BOOK VIII.
FROM THE DEATH OF POPE BONIFACE VIII TO THE
END OF THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE,
A.D. 1303-1418.
CHAPTER V.
THE GREAT SCHISM OF THE WEST, TO THE END OF THE
COUNCIL OF PISA.
A. D. 1378-1409.
AT the death of Gregory XI the Romans were resolved to
put an end, if possible, to the residence of the popes in France, by insisting
that one of their own countrymen should be chosen. Gregory, foreseeing the
danger of a schism, had, in the last days of his life, made a decree that a
pope chosen by a majority of the cardinals should be acknowledged, whether the
election were made in Rome or elsewhere, and although the usual formalities of
the conclave were not observed. But the Romans were bent on carrying out their
purpose. In order that the cardinals might not escape from the city, they took
the keys of the gates from the officials of the church, and replaced the
sentinels by partisans of their own; they expelled the nobles, and, with a view
to overawing the electors, they called in a multitude of armed and half-savage
peasants from the neighbouring mountains, while Italian prelates, within and
without the city, were busily employed in stirring up the people. The number of
cardinals then at Rome was sixteen—four Italians, a Spaniard (Peter de Luna),
and eleven Frenchmen, of whom seven were Limousins; while of the other
seven members of the college one was employed as legate in Tuscany, and the
rest had remained at Avignon. It was with difficulty that the electors were
able to make their way through the threatening crowd which beset the Vatican,
and, as they entered the chamber appointed for the conclave, they were alarmed
by a violent thunderstorm, which seemed like an omen of coming evil. But they
were yet more terrified by the behaviour of the multitude, which had forced its
way into the palace, furiously clamouring, “We will have a Roman, or at least
an Italian!”. After a time the greater part were turned out, but about forty
persisted in remaining; they searched the beds of the cardinals and the most
secret corners of the apartment, in order to discover any men who might be
hidden, or any private outlet by which the electors might escape; and, as the
Romans had not allowed the usual form of walling up the entrance to be
observed, the intruders were able to terrify the cardinals by their menaces and
by their display of force.
The French cardinals, although more than twice as many
as all the rest, were weakened by a division among themselves; for the Limousins,
who for six-and-thirty years had enjoyed the papacy and its patronage, wished
to choose one of their own number, while the other section, headed by Robert of
Geneva, was resolutely opposed to the election of a Limousin. Each of
these factions, if unable to carry a candidate of its own, would have preferred
an Italian to one of the rival French party; and thus the Italians, although
few, found that they held the balance in their hands.
As the tumult increased, two bannerets of Rome (the
chiefs of the regions into which the city was divided) asked admittance, and
urged the expediency of yielding to the wishes of the people. But they were
told that the election was a matter with which no personal regards must
interfere; that the cardinals, after having celebrated the mass of the Holy
Ghost on the morrow, would be guided by Him alone in their choice. All through
the night the uproar waxed wilder and wilder. The ruffians who had remained in
the palace, after having unwillingly consented that the conclave should be
shut, took up their position in the room below; they plundered the papal stores
of food and wine in their heightened excitement, they dashed their swords and
lances against the ceiling, so as to add to the terror of the cardinals, and
even made preparations as if for burning the palace; while the multitude
without kept up their cries for a Roman or an Italian, mingled with shouts of
“Death to the cardinals!”. The great bells of St. Peter’s and of the Capitol
were beaten with hammers as if the city were on fire.
In the morning the numbers of the mob were greater
than ever. When the cardinals were at mass, the words of the service could not
be heard for the noise without; and now the cry was for a Roman only. The
cardinals again met for the election, while the door of the conclave was
assailed with violent blows, and the noise became louder every moment. It was
suggested that someone should be declared pope, in order to appease the
multitude, and that another should be privately chosen, with a view to his
being afterwards substituted for the first. The cardinal of Florence proposed
Francis Tibaldeschi, cardinal of St. Sabina, and
archpriest of St. Peter’s, the oldest member of the college; but the motion met
with no support; and on a second vote, all, with the exception of James Orsini,
who declined to act under such coercion, agreed in the choice or
Bartholomew Prignani, archbishop of Bari, who
was not a cardinal, but, as being at once an Italian and a subject of the
French sovereign of Naples, might be supposed to be acceptable to both parties.
On the announcement of the election an accident led the multitude to believe
that it had fallen on Tibaldeschi. They
plundered his palace, according to the custom on such occasions, forced a way
into the conclave, and overwhelmed the old man with violent congratulations,
while he strove to make them understand their mistake, and desired them, even
with curses, to let him go. In the meantime the cardinals dispersed in terror,
leaving their hats and cloaks behind them, and some of them were severely
handled by the mob.
Next day, however, they met again; and, although the
announcement of the archbishop of Bari’s election caused some tumult, as his
title was mistaken for the name of James of Bar, a Limousin of the
papal household, he was peaceably invested with the mantle of office. It is
said that, in answer to his doubts as to the validity of his election, the
cardinals assured him that all had been rightly and fairly done. He received
their homage, and they all took part in his coronation, which was solemnly
performed on Easter-day. The election was announced to the sovereigns of
Europe, not, as had been usual, by the pope himself but by the cardinals; and
they also reported it to their brethren at Avignon in a letter which declared
that their choice had been made unanimously, and (as they professed to believe)
under the direction of the Holy Spirit.
Urban VI (as the new pope styled himself) was a
Neapolitan of humble birth, and a man of strictly ascetic life. He was deeply
read in ecclesiastical law, but was more especially respected for his devotion
to the study of Scripture, and for the humility, the disinterestedness, the
equity, and the compassion which were supposed to mark his character. But
almost immediately after his elevation, it began to appear that some of the
virtues by which he had been hitherto distinguished were exchanged for qualities
of an opposite kind. He was open to flattery, while, in dealing with his
cardinals and with other high ecclesiastics, he behaved with a haughtiness and
a rudeness which were felt to be intolerable, and called forth open
remonstrances. Even his good actions were so done as to produce an unfavourable
impression. He announced reforms of an unpopular kind, without any
consideration for the prejudices or the interests which might be affected by
them. He threatened to reduce the luxurious cardinals to one dish at table,
after his own example; to overwhelm the French influence in the college by the
addition of Romans and Italians; and he further provoked the French cardinals
by absolutely refusing to go to Avignon. Preaching in his own chapel, he
denounced the bishops who were at the court as perjured for neglecting their
dioceses; to which the bishop of Pampeluna immediately
replied that the charge was in his case untrue, as he was there on diocesan
business. The pope desired the cardinals to repair to the churches from which
they took their titles, and to reside at them. At a consistory he charged such
of them as had been sent on embassies with having allowed themselves to be
bribed; to which James de la Grange, cardinal of St. Marcellus, retorted, “As
archbishop of Bari you lie!”, and the cardinal, who was one of the French
king’s councillors, went off to use his influence with Charles V in opposition
to Urban. Joanna of Naples had celebrated the election of the Neapolitan pope
by public festivities; she sent him magnificent presents of money, food, and
wine, and deputed her husband, duke Otho of Brunswick, to convey her
congratulations and respects to him; but Urban, although he had formerly been
on terms of friendship with the duke, now treated him with such discourtesy
that Otho returned to Naples indignant and alienated. St. Catharine of Siena,
although she adhered zealously to Urban in the differences which afterwards
arose, found herself compelled to remonstrate with him on his irascibility and
on the impolicy of his behaviour.
The majority of the cardinals, angry and disgusted at
his treatment of them, and the more so because they saw that he endeavoured to
ingratiate himself with the people of Rome, began to question the soundness of
the pope’s mind, and to consider how they might rid themselves of him. One by
one they made their way out of the city, and assembled at Anagni,
where they invited Urban to join them. Instead of complying with this request,
he summoned them to Tivoli, where he was with the four Italian cardinals; but
they answered that they could not conveniently leave Anagni,
as they had laid in large stores of provisions there. Their design, which had
probably been nothing more than to draw Urban into a capitulation, was now
carried further. In the presence of three of their Italian brethren, who had
conveyed the pope’s invitation, they swore on the Gospels that their consent to
Urban’s election had been extorted only by the fear of death; and on the 9th of
August, after having celebrated a solemn mass, they sent forth a letter in
which they renounced him as an apostate and a deceiver—professing to have
chosen him in the trust that, as a man of integrity and acquainted with the
canon law, he would feel himself bound to regard as null an election which had
been made under constraint, and to take the earliest safe opportunity of
declaring its nullity.
