" A few months later, it was announced that Clement had purchased Avignon from the queen, who, as countess of Provence, held title to the city. The selling price, eighty thousand gold florins, was deemed very reasonable by most observers—indeed, perhaps even a bit low for what was, after all, the capital of Christendom. "

― , The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time