Perugia
On various occasions, the popes found asylum, from the conflicts in Rome, within its walls, and it was the meeting-place of five conclaves (Perugia Papacy), including those which elected Honorius III (1216), Clement IV (1285), Celestine V (1294), and Clement V (1305); the papal presence was characterized by a peace-time rule between the internal rivalries. But Perugia had no mind simply to serve the papal interests and never accepted papal sovereignty: the city used to exercise a jurisdiction over the members of the clergy. Also, in 1282, Perugia was excommunicated due to a new military conflict against the Ghibellines regardless of a papal prohibition. In the other hand, side by side with the 13th-century bronze griffin of Perugia, above the door of the Palazzo dei Priori stands, as a Guelphic emblem, the lion: Perugia remained loyal for the most part to the Guelph party in the struggles of Guelphs and Ghibellines. However this dominant tendency was rather an anti-Germanic and Italian political strategy. The Angevin presence in Italy appeared offer a counterpoise to papal powers: in 1319 Perugia declared the Angevin Saint Louis of Toulouse "Protector of the city's sovereignty and of the Palazzo of its Priors" and set his figure among the other patron saints above the rich doorway of the Palazzo dei Priori. At the half of the 14th century, Bartholus of Sassoferrato, who was a renowned jurist, asserted that Perugia was dependent upon neither imperial nor papal support. In 1347, at the time of Rienzi's unfortunate enterprise in reviving the Roman Republic, Perugia sent ten ambassadors to pay him honour; and, when papal messengers sought to force it by foreign soldiers, or to exact contributions, they met with vigorous resistance, which broke into open warfare with Pope Urban V in 1369; in 1370 the noble party reached an agreement signing the treaty of Bologna and Perugia was forced to accept a papal legate; however the vicar-general of the Papal States, Gérard du Puy, Abbot of Marmoutier and nephew of Pope Gregory IX, was expelled by a popular uprising in 1375, and his fortification of Porta Sole was razed to the ground.