Yet, although the election had unquestionably been
influenced by fear of the Roman populace,—although the cardinals, if they had
been free, would probably have chosen otherwise,—their choice of Urban had
really been rather a compromise than a compliance with the will of the
multitude, who had cried out for one of their own fellow-citizens, and, far
from wishing for the archbishop of Bari, had been eager to enthrone the
cardinal of St. Peter’s. And, whatever might have been the original defects in
Urban’s title, the cardinals appear to have debarred themselves from insisting
on these. They had, it would seem, gone through a second form of election, in
order to make the matter sure; they had accepted him after the restoration of
peace in the city; they had with apparent willingness taken part in all the
forms which were necessary in order to put him completely into possession of
the papacy; they had announced his elevation to the Avignon cardinals and to
the sovereigns of Christendom as having been made in due form, and even under
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They had assisted at his celebration of the
most solemn rites. They had solicited and received preferment at his hands, for
themselves or their friends, even since their withdrawal to Anagni.
In all possible ways they had acknowledged him, until driven by his outrageous
behaviour to seek for pretexts which might warrant them in forsaking and
superseding him.
The cardinals now hired a band of Breton and Gascon
soldiers to protect them. They got possession of the papal jewels and insignia,
which had been deposited in the castle of St. Angelo. They entered into an
understanding with the queen of Naples, and removed from Anagni to Fondi, within the Neapolitan territory, where
the count of the place, a turbulent man of the Gaetani family, who had long
held the government of Campania under the Roman church, was induced by his
enmity against Urban to support them. They persuaded three out of the four
Italian cardinals to join them—it is said, by holding out to each the hope of
being chosen as pope. They endeavoured to fortify their cause by procuring the
opinions of eminent lawyers; but in this their success was imperfect, as the
jurists in general held that the election of Urban had been regular, or that,
if it were not so, the power of amending it belonged, not to the cardinals, but
to a general council.
CLEMENT VII, ANTIPOPE
The aged cardinal of St. Peter’s was the only member
of the college who still adhered to Urban; but he did not long survive. Urban
now announced an intention of creating nine cardinals; but in the Ember-week of
September he proceeded to bestow the dignity at once on twenty-nine persons—a
number which exceeded that of the French and the Italians together. Many of
these were Neapolitans like himself and recommended by powerful family
connexions, or by other circumstances which might enable them to exercise an
influence in his favour among their countrymen.
On the 20th of the same month, the rebellious
cardinals at Fondi renewed their
declarations against Urban, and, although the Italian members of the college
withdrew before the election, chose as pope Robert of Geneva, cardinal of the
Twelve Apostles and bishop of Cambray, who took the name of Clement VII. The antipope,
who was recommended to them by his enterprising spirit, as well as by his
birth—which connected him with almost all the chief princes of Europe—was only
thirty-six years of age. His qualities were rather those of a warrior than of a
prelate; he had been the leader of a company of Breton mercenaries, and had
been deeply concerned in the massacre of Cesena, and in other barbarities by
which the late contests of Italy had been stained. The election of Clement was
accepted by the cardinals of Avignon and thus was begun the great schism of the
west, which for nearly forty years distracted Latin Christendom, between rivals
who hurled against each other the spiritual weapons of excommunication and
anathema, while each loaded the other with charges of the worst of crimes.
France declared for Clement, although not until 1379, when Charles V requested
the university of Paris to give a judgment on the question. The faculties of
theology, law, and medicine, with the French and Norman nations in the
department of arts, pronounced in favour of Clement, and the neutrality of the
English and Picard nations of “artists” was overpowered. England was on the
side of Urban, because France was with Clement; and Scotland was for Clement,
because England was with Urban. Germany and Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and
Portugal, tired of the long series of French popes, were in favour of Urban;
so, too, was all Italy except the Neapolitan kingdom, which he had alienated by
his behaviour to queen Joanna’s husband, and by showing an inclination to
favour the pretensions of Charles of Durazzo as a rival claimant of her throne.
Castile and Aragon were brought, after some delay, to declare for Clement—in
great measure through the skilful negotiations of his legate, cardinal Peter de
Luna. Within a short time after the beginning of the schism, changes occurred
by which the chief thrones of Europe were transferred from experienced
sovereigns to princes whom a writer of the time describes in general as
voluptuous youths, and whose authority was not such as to exercise much
influence in the question. In France, Charles V, a king distinguished for his
prudence and for his love of learning and the arts, was succeeded by his son
Charles VI, a boy of fourteen, who from his early manhood became subject to fits
of lunacy, in consequence of which the kingdom fell a prey to the rivalries of
the princes of the blood. In England, Edward III had been succeeded in 1377 by
the young and feeble Richard II. In Germany and Bohemia, Charles IV was
succeeded by his son Wenceslaus, whose slender capacity was obscured by
continual debauchery. Nor, while the power of sovereigns was thus ineffective,
was there any predominant saint who, like Bernard in an earlier age, could, by
throwing his influence into the scale of one of the claimants of the papacy,
have made the other to be generally regarded as an antipope. On each side there
were saints and prophets whom their contemporaries regarded with veneration:
while Urban had with him Catharine of Siena, Catharine of Sweden, and the royal
friar-prophet, Peter of Aragon, Clement was supported by the great Spanish
Dominican preacher, Vincent Ferrer, and by a prince of Luxemburg, Peter, bishop
of Metz and cardinal, who, although he died at the age of eighteen in 1387,
continued after death to throw over the cause of the Avignon popes the lustre
of innumerable miracles. Nor has the question as to the legitimacy of the two
popes, and of the lines founded by them respectively, been ever decided by any
authority which is regarded as final. It was carefully avoided by the councils
which were assembled with a view to healing the schism; and in later times,
while writers of the Roman communion in general have been in favour of the
Italian popes, the Gallicans have maintained the title of the French line. As
to the practical question of communion with the popes of one or the other
party, the judgment of St. Antoninus of Florence appears to be
commonly accepted—that, while Christians in general are not bound to have such
knowledge of canon law as would qualify them to judge of the elections, they
are safe in following those who are set over them in the church.
Soon after his election Clement proceeded to Naples,
where he was received with great honour by the queen. But the people were on
the side of Urban, as being their countryman, and he had strengthened his
interest by including several Neapolitans in his late creation of cardinals.
Cries of “Death to the antipope and the queen!” were raised in the streets and
Clement, after a time, found it expedient to make his way by Marseilles to
Avignon, where he settled under the protection of the king of France, and found
himself obliged to endure the miseries of a dependent position.
In the meantime Urban was successful in Italy. A
mercenary force which he engaged, under a native captain, Alberic of Barbiano, defeated and broke up the Breton and Gascon bands
which were in the pay of the opposite party. The castle of St. Angelo, which
had been held for the cardinals, was now for the first time assailed by
artillery, and fell into the hands of the Romans, who dismantled it and
barbarously mutilated it by pulling down a large part of the marble facing, and
employing the stones in paving the streets.
