Clement VII

Robert of Geneva (; 1342 – 16 September 1394) was elected to the papacy as Clement VII by the cardinals who opposed Pope Urban VI and was the first antipope residing in Avignon, France. His election led to the Western Schism. The son of Amadeus III, Count of Geneva, Robert became Archbishop of Cambrai and was made a cardinal in 1371. As legate, during the War of the Eight Saints, he is said to have authorized the massacre of over 2,000 civilians at Cesena in 1377. He was elected pope the following year by the cardinals who opposed Urban VI and established himself at Avignon. Biography Robert was born in the Chateau d'Annecy in 1342, the son of Amadeus III, Count of Geneva, and Mahaut de Boulogne. Guy de Boulogne was his maternal uncle. Robert studied at La Sorbonne in Paris. In 1359, he was appointed prothonotary Apostolic, became Bishop of Thérouanne in 1361, Archbishop of Cambrai in 1368, and a cardinal on 30 May 1371. From 1373 he held the position of Archdeacon of Dorset, and from 1374 also Prebend of All Saints Parish Church in Middle Woodford in Wiltshire, leaving both positions in 1378. From 1375, he held a living as rector of Bishopwearmouth in County Durham, England, and instead used the income from that highly prized living for his papal election expenses. In 1377, while serving as papal legate in upper Italy (1376–1378), 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 by the condottiere John Hawkwood to reduce 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 authorized the massacre of 3,000–8,000 civilians, an atrocity even by the rules of war at the time, which earned him the nickname butcher of Cesena.