Papal Troops Massacre Cesena: 2,000 Civilians Slain

Cardinal Robert of Geneva ordered the massacre of over 2,000 residents of Cesena on February 3, 1377, earning himself the permanent title "Butcher of Cesena" and deepening the crisis of legitimacy that would tear the Catholic Church apart within months. The city had revolted against papal authority during the War of the Eight Saints, a conflict between Pope Gregory XI and an alliance of Italian city-states led by Florence. Cesena's citizens had attacked and killed several hundred Breton mercenaries garrisoned in their city. Robert of Geneva, commanding the papal military forces in Italy, promised the citizens amnesty if they surrendered their weapons. They complied. Then he unleashed his Breton mercenary companies on the disarmed population. The soldiers spent three days killing, raping, and looting their way through the streets. Contemporary accounts describe bodies piled in churches where civilians had sought sanctuary, and blood running through the gutters of the central square. Estimates of the dead range from 2,500 to as many as 5,000. The massacre outraged Italian public opinion and severely damaged the moral authority of the papacy across Europe. The following year, when the Great Western Schism erupted over a disputed papal election, Robert of Geneva was elected as the rival pope Clement VII by cardinals who wanted to move the papacy back from Rome to Avignon. The Butcher of Cesena became one of two competing popes, each claiming supreme spiritual authority over Christendom. The schism he helped provoke lasted thirty-nine years.