Urban was resolved to make Joanna feel the weight of
his enmity. He stirred up Charles of Durazzo, the last representative of the
Angevine dynasty, to make an attempt on the Apulian crown, instead of waiting
until the course of nature should give it to him. The enterprise was favoured
by the oracular utterances of St. Catharine of Siena, and in order to
contribute to the expenses of it, Urban sold the plate, the jewels, and other
precious ornaments of churches, and even alienated ecclesiastical property without
regard to the will of the incumbents. In April 1380 he pronounced Joanna, as a
heretic and schismatic, to be deprived of her kingdom and of all fiefs held
under the Roman see, released her subjects from their allegiance, and
proclaimed a crusade against her. Charles was received at Rome with great
honour, was anointed as king of Sicily, and was invested in the dominion of all
southern Italy, except the papal city of Benevento, with Capua, Amalfi, and
other places, which Urban wished to form into a principality for his nephew,
Francis Prignano. On the other hand, Joanna resolved to call in to her
assistance Lewis, duke of Anjou, a prince of warlike character, whom she
adopted as her heir; and the Avignon pope not only sanctioned this, but professed
to bestow on Lewis a portion of the papal states, which was to be styled the
kingdom of Adria, on condition that neither he nor his successors should
accept an election to the German crown, or to the lordship of Lombardy. The
gift was one which cost Clement nothing, as the papal territory was in the
hands of his rival, and there was a hope that, by professing to give a part, he
might gain the assistance of Lewis towards the acquisition of the rest. But the
plan failed. While Lewis remained in France, busily engaged in securing the
inheritance which had fallen to him by his brother’s death, Charles invaded
southern Italy. Otho, although distinguished for his military skill, was
without money, and was unsupported by the people, who had been irritated by
the demand of a heavy war-tax; and Charles, after having defeated him at
San Germano, got possession of Naples. The queen
was compelled to surrender herself to the victor, and it is commonly believed
that by his command she was smothered or strangled in prison. Her death and the
manner of it are said to have been determined by the advice of king Lewis of
Hungary, who thus avenged, even in its very circumstances, the murder of his
brother Andrew. When at length Lewis of Anjou was able to enter Italy at the
head of a powerful and brilliant army, he found that the policy of Charles had
raised up difficulties which beset him in his passage through Lombardy. His
troops suffered severely from the want of provisions and from the inclemency of
the weather, while Charles declined meeting him in the field, and left these
enemies to do their work,—so that the soldiers, according to the expression of
a contemporary, “died like dogs”, and Lewis himself was carried off by a fever
at Bari. His force was utterly broken up, and gallant nobles, who had accompanied
him in full confidence of victory, were obliged to beg their way in rags back
to France, while Charles remained undisputed sovereign of Naples.
To Urban it seemed that the new king, of whose success
he regarded himself as the author, was slow in showing the expected gratitude
for his support, and especially in contributing to provide a territory for his
nephew, Francis (who was commonly called Butillo). He
therefore resolved to go in person to Naples, and when his cardinals
endeavoured to dissuade him, he burst into a fury, which seemed to confirm
their suspicions of his sanity, and threatened to depose them. At Aversa he was
met by Charles, who received him with a show of honour, and acted as his
esquire; but both at Aversa and Naples he was closely guarded, from fear that
he might engage in political intrigues; and when this restraint was about to be
relaxed, a difficulty was caused by the misconduct of the foolish and
profligate Butillo, who seduced and carried off a
noble and beautiful nun of the order of St. Clare. For this he was
condemned to death by the king’s court of justice; but Urban (who usually
excused his nephew’s excesses by the plea of youth, although Butillo had reached the age of forty), declared that he
himself was suzerain of the Apulian kingdom, and that in his presence no other
tribunal had jurisdiction over a grandee. Charles was unwilling to carry
matters to an extremity, as the French invasion had not yet passed away. The
cardinals, therefore, were able to compound the dispute, by arranging that Butillo should marry a lady related to the king, and Urban
withdrew with all his cardinals to Nocera.
During his stay at Naples, Urban had deprived all such
clergy of that city as were suspected of leaning to the opposite interest, and,
in filling up the vacancies, he had put many low men into dignities for which
they were grossly unfit. He had promoted at once thirty-two Neapolitans to
archbishoprics and bishoprics. He now resolved on a new creation of cardinals,
among whom he wished to include the three ecclesiastical electors of Germany;
but these all declined to bind themselves to his fortunes by accepting the
doubtful honour. And when he offered it to a number of the Neapolitan clergy,
he had the double mortification of finding that they refused from fear of
offending the king, and that the cardinalate was discredited in the general
estimation by the characters of those whom he had thought worthy of it.
Charles invited Urban to a conference, but was told in
answer that it was for kings to wait on popes, not for popes to wait on kings;
and he was charged to relieve his subjects from the heavy taxes which he had
imposed on them. On hearing this he indignantly exclaimed that the kingdom was
his own,—that the pope had no concern with the government of any but the
priests; and that he would go to Urban, but at the head of an army. For some
weeks the pope was besieged in Nocera, where he showed himself at a window
three or four times a-day, pronouncing with bell and lighted candle the
sentence of excommunication against his besiegers. He even talked of deposing
Charles in punishment for his ingratitude. The old man’s perverseness,
self-will, and irritability became intolerable even to the cardinals of his own
promotion; and some of them submitted to an able, but somewhat unscrupulous,
lawyer, Bartoline of Piacenza, a set of
questions, among which was this—whether, if a pope should conduct himself in
such a way as to endanger the weal of Christendom by negligence, obstinacy, and
engrossing all power, to the exclusion of the advice of the cardinals, these
would not be warranted in placing him under the charge of curators. Bartoline replied in the affirmative, and other
opinions to the same effect were obtained, although some of those who were
consulted thought otherwise. Urban, on being informed of this proceeding by a
cardinal who was not concerned in it, caused six of the cardinals to be thrown
into a dungeon which had been formerly used as a cistern, and after a time
brought them to trial before his consistory. By the application of torture,
they were driven to confess anything that was required; and while Butillo stood by, laughing immoderately at their agonies
and shrieks, his uncle walked up and down in the adjoining garden, calmly
reciting his canonical hours in a loud tone, so that the executioners might be
aware of his presence, and might do their work with vigour. The cardinals were
then remanded to their prison, where they suffered from hunger and thirst, from
darkness, stench, and vermin; one of them, De Sangro, whose place of
confinement was seen by Theodoric of Niem, had not room to stretch himself
in any direction.
At length Urban, for whose surrender 10,000 florins
had been offered, was rescued from his uneasy position by Thomas of San
Severino, and hurried, with his prisoners, across the country to a place on the
Adriatic coast, between Trani and Barletta, where he had arranged
that a Genoese fleet should be ready to receive him. The bishop of Aquila, who
was unable from illness to ride so fast as the rest of the party, was killed on
the way by the pope’s commands The six cardinals were carried to Palermo, and
thence to Genoa; and there five of them were put to death, with circumstances
of mystery which have given rise to a variety of reports—that they were
beheaded in prison, that they were buried alive, or that they were put into sacks
and cast into the sea. The sixth, Adam Easton, cardinal of St. Cecilia, was
spared at the intercession of his sovereign, Richard II, but was degraded from
his dignity, and was kept in rigorous imprisonment until after the death of
Urban, by whose successor he was reinstated. Two other cardinals, alarmed by
the fate of their fellows, made their way from Genoa to Avignon, where they
were admitted into the rival college by Clement; one of them, Pileo de Prata, archbishop of Ravenna, having
publicly burnt his official hat at Pavia. Within little more than a year after
his arrival at Genoa, Urban quarrelled with the doge, to whom he had been
indebted for his safety; and he left the city in the middle of December 1386
for Lucca. There he was urged by envoys from the princes of Germany to take
measures for ending the schism; but he answered that he was the true pope, and
could not throw doubt on his title. From Lucca he removed to Perugia, but he
was compelled to leave that place by the scandal which had been occasioned by
his nephew Butillo’s licentiousness, and in
August 1388 he returned to Rome.
Charles of Durazzo, having firmly established himself
in the kingdom of Naples, set off, in compliance with an invitation from a
party in Hungary, to assert his claims to the throne of that country, where
Mary, the daughter of king Lewis, notwithstanding a law which excluded females
from the crown, had been chosen “king” on her father’s death in 1382. Charles
had sworn that he would not disturb the daughters of Lewis in their inheritance;
but Mary was persuaded to resign, and he was solemnly crowned in her stead. He
was not, however, long allowed to enjoy his new acquisition. Through the
contrivance of the late king’s widow he was treacherously attacked by
assassins, and he died of his wounds soon after; when the Hungarian crown again
fell to Mary, who had been betrothed to Sigismund, son of the emperor Charles
IV, Urban made difficulties as to allowing Christian burial to Charles, and
refused to invest his son Ladislaus, a boy only ten years old, in the
Neapolitan kingdom; but by thus indulging his enmity against Charles and his
family, he encouraged the interest of his own rival, who favoured the claims of
the younger Lewis of Anjou to the Neapolitan crown. The kingdom was for a time
a prey to anarchy, while the effect of the schism in weakening the papacy aided
the designs of John Galeazzo Visconti—a deeply politic and utterly unscrupulous
man, who had deposed and poisoned his uncle Bernabò—to
gain a predominating influence in Italy. Urban, on his return to Rome, had been
coldly received, and he afterwards increased his unpopularity with the
citizens. With a view at once of conciliating them and of bringing money into
the treasury of the church, he announced a jubilee. Out of tenderness (as he
professed) to those who might be too severely tried by the interval of fifty
years between such solemnities, the time was to be reduced to thirty-three
years, the length of the Saviour’s earthly life; and by this calculation he determined
that the next celebration should fall in the year 1390. But some weeks before
the beginning of that year, the pope, who had been severely shaken by a fall
from his mule, died; and benefits of his preparations were reaped by his
successor.
