12146574968738152511. The Library of Congress control number is n83165590. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1314, 1305, 1294 and 1297.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pope Clement V” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.