Pope Benedict XI had lasted only nine months before dying in exile.

After an eleven-month interregnum occasioned by the disputes between the French and Italian cardinals, who are nearly equally balanced in the conclave, which had had to be held at Perugia, the conclave decides in June on Raymond Bertrand de Got.

Born in Villandraut, Aquitaine, Bertrand had been canon and sacristan of the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux, then vicar-general to his brother, the archbishop of Lyon, who in 1294 had been created Cardinal Bishop of Albano.

He had then been made bishop of St-Bertrand-de-Comminges, the cathedral church of which he was responsible for greatly enlarging and embellishing; and chaplain to Pope Boniface VIII, who had made him archbishop of Bordeaux in 1297.

Bertrand is neither Italian nor a cardinal, and his election might have been considered a gesture towards neutrality.

The contemporary chronicler Giovanni Villani reports gossip that he had bound himself to King Philip IV of France by a formal agreement previous to his elevation, made at St. Jean d'Angély in Saintonge.

Whether this is true or not, it is likely that the future Pope Clement V has conditions laid down for him by the conclave of cardinals.