From time to time attempts had been made to put an end
to the schism. Thus in 1381 the university of Paris, disgusted by Clement’s proceedings,
gave an opinion that a general council should be called for this purpose. In
1387, Clement, feeling himself pressed by the authority of the university,
professed himself willing to refer the question to a council, and offered, if
Urban would submit to him, to give him the highest place among the cardinals.
Urban also professed his readiness to submit to a council; but he added a condition
which made the offer nugatory—that he himself should in the meantime be
acknowledged as the only pope. Clement is said to have induced persons of
influence in the French court, by frequent and costly presents, to refrain from
exerting themselves for the closing of the schism; and, as the princes of Latin
Christendom had been guided by their former political connexion in the choice
of sides as to the question of the papacy, it is remarked by a writer of the
time, Richard of Ulverstone, that but for the
quarrels of nations the schism would neither have been so lightly begun nor so
long kept up.
On the 1st of November the cardinals of Urban’s party
chose as his successor Peter Tomacelli, cardinal
of St. Anastasia, who took the name of Boniface IX. The new pope, according to
some authorities, was only thirty years of age; but others, with greater
probability, make him fourteen years older. He is described as possessed of
some showy personal qualities, but without any learning or any such knowledge
of affairs as would have fitted him for his position—although this last defect
was afterwards in some degree remedied by experience.
The schism, by throwing on western Christendom the
cost of maintaining a second pontifical court, added greatly to the burdens
which had before been matter of complaint. Clement VII endeavoured to swell
his income by the most unscrupulous means, and the grievances of his
administration excited loud outcries from the church of France. He surrounded
himself with a body of no less than thirty-six cardinals, for whom he provided
by usurping the patronage of all the church-preferment that he could get into
his hands. A new kind of document was introduced under the name of gratia expectativae by which the reversion of a benefice
was conferred, and the receiver was authorized to take possession as soon as a
vacancy should occur. The old resources—such as reservations, tenths,
dispensations of all kinds, and the jus exuviarium (which
was now exercised on the property of abbots as well as on that of bishops)—were
worked to the uttermost, and were developed in ways before unknown. Promotion
was bestowed for money or other improper considerations, without regard to the
merit or fitness of the receivers; and, as learning was no longer regarded as a
qualification for preferment, schools and colleges were broken up, and even the
university of Paris found itself comparatively deserted by students. While the
French church and people groaned under these evils, the pope, by bestowing a
part of the spoil on princes and powerful nobles, contrived to secure their
connivance but a royal edict of 1385 in some degree, although very imperfectly,
corrected the abuses which had arisen.
While the French pope was endeavouring to swell his
revenues by simony and rapacity, Urban VI was honourably distinguished by his
freedom from such practices; and his successor, Boniface, is said to have so
far regarded the opinion of the elder cardinals that for the first seven years
of his pontificate he refrained from open simony. But when the old men were
dead, he entered on a course of rapacity grosser and more shameless than
anything that had ever been known. Boniface reserved to himself the first year’s
income of all bishoprics and abbeys. Persons who aspired to preferment of this
kind were required to pay for it in advance, and, if unprovided with ready
money, they were obliged to borrow at extravagant interest from the brokers who
hung about the papal court. Unions of benefices were simoniacally made,
and men utterly ignorant were allowed, if they paid sufficiently, to be exempt
from the laws against pluralities. Spies were sent throughout Lombardy and
other countries of Boniface’s obedience, to discover whether any incumbents of
rich benefices were ill, and to give early notice of any vacancy to their
employers. The “spoils” of prelates and cardinals were plundered before the
owners were actually dead. The same reversions were sold repeatedly, the last
buyers having their papers marked for preference, but as this practice became
so well known that after a time purchasers could not be found on such terms, a
form of precedence over all other preferences was devised in order to attract
and assure them, and was, of course, sold at a much higher priced The pope
affected to check these abuses by enacting rules, and found a new source of
profit in granting exemptions from his rules. By a like policy he revoked the
indulgences, privileges, and other benefits which he had irregularly bestowed,
and made the revocation a ground for fresh exactions. Even after the first
year’s income of a benefice had been paid in order to secure the presentation,
the purchaser was liable to see it carried off by a later comer who was willing
to pay more highly; for in such cases the pope professed to believe that those
who had made the lower offers intended to cheat him. The system of corruption
became continually more ingenious and refined. Members of mendicant orders
were allowed, on payment of a hundred gold florins, to transfer themselves to
orders which did not profess mendicancy; and the world was astonished at seeing
such payments made by persons who were bound by their rules to possess nothing.
The traffic in indulgences was carried out more thoroughly than before. The
pope himself was not above accepting the smallest gains, and his mother, who is
described as the greediest of women, with his three brothers, found
opportunities of enriching themselves. The theory which some had maintained at
an earlier time, that a pope could not become guilty of simony, was brought
forward by Boniface’s friends as the only plea by which his practices could be
justified. Among those who obtained preferment by such means as were then necessary
were many worthless and unfit persons, and for a long time afterwards the
clergy of the “Bonifacian plantation, which the heavenly Father planted not”,
were noted as the least reputable of their class. In some countries, such as
England or Hungary, the extravagance of the charges exacted by the Roman court
on appointment to ecclesiastical dignities produced an effect which Boniface
had not reckoned on, as the clergy of those countries ceased to resort to Rome,
and the connexion of the national churches with the papacy was practically
suspended.
JUBILEE OF 1390.
Boniface, at his accession, found the jubilee of 1390
prepared for him by his predecessor; and, notwithstanding the difficulties of
the time—the separation of France from the Roman papacy, and the consequent
absence of French pilgrims, with the disturbed state of affairs, which placed
extraordinary hindrances in the way of travellers—a large number of visitors
appeared, and great sums were contributed to the papal treasury. In
consideration of the impediments which made the journey hazardous, Boniface
sent emissaries into the kingdoms which acknowledged him, with a commission to
offer the benefits of the jubilee and a dispensation from the necessity of
visiting Rome in person; and although it is said that much of the money paid
for this indulgence was embezzled by the collectors, it brought in a large
addition to the profits of the jubilee—which, while a portion of them was
bestowed on the repairs of the Roman churches, were mostly retained for the
pope’s own use. The difficulty as to Naples, which Urban had left to his
successor, was overcome by Boniface’s acknowledging Ladislaus as
king, and thus securing himself against the risk that the kingdom might fall
under the spiritual obedience of the Avignon pope, who had crowned the younger
Lewis of Anjou as its sovereign. Boniface also complied with the wishes
of Ladislaus by sanctioning his groundless and scandalous divorce and
remarriage, and by crowning him as king of Hungary. But in that country Mary
and her husband Sigismund were so firmly established that Ladislaus withdrew
from the attempt to dispossess them.
