Worn out by ten years of discord and struggle to curb the worldliness of prelates, and finally by plague and brigands, Innocent died in September 1362, while Jean was on his way to Avignon. His successor, Urban V, though also a French native, saw the absorption of Provence by France as a threat to papal independence and disapproved the marriage. But he preached the crusade, actively supported by the titular King of Jerusalem, Pierre de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, who had arrived in Avignon to promote it. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem by this time was no more than a memory; the last European
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