The most notorious of the French was Arnaut de Cervole, a noble of Périgord called the “Archpriest” because of a clerical benefice he had once held. Wounded and captured at Poitiers, he had been released on paying his ransom, and on return to France in the anarchic months of 1357 made himself commander of a band which called itself frankly enough Società dell’ acquisito. In collaboration with a lord of Provence named Raimond des Baux, the band grew to an army of 2,000 and the “Archpriest” into one of the great evildoers of his time. In the course of a raid Cervole launched through Provence in
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The most notorious of the French was Arnaut de Cervole, a noble of Périgord called the “Archpriest” because of a clerical benefice he had once held. Wounded and captured at Poitiers, he had been released on paying his ransom, and on return to France in the anarchic months of 1357 made himself commander of a band which called itself frankly enough Società dell’ acquisito. In collaboration with a lord of Provence named Raimond des Baux, the band grew to an army of 2,000 and the “Archpriest” into one of the great evildoers of his time. In the course of a raid Cervole launched through Provence in 1357, Pope Innocent VI felt so insecure in Avignon that he negotiated for immunity in advance. Cervole was invited to the papal palace, “received as reverently as if he had been the son of the King of France,” and after dining several times with the Pope and cardinals, was given a pardon for all his sins—a regular item in the companies’ demands—and the sum of 40,000 écus to leave the area.