With his own subjects Boniface had serious discords,
which obliged him to leave Rome for Perugia in 1393; and from that time he
lived in provincial towns until the approach of the jubilee of 1400, when the
Romans, considering that the absence of the pope would probably reduce the
number of pilgrims and the profits of the celebration, made overtures for his
return. Boniface, although he had already benefited by the calculation which
fixed a jubilee for 1390, was very willing to fall back on the scheme which allowed
him to celebrate a second jubilee within ten years; and, feeling the importance
of his presence to the Romans, he took advantage of it to make stipulations
which, among other things, removed the democratic bannerets from a share of the
government and placed the control of it in the pope’s own hands. The jubilee
was attended by great multitudes; the French had been eager for it, and flocked
to Rome, notwithstanding their king’s prohibition, and in defiance of the
dangers with which the journey was beset from robbers and from the rude and
licentious soldiery who swarmed in Italy. From those who were unable or
unwilling to undertake the expedition, Boniface contrived to draw large
contributions by allowing them, on the payment of offerings, to commute it for
the visitation of certain churches in their own neighbourhood. By the wealth
derived from the jubilee, and by the produce of the exactions already
described, the pope was enabled to repair the fortress of St. Angelo and the
harbour of Ostia, to fortify the Capitol and the Vatican, to recover some
portions of the papal territory, and to gain such a power over Rome itself as
no one of his predecessors in late times had enjoyed.
Early in his pontificate Boniface endeavoured, by
repeated letters and missives, to draw the French king into renouncing the
obedience of Clement. The university of Paris was diligent in endeavouring to
heal the schism, and in January 1394 obtained leave from the duke of Berri, who
was then in power during one of the king’s attacks of lunacy, to give its
judgment on the subject. A chest was set to receive the opinions of members of
the academic body, and it is said that upwards of ten thousand papers were
thrown into it. The plans proposed in these opinions were found to be reducible
to three—that both popes should abdicate; that they should agree, by a
compromise, on a list of persons to whose arbitration the matter should be
committed; and that it should be referred to a general council. On this basis
the judgment of the university was drawn up by Nicholas of Clemanges (who was styled the “Cicero of his age”),
with the assistance of Peter d'Ailly June
and Giles Deschamps; and it was submitted to the king, who had again become
capable of attending to business. But Charles, although he thanked the members
of the university for their pains, was persuaded by cardinal de Luna and other
friends of Clement to desire that they would not concern themselves further
with the matter; and the professors suspended their teaching until their
representation should receive due attention. The judgment was forwarded to pope
Clement, who declared it to be defamatory of the apostolic see, full of venom
and detraction, and unfit to be read; but on finding that his cardinals were
inclined to the opinion of the university, he was thrown into an agitation
which in a few days put an end to his life on the 16th of September 1394.
On this, Charles of France, at the instigation of the
university of Paris, and with the hope of bringing the schism to an end, wrote
two letters to the cardinals of the Avignon court, desiring that they would not
be in haste to elect a new pope. But his first letter found them already
assembled in conclave, although not yet shut in; and suspecting its purport,
they resolved to leave it unopened until the election should have been decided.
Each member of the college took an oath that, if elected, he would labour
for the extinction of the schism, even to the extent of resigning, if such a
step should be for the benefit of the church, or if the cardinals, or a
majority of them, should think it expedient; and they chose Peter de Luna,
cardinal of St. Mary in Cosmedin, who styled
himself Benedict XIII. The new pope, a Spaniard, had been noted for his ability
as a negotiator; he had obtained for Clement the adhesion of Castile, and at
Paris had raised up a party in opposition to the university. Although he was
one of those who had begun the schism by the election of Clement at Fondi, he had been accustomed to lament that step, to blame
Clement for the policy by which the separation was continued, and to profess an
eager desire for the reunion of the church at whatever sacrifice. But it soon
became evident how little he was disposed to act sincerely on his former
professions. He had at the election avowed an opinion that the oath which was
proposed could not bind the pope except so far as every Catholic was bound by
right and conscience; and although he still continued to speak as before—declaring
that, if he himself only were concerned, he would put off the papacy as readily
as if it were a cloak, that he would rather spend his remaining days in a
desert than give occasion for prolonging the schism—he was now able to put his
own interpretation on his late engagement.
The university of Paris took continually a more active
part in endeavouring to heal the schism. It offered its advice to Benedict, and
requested him to exert himself for the union of the church; but the letter
received only an evasive reply. The leaders of the university, Peter d'Ailly, Nicolas of Clemanges,
and John Gerson, were opposed alike to the papal despotism and to any schemes
which would have proposed to remedy this by a revolution in the system of the
church. But in the meantime the increasing pressure of the evils which arose
out of the schism drove others into speculations as to the means of healing it
which touched the very foundations of the papal power.
On the Festival of the Purification, 1395, a national
council was held at Paris. The king was prevented from attending by an attack
of his terrible malady; but the princes of the royal house were present, and
among the clergy were the titular patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem, seven
archbishops, and a great number of bishops, with representatives of the
monastic orders and of the universities. Simon de Cramault,
patriarch of Alexandria and administrator of the diocese of Carcassonne,
presided. Before this assembly was read the judgment of the university in
favour of the plan that both popes should resign. It was adopted by a majority
of 87 to 22; and after it had been formally reported by the prelates to
the king, a mission, headed by the dukes of Berri, Burgundy, and Orleans,
proceeded to Avignon, for the purpose of laying before Benedict the various
courses which had been proposed with a view to end the schism, and of
recommending the way of cession as the speediest and most dignified. At the
same time a letter of similar purport was addressed to Benedict by the
university of Paris. The cardinals, although it is said that high words passed
among them, for the most part declared themselves in favour of the proposed
scheme; but Benedict, after much delay and many evasions, professed to think
that a conference between himself and his rival would be more hopeful; while
to one who visited him he declared that he would rather be flayed alive than
resign, and he wrote letters of remonstrance both to king Charles and to the
duke of Burgundy. The representatives of the university were indignant at the
rudeness which they experienced from the pope’s servants and at his refusal to
receive them publicly, and the embassy left Avignon in disgust,—the duke of
Berri, in the name of the rest, refusing an invitation to the pope’s table. The
proposal of a conference was received with general disfavour, as it was
suspected that such a meeting would result in an agreement for the partition of
Christendom between the two popes, and consequently would prolong the schism.
Still eager to bring the schism to an end, the king of
France endeavoured to enlist other princes in the same cause, while the
university of Paris entered into correspondence with universities of other
countries on the subject. From Cologne a letter had been received, exhorting
the Parisians to labour for peace, but showing an inclination to the side of
Boniface. From Oxford came a declaration in favour of a general council; but
king Richard of England preferred the scheme of a cession, and wrote to both popes
in recommendation of it. The university of Toulouse maintained, in opposition
to that of Paris, that not even a general council has authority to judge the
pope and in this, as in other matters, the Dominicans held against the Parisian
university, from which they had been excluded some years before on account of
their resistance to the doctrine of the immaculate conception. Provoked by
opposition, Benedict condemned some members of the university to the loss of
their preferments; whereupon the academical body appealed against him to a
future, sole, and real pope; and when he declared appeals from the pope to be
unlawful, it repeated the act, asserting that schismatical and
heretical popes were subject in life to the judgment of general councils, and
after death to that of their own successors.
In March 1398 the emperor Wenceslaus and the king of
France met at Reims, with a view to settling the termination of the schism. It
was agreed that abdication should be recommended both to Benedict and to Boniface,
with a view to the appointment of a new pope, who should be chosen by the
cardinals of both parties; and, if this recommendation should be neglected,
each of the sovereigns undertook to depose the pope to whom he had before
adhered. Peter d'Ailly, now bishop of Cambray,
was sent to the courts of Rome and Avignon with a charge to announce this
resolution; but the mission was ineffectual, as each pope, although he did not
absolutely reject the proposal, insisted that his rival should be the first to
resign.
Another national council was held at Paris in May
1398, under the presidency of the patriarch of Alexandria. The question was
proposed, whether, if Benedict should obstinately refuse to resign, the French
should continue to acknowledge him, or whether they should withdraw their
obedience, either entirely, or in so far as regarded the patronage and temporalities
which he had usurped? A committee of twelve, chosen equally from among the
friends and the opponents of Benedict, drew up a statement of the reasons, on
the one hand, for adhesion, and on the other hand for total or partial
withdrawal. After a discussion of twelve days, two hundred and forty-seven
members out of three hundred pronounced for a total withdrawal; and, some weeks
later, this resolution was confirmed by the king, who had then recovered in
some degree from an attack of madness. The subjects of the crown were forbidden
to obey Benedict, or to pay any of the ecclesiastical revenues to him. The king
declared that capitular and monastic elections should be free from the control
which popes had exercised over them, and he annulled the “expectative”
presentations which Benedict had granted. But Benedict, on being informed of
the resolutions of the council, declared that nothing should make him resign
the dignity which God had been pleased to bestow on him.
