ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what happened on that long winding road from Bordeaux to Avignon. It also explains that the world of Pope Clement V was bounded by the Loire, the Rhone, the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees, and the Atlantic, and the serpentine maze shown on the accompanying maps within those boundaries is the record of his footprint on that world. That trail begins at Bordeaux in May 1304, when Bertrand de Got, archbishop of Bordeaux since 1299, Sophia Menache, Clement V, not yet Pope Clement, set out on his pastoral visits of the dioceses of Agen, Périgueux and Poitiers. Clement, having returned from Poitiers to Bordeaux in October 1308, left with his entourage in November 1308, on the road south from Bordeaux via Uzeste, Villandraut and Lectoure to Toulouse and St Bertrand de Comminges, where he had been bishop, precisely following, whether he knew it or not, the ancient Roman Itinerary of Antonin from Bordeaux to Rome.
