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.

 

 

CHAPTER VI. WYCLIF.