On this, the marshal of France, Boucicault, was sent
with a force to Avignon, where the citizens admitted him within their walls,
while the cardinals withdrew across the Rhone to the French town of
Villeneuve, leaving one of their number, whose tastes and habits were military,
in command of Avignon. The pope was besieged in his palace, but on each side
there was an unwillingness to proceed to extremities; the besiegers, although
they tried to enter the papal fortress by various ways, refrained from attempting
to take it by storm; and Benedict, in the hope of profiting by the intrigues of
the parties which surrounded the throne of the unfortunate Charles VI,
refrained from uttering the usual denunciations against the French.
The plans which had been arranged for bringing the
influence of sovereigns to bear on the popes, and compelling them to resign,
were foiled by the deposition of Richard of England in 1399, and by that of the
voluptuary Wenceslaus, who in the following year was set aside, as having
shown himself unworthy of his office by alienation of the imperial territory
and rights, by cruelty, misgovernment, ill behaviour towards the church, gross
personal misconduct, and general neglect of his duties. The king of Aragon, on
being requested by Benedict to assist him, had answered, “Does the pope think
that, in order to keep up his tricks, I shall go to war with the king of
France?”. But he exerted himself as a mediator, and through his influence a
compromise was arranged after Avignon had been besieged for seven months. The
pope, who had been reduced to great distress, was to be allowed to receive
provisions into the palace, but a strict watch was kept lest he should escape
with his treasures; and this state of partial imprisonment continued from April
1399 until March 1403, when Benedict, by the aid of a Norman gentleman, Robinet
de Braquemont, escaped from Avignon, and made
his way down the Rhone to Chateau Renaud. There he was under the protection of
Lewis of Sicily and Provence, and his cardinals returned to their obedience.
A.D. 1398-1403. RUPERT, KING OF THE ROMANS.
Rupert, count palatine of the Rhine, had been chosen
king of the Romans on the deposition of Wenceslaus; and Boniface, although he
acted with caution, had given the electors reason to suppose that he would
sanction the change. But Rupert, although personally far superior to
Wenceslaus, found the force of circumstances too strong to admit of his
asserting the rights of the empire with effect; for the princes of Germany, by
weakening the power of the crown, had in reality caused the anarchy for which
they now blamed the existing sovereign. On going into Italy, to which
he had been urgently invited by the Florentines, he found that his citations
were little heeded, while his authority was openly treated with contempt by
John Galeazzo of Milan, who declared that he had received his duchy from a
legitimate emperor, and would not give it up. Discouraged by such
manifestations of the temper of the Italians, by a defeat in an encounter with
Galeazzo near Brescia, and by the defection of some princes who had accompanied
him across the Alps, Rupert returned to Germany without having advanced beyond
Padua, and without having obtained even a promise of the imperial crown from
the pope. Boniface, however, soon after condescended to confirm the election;
for, while his own position was in jeopardy, he continued to hold the lofty
language of Hildebrand and of the Innocents. The death of John Galeazzo, who
was carried off by a plague in September 1402, threw the north of Italy for a
time into frightful anarchy; but although circumstances seemed to invite Rupert
to a second Italian expedition, and Boniface granted him a tenth of the
ecclesiastical income for the expenses of his coronation, the clergy refused to
pay this impost, and the king felt himself compelled to remain at home.
In the meantime circumstances had favoured Benedict.
The king’s brother, the duke of Orleans, espoused his cause, in the hope of
being able to use the papal name as a counterpoise to the influence of his
kinsmen, the dukes of Berri and Burgundy. The most eminent
theologians—Peter d'Ailly, Nicolas of Clemanges (who had even become the pope’s secretary),
and John Gerson—were on his side. The university of Toulouse, which had always
been with Benedict, urged a return to his obedience. Even in the university of
Paris, the French and Picard nations were for a return, while the Normans were
against it and the Germans were neutral. It was urged that the withdrawal of
obedience had been ineffectual, inasmuch as no one of the powers which
acknowledged the rival pope had taken a like step; that Benedict had deserved
well by accepting the scheme of abdication, while Boniface had rejected it. A
national assembly resolved that France should return to the obedience of
Benedict, and the king, who was enjoying an interval of reason, was brought
forward to take part in the solemnity by which the return was celebrated. It
was agreed that Benedict should resign in case of Boniface’s resignation,
deposition, or death; that ecclesiastical appointments which had been made
during the suspension of obedience should be ratified; and the pope promised
that he would speedily call a general council, and that he would carry out the
resolutions which it might decree. But he soon showed an inclination to evade
these terms, and the royal authority was found necessary to enforce the article
as to the confirmation of benefices.
In 1404 Benedict sent a mission to his rival with
proposals for a conference. But Boniface refused to allow any equality of
terms,—speaking of himself as sole pope, and of Benedict as an antipope; and,
although the envoys had a safe conduct from the Romans, and even from Boniface
himself, he required them to leave the city. “At least”, said they, provoked by
this treatment, “our master is not a simoniac”; and it is said that the words
affected the pope so strongly as to produce an illness which carried him off in
three days. Thus had occurred one of the contingencies in which Benedict had
pledged himself to resign; and the Roman cardinals asked his representatives
whether they were furnished with authority for that purpose. The envoys could
only reply that their commission did not reach so far; but they entreated that
the cardinals would refrain from any fresh election. This request, however,
was treated as a jest, and the cardinals proceeded to choose Cosmato Migliorati, cardinal
of Holy Cross, who took the name of Innocent VII. Every one of the electors had
bound himself by oath that, if chosen, he would labour in all possible ways for
the healing of the schism, and, if necessary, would even resign his office; but
the value of such oaths had by this time come to be generally understood.
Innocent VII. was a native of the Neapolitan kingdom.
He had been eminent as a canonist, had been employed by Urban VI as collector
of the papal revenue in England, and had afterwards been promoted to the
bishopric of Bologna. In himself he was a mild and unassuming old man, free
from the pontifical vice of rapacity, an enemy to the pontifical practice of
simony, and most especially desirous of a quiet and easy life. He attempted to
begin a reform by making his secretaries dismiss their concubines; but the
greed and the ambition of his kinsmen were too strong for him, and abuses
which Innocent had at first reprobated were afterwards adopted into his own
practice. His short pontificate, while uneventful in other respects, was full
of trouble for himself. The Romans attempted to recover the power which
Boniface had wrested from them; the Colonnas renewed
the turbulence by which their family had been marked under earlier
pontificates; above all, Ladislaus of Naples played an equivocal and
alarming part. To the scheming and perfidy of John Galeazzo Visconti, Ladislaus added
the quality of personal courage; he was animated by an ambition which exceeded
that of John Galeazzo, so as even to aspire to the imperial dignity; and, while
affecting to protect the pope, there was reason to believe that, with a view to
his own interest, he secretly incited the citizens of Rome to rebellion. In
August 1405 Innocent was driven to Viterbo, chiefly in consequence of the act
of his nephew, who had treacherously put to death eleven deputies of the
Romans; and for a time John Colonna, who professed to be in the interest of
Avignon, was master of Rome, being ironically styled John the Twenty-third. But
after some months the Romans found it expedient to recall their pope, offering
him all the power which had been enjoyed by Boniface. Innocent returned in
March 1406. He denounced Ladislaus as a perjured traitor, declared
him to be deprived of the kingdoms which he held under the Roman see, and
proclaimed a crusade against the Colonnas. Ladislaus,
in order to propitiate the pope, surrendered the castle of St. Angelo to him,
and a treaty was concluded by which the king took an oath of fealty, and was
appointed standard-bearer of the Roman church. But before this measure had
produced any considerable effect, Innocent died on the 6th of November in the
year of his return. It is said that he had intended to call a general council
with a view to the reunion of the church, but that the troubles of his
pontificate prevented the execution of this design.
The Roman cardinals, after some hesitation whether
they should elect a successor, went through the form of choosing a pope under a
promise that he would resign if the benefit of the church should require it,
and that he would invite his rival of Avignon to join with him in this
sacrifice of private interest to the cause of unity; and thus, says Leonard of
Arezzo, the person to be elected was to regard himself rather as a proctor for
resigning the papacy than as a pope. The election fell on Angelo Corario, cardinal of St. Mark and titular patriarch of
Constantinople, who styled himself Gregory XII. Gregory was a man of seventy,
greatly respected for piety, learning, and prudence. It was he who had
proposed the engagement by which the cardinals had bound themselves before the
election; and it was believed that the straightforward honesty which was
supposed especially to mark his character would secure his zealous performance
of the obligation. Theodoric of Niem, however, who held an office in his
court, speaks of him as a dissembler, a wolf in sheep’s clothing; and
although this unfavourable representation may have been partly caused by some
personal enmity, the writer’s statements have an appearance of truth which has
won general belief for them. Gregory began by professing an intense desire for
the reunion of the church. He renewed the oath by which he had bound himself to
resign for the sake of this objects He wrote to urge the duty of cession on
Benedict in terms which were entirely inoffensive, except that the Avignon
pope’s right to the title was questioned in the superscription; and Benedict,
adopting his rival’s style of address, offered in return to take his cardinals
with him to a conference, and to resign if Gregory would do the like. Gregory
professed himself to be like the true mother, who was ready to give up her
child rather than suffer it to be divided; he declared that for the sake of
re-establishing unity in the church he was willing to go to any place, however
remote; that if ships were not to be had, he would put to sea in a little boat;
that if he could find no horses, he would go on foot with a staff in his hand.
It was only feared that he might not live long enough to carry his noble designs
into effect. But even if these professions were sincere, Gregory was under
influences which made it impossible for him to act on them. His nephews and
other relations exerted themselves to prevent an abdication which would have
destroyed their importance and their wealth while Ladislaus of Naples
was resolved to oppose a reconciliation which was likely in any case to tell
against him, and which, if it should be followed by the establishment of a
French pope, would have involved the acknowledgment of a French pretender to
the Neapolitan throne. Ladislaus, therefore, harassed Rome by a succession
of attacks which—perhaps through an understanding with Gregory or with his
nephews—were so timed and conducted as to afford pretexts for delaying the
attempts at a reconciliation; he even got possession of the city in April
1408, and remained there until the end of June. Benedict, in answer to
Gregory’s overtures, proposed a meeting, and after much negotiation, and many
attempts at evasion on the part of the Roman pope, it was agreed that it should
take place at Savona, on the Gulf of Genoa, between Michaelmas and All Saints’
Day 1407. The terms were arranged with elaborate precaution for the security of
the parties, and Gregory at length set out as if for the purpose of fulfilling
his engagement. But when he had reached Lucca, he professed to feel
apprehensions and difficulties which must prevent his appearance at Savona; and
Benedict, on being informed of this, endeavoured to gain for himself the reputation
of greater sincerity by going on as far as Porto Venere, near Spezzia. As Benedict advanced, Gregory retreated. It was,
says Leonard of Arezzo, as if one pope, like a land animal, refused to approach
the shore, and the other, like an inhabitant of the sea, refused to leave the
water. And Theodoric of Niem tells us that the project of a
conference was generally compared to a tilting-match, in which it is understood
that the champions are not to touch each other, but are merely to display
themselves before the spectators. The scandal presented by the intrigues and
insincerity of the two aged men, each of whom professed to claim the holiest
office in Christendom, with the mysterious blessings and prerogatives attached
to the see of St. Peter, excited general disgust, and it was commonly believed
that they had made a secret agreement to prolong the schism for their own
benefit.
France had again become impatient of the pretexts
under which a reconciliation was continually deferred. In July 1406, after a
warm discussion in the parliament of Paris, a letter of the university of
Toulouse in behalf of Benedict had been condemned as derogatory to the honour
of the king; and it had been decreed that the original should be burnt at
Toulouse, and copies on the bridge of Avignon, at Montpellier, and at Lyons. In
November of the same year a great national assembly was held under the presidency
of the titular patriarch of Alexandria. All agreed that a general council was
necessary for the solution of the difficulties which had arisen, and after long
and full discussions it resolved that obedience should be again withdrawn from
Benedict, unless within a certain time he should come to an agreement with his
rival. The publication of this resolution, however, was not to be immediate,
but was to be determined by circumstances. The king soon after despatched an
embassy to both popes, but neither Benedict nor Gregory could be persuaded to
resign, and the agreement for the meeting at Savona had already been concluded
between them.
About the time when the failure of that scheme became
known, Benedict lost his most powerful friend, the duke of Orleans, who was assassinated
in the streets of Paris through the contrivance of his cousin, John the
Fearless, duke of Burgundy. The irritation of the French soon after manifested
itself in a declaration of renewed subtraction from Benedict and of neutrality
between the claimants of the papacy; but although this was communicated to the
two rivals, and although the king exerted himself to draw other sovereigns into
the same policy, the document was not yet formally published. Benedict, perhaps
encouraged by the distresses which he saw gathering around his rival, replied
in April 1408 by sending to Paris two bulls. The first of these, dated eleven
months earlier, was intended to counteract the decisions of the French national
council by excommunicating all persons, of whatever rank, who should take part
against the pope, interdicting the territories of princes who should oppose
him, and releasing their subjects from allegiance; the second bull,
dated in April 1408, was conceived in a tone rather of complaint than of anger,
but warned the king that by persistence in his unkindness towards Benedict he
would incur the penalties of the earlier bull.
But the French were no longer disposed to endure such
threats. At a great assembly of nobles, ecclesiastics, representatives of the
university, and lawyers, John Courtecuisse, an
eminent divine, made a discourse in which he charged Benedict with heresy and
schism, with trifling and insincerity in negotiating with his rival, and with
having shown himself an enemy of all Christendom by hindering the reunion of
the church. The bull of excommunication was cut by the king’s secretary into
two parts, of which one was given to the princes and councillors, and the other
to the representatives of the university, and they were then torn into small
pieces and burnt. The messengers who had conveyed the bulls were pilloried and
imprisoned; the archbishop of Reims and other dignitaries, who were suspected
of having been privy to the bull, were arrested. The neutrality of France was
now proclaimed, and the pope was publicly denounced as guilty of heresy and
schism. Orders were sent to Marshal Boucicault, governor of Genoa (which was
then subject to the French crown), that Peter de Luna should be made prisoner
until he should conclude a real peace with his rival; but Benedict took the
alarm, and, after having issued declarations against the conduct of the French
king and others, he made his escape by sea from Porto Venere and took up his
abode at Perpignan.
In the meantime Gregory had begun to distrust his own
cardinals, who urged him to resign. Fearing lest they should take some steps
against him, he forbade them to leave Lucca; and, in disregard of the engagements
by which he had bound himself both at his election and in correspondence with
his rival, as well as of the remonstrances which were addressed to him by the
cardinals and by many bishops, he announced an intention of creating four new
cardinals, of whom two were his own nephews. By this step the older cardinals
were roused to action. They refused to acknowledge those who had been obtruded
on them, and, in defiance of Gregory’s command, all but three, who were
detained by sickness, removed from Lucca to Pisa, where they sent forth
protests against the pope’s late proceedings.
The cardinals who had been attached to Benedict now
repaired to Leghorn, where they were met by those of Gregory’s party, and the
two sections joined in issuing a summons for a council to meet at Pisa in March
of the following year. In this course they were supported by the universities
of Florence and Bologna, as well as by that of Paris. They announced their
intentions to both popes, inviting them to appear and to resign their
pretensions, agreeably to the engagements which they had made at election; otherwise,
it was added, the council would take its own course. Gregory replied by
declaring the cardinals to be degraded and excommunicate; he professed to make
a new promotion to the college, and announced an intention of holding a
council of his own. But for this purpose it was not easy to find a place. The
authorities of his native state, Venice, to whom he applied, advised him rather
to send representatives to Pisa; and various towns—even Ephesus, which was
then for a time in Christian hands—were proposed. At length, when the council
of Pisa was far advanced, the Venetians allowed Gregory’s council to be held at
Cividale, in Friuli; but it was ineffectual for any other purpose than that of
showing his impotence.
Benedict also summoned a council, which met at
Perpignan in November 1408, and was attended by a considerable number of
prelates, among whom four had been decorated by him with the empty title of
patriarch. But this assembly, instead of seconding his wishes, almost
unanimously advised him to resign, and Benedict soon found himself deserted by
all but a few of his partisans, who themselves urged him to abdicate or to send
representatives to the council which had been summoned by the cardinals. His
indignation vented itself in furious threats against those who had thwarted
him, and in declaring them all, from the cardinals downwards, to be deprived of
their dignities and excommunicated.
The emperor Rupert had promised to Boniface IX that he
would accept no other solution of the question by which the church was divided
than the suppression of the papacy of Avignon; and Gregory had conciliated him
by declaring that, while the right of summoning general councils belonged to
the pope, the emperor, as general advocate of the church, was more entitled to
take such a part than the cardinals. At a great assembly, which was held at
Frankfort in January 1409, a cardinal appeared on behalf of the Pisan
cardinals, and cardinal Antony Corario,
Gregory’s nephew, as representative of his uncle. Rupert, whose leaning to the
interest of Gregory was manifest, agreed to send representatives to Pisa, but
declared that he would not forsake the pope unless convinced that Gregory had
forfeited his support by misconduct. But in this feeling the majority of the
assembly did not concur.
The obstinacy with which the rival popes clung to
their pretensions, the manifest insincerity of their professions as to a desire
for unity, the charges with which they mutually blackened each other, produced
an increasing effect on the minds of men; and, as the hope of their voluntary
resignation vanished, the idea of a general council as an expedient for healing
the schism gained ground. Among those who, after having favoured the scheme of
resignation, adopted that of referring the matter to a council, the most
eminent for abilities, reputation, and activity was John Charlier, whose
surname is usually superseded by the name of his native place, Gerson, a
village near Rethel, in Champagne. Gerson, born in 1363, had studied under
Peter d'Ailly and Giles Deschamps, and in
1395 had succeeded his old master d'Ailly as
chancellor of Paris and professor in the university. The opinions which he had
now formed as to the manner of ending the schism were expressed in various
writings, especially in a tract “Of the Unity of the Church”, and in one
“De Auferibilitate Papae”. He believed the
authority of the church to reside in the whole catholic body, and in a general
council as its representative. He supposed that, although the power of
convoking general councils had in later times been exercised by the popes
alone, the church might resume it in certain circumstances; that this might be
properly done in the case of a division between rival popes; and that in such a
case a council might be summoned, not only by the cardinals, but by faithful
laymen. He held that, in case of necessity, the church could subsist for a time
without a visible head; he greatly mitigated the pretensions which had been set
up in behalf of the papacy; and, on the whole, he expressed far more distinctly
than any one who had written since the appearance of the false decretals, that
theory of the church to which the name of Gallican has been given in later
times. Yet Gerson had been unable to take part with the university in its
extreme proceedings, and had incurred obloquy by the moderation of his counsels
at the national assembly of 1406. And, although his influence was strongly felt
in the Pisan council, he himself was not present at it.
The council of Pisa met on the 25th of March 1409, in
the cathedral of that city, which three years before had been sold by its doge
to its old rivals and enemies, the Florentines. Among those who took part in it
(although many of them did not arrive until later) were twenty-two cardinals
and four titular patriarchs, with archbishops, bishops, abbots (including the
heads of the chief religious orders), envoys of many sovereign princes,
proctors for cathedral chapters, and a host of masters and doctors who represented
the new and powerful influence of the universities. Henry IV of England, who
had laboured for the extinction of the schism, and had practically enforced his
counsels by detaining the pope’s revenues from England until a reconciliation
should be effected, had taken order for the representation of his kingdom; and
at the head of the English members was Robert Hallam, bishop of Salisbury. As
the cardinals, in their need of support, were desirous to avoid the risk of
provoking jealousies between various classes, it was arranged that all the
members should sit together as one house, and that there should be no
distinction as to the privilege of voting. Guy de Maillesec,
bishop of Palestrina, presided as senior cardinal.
At the opening of the council a sermon was preached by
Peter Philargi, cardinal of the Twelve Apostles
and archbishop of Milan, who lamented the distractions of the church, and
exhorted his hearers to take measures for the restoration of unity. At the
first session it was asked by proclamation at the doors of the cathedral
whether Angelo Corario or Peter de Luna
were present, either in person or by proxy; and as the question, after having
been repeated at the second and third sessions, received no answer, the
council, in its third and fourth sessions, pronounced both the rivals to be
contumacious.
The emperor Rupert, although favourable to the interest
of Gregory, had sent the archbishop of Riga, the bishops of Worms and Verden,
and others, as his ambassadors. At the fourth session, the bishop of Verden brought
forward twenty-three objections to the course of proceedings; and it was proposed,
in the emperor’s name, that the council should be adjourned to some other
place, where Gregory might be able to attend. But this proposal, which was
evidently intended to break up the assembly, found no favour; and at a later
session the German objections were powerfully exposed by Peter de Ancorano, an eminent doctor of Bologna. Meanwhile Rupert’s
ambassadors, finding the tone of the council unpromising for their master’s
policy, had withdrawn, after having made an appeal to a future general council,
maintaining that Gregory was the only legitimate pope; and, as Wenceslaus
acknowledged the council, he obtained its recognition in return, although his
want of energy allowed this advantage to remain unimproved as an aid towards
recovering the imperial dignity. At the fifth session thirty-eight charges were
brought forward against the rival claimants of the papacy, and at the tenth
session a commission which had heard evidence in support of these charges made
its report. The opinions of the universities of Paris, Angers, Orleans,
Toulouse, Bologna, and Florence were alleged in favour of the proposed course,
and at the fifteenth session it was declared that both were guilty, as
notorious schismatics, obstinate and incorrigible heretics, perjurers, and
vow-breakers; that by these and other offences they had scandalized the whole
church, and had rendered themselves unworthy of any dignity. The sentence of
the council, which was solemnly pronounced by the titular patriarch of
Alexandria, while his brethren of Antioch and Jerusalem stood on each side of
him, condemned both Benedict and Gregory to be deposed and cut off from the
church; the sentences uttered by them were declared to be null, their
nominations of cardinals since the spring of the preceding year, when they had
ceased to labour for union by means of cession, to be invalid; and it was added
that, if either of them should despise this sentence, he and his partisans
should be coerced by the secular power. Thus, although the cardinals, who
summoned the council, could not have entered on the investigation of the schism
without exposing themselves to fatal questions,—inasmuch as every member of
the college had either shared in the election of one or other of the rivals, or
owed his appointment to one or other of them,—the council itself assumed the
right to decide the matter, in absolute disregard of the pretension which had
been maintained for centuries, that the pope could not be judged by man except
in the case of manifest heresy.
At the eighteenth session some envoys of the king of
Aragon appeared, and one of them, on speaking of Benedict as pope, was assailed
with hisses and mockery. The council, however, out of respect for the king’s
intercession, agreed to give an audience to certain representatives of Peter de
Luna; but on the entrance of these, an outcry was raised against them “as if
they had been Jews”; and when one of them, the archbishop of Tarragona, gave
the title of pope to Benedict, there was a general outburst of derision, with
cries that the speaker was the envoy of a heretic and schismatic. The
archbishop was silenced, and, with his companions, immediately left Pisa.
It had become evident to all discerning men that the
extinction of the schism would be no sufficient cure for the prevailing evils,
unless accompanied by a reform of the church, “both in head and in members”.
With a view to this, each of the cardinals, before proceeding to the election
of a pope, pledged himself that, if he should be chosen, he would continue the
council until a “due, reasonable, and sufficient reformation” should be
effected; and it was agreed that, if the election should fall on any one who
was not then present, a like pledge should be required of him. On the 15th of
June, twenty-two cardinals entered the conclave, and, after eleven days of
deliberation, they announced that their choice had fallen on the
cardinal-archbishop of Milan, who, as we have seen, had preached at the opening
of the council. Peter Philargi was a native
of Candia, and had never known his parents or any other relation. When begging
his bread in childhood, he attracted the notice of a Franciscan friar, and, in
consequence of this patron's kindness, he became a member of the same order.
He had studied at Paris and at Oxford, and was much esteemed for his
theological learning. As pope, he took the name of Alexander V.
|