The Great Western Schism (1378-1417/1429):
Lessons For the Troubled Catholic Present From its Chaotic Past
(Seattle Catholic, January, 2006)
"Every age has its afflictions, but you have not seen, and no one has seen a time so troubled as the present."(St. Catherine of Siena)
Why Study the Great Western Schism?
A detailed review of the chaotic years of the Great Western Schism is extremely helpful in coming to terms with the troubled Catholic present. It is useful, in this context, for three reasons. First of all, it shows us—as do all historical studies--that crises do not pop up out of nowhere, and that a given generation’s miseries generally have been prepared in a previous age suffering from perhaps even more fundamental woes. Secondly, it demonstrates that resolution of the specifics of any given ecclesiastical disaster may not proceed precisely "by the book", especially if the problems involved are basically new ones and have not been confronted by theologians and canonists adequately before. Finally, it points to the fact that the Church’s full awakening from a nightmare which has diverted her energies away from her real mission is a very difficult enterprise indeed; that it cannot be accomplished "on the cheap"; that if it is to take place at all, it must be built not only upon a humble digestion of the lessons taught by recent adversity, but also on a deeper inspection of all of the wisdom that the book and jewel box of her Tradition contain. Only thus can she truly arouse herself from her doctrinal and pastoral slumber and be better armed for the next inevitable battle with her outer and inner demons.
The Attack on the Incarnation and Co-Option by the Low Road
Allow me to begin by noting the fact that life in later medieval Europe was made miserable by a deep disillusionment with the dramatic monastic and papal reform movement promoting a political and social "transformation of all things in Christ" since the middle of the Tenth Century. Such disenchantment was encouraged by a variety of Manicheans, Millenarians, Nominalists, Legalists, and Money Grubbers, all of whom had been peddling their depressing wares in tense alliance with one another for almost as long as the ecclesiastical reformers had themselves been active. Some of these outspoken critics were simply overwhelmed by the practical failures of a powerful visible Church in living up to the public demands of her noble mission. Others jumped upon the critical bandwagon with the hidden, cynical aim of discrediting all exalted visions placing obstacles in the path of satisfaction of their own base self-interests. Still others rejected the very possibility of a political and social transformation in Christ out of honest conviction. Such an enterprise they understood to be, at best, a hopeless waste of time, and, at worst, a blasphemous attempt to baptize the inevitably satanic earthly realm; a horrifying dance with the devil. In rejecting the vision of the great reform movement of the High Middle Ages, however, such honest critics were turning their backs on the most profound discussion of the deepest consequences of the Incarnation and how human beings could use their free will to "give flesh" to the fullness of Christ’s teachings.
A broad intellectual and spiritual disillusionment was driven home and given further clout by a seemingly endless succession of temporal calamities beginning in the mid 1200’s and lasting throughout the whole of the Fourteenth Century. These catastrophes included the collapse of the central authority of the Holy Roman Empire, the destruction and internal dislocation caused by the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, the loss of the Holy Land, the appearance of the Ottoman Turks in Europe, and an ever more open economic and social class war. All such problems were worsened by the successive waves of plague breaking upon Europe from 1348 onwards and the self-preoccupation perhaps inevitably accompanying them. Surely now, critics of "giving flesh" to the consequences of the Incarnation might argue, anyone who thought that nature was meant to serve the greater glory of God had to see that he was battering his head against a brick wall. Surely now he had to realize that actively working to achieve such a goal made him either a fool or a conscious cooperator with malevolent materialist forces.
Catholics are probably best acquainted with the contemporary misfortunes flowing from the humiliation of Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) at the hands of King Philip the Fair (1285-1314) and his anticlerical legal advisors: enemies of "transformation in Christ" if ever there were ones. Consistent statist attacks on ecclesiastical rights during that monarch’s reign forced a Church preoccupation with conditions in his troublesome kingdom. This fixation in turn seemed to dictate a temporary papal presence in or near France, as well as the selection of a line of Gallic popes suitable for handling French affairs. Pontifical absence from Rome contributed to the chaotic conditions disturbing much of Italy in the 1300’s, where the breakdown of imperial authority had further promoted the growth of autonomous, quarreling city-states. Increasing Italian instability then, in turn, confirmed the papal resolve to stay at its "temporary" residence in the city of Avignon, the entirety of which was finally purchased during the reign of Clement VI (1342-1352). Here, directly adjacent to the Kingdom of France, but on the road that led to Rome, anyone could make the best of an ever-longer Gallic vacation.
Most Catholics familiar with these problems think of the post-Boniface VIII era as one of papal captivity and weakness. In many respects, it really was not. French kings had too many life-and-death problems over the course of the next century to pursue a consistent policy of papal humiliation. The popes came to and left France and Avignon on their own steam. Moreover, they refined therein the most centralized and refined administrative apparatus that the Church had ever possessed; one that both imitated and yet often surpassed in efficiency the bureaucracies of any of the troubled secular governments of the day. Popes, Cardinals, and officials of the Chancery and Apostolic Camera appointed bishops, collected taxes, and imposed disreputable political interdicts and excommunications throughout much of Christendom with greater abandon than ever before. They did so in tight association with countless princes and other representatives of the late medieval Establishment. Bankers were particularly welcome in their entourage. As Alvaro Pelayo, himself a fervent supporter of the Holy See, noted in De planctu ecclesiae, "Whenever I entered the chambers of the ecclesiastics of the Papal Court, I found brokers and clergy engaged in weighing and reckoning the money which lay in heaps before them." (Pastor, I, 72).
A myriad of astonishing abuses, many of them the product of exceedingly pro-papal canonists influenced heavily by Roman Law and purely utilitarian power considerations, became associated with the Avignon administration. Charitable covers for raking in illicit funds were multiplied. Sees were left vacant or filled in ways that furthered the increase of gross curial muscle and wealth. Legal cases were painfully delayed so as to milk more loot from long-suffering plaintiffs and defendants. And, once again, all this was done in dangerous cahoots with locally important political and banker hacks.
Even more destructive was the treatment of diocesan matters as property rather than pastoral questions. Bishoprics were assigned either to curial officials--to provide, from their endowments, salaries the Papacy could not otherwise pay--or to friends of political allies whose cooperative behavior needed to be rewarded. Since it was impossible for papal employees to leave their governmental positions in Avignon to tend to even one diocese—much less the two or more often entrusted to their misuse—episcopal charges inevitably entailed the same absenteeism already practiced by the pope himself. Perhaps the most bizarre long term development from such unfortunate policies was to be the creation of nominal "bishops" who were often not even priests. Lay "bishops" got the revenues from their "property", and then employed some hireling to do the episcopal tasks they themselves could not legitimately perform.
All this indicated a diversion from the Church’s understanding of her main mission and what she most needed to do in order to fulfill it. It revealed a "preferential option for the low road", a massive placing of her faith in purely earthly tools and gimmicks, a bow to the cynical preoccupations of those who did not really, in practice, believe in the greater strength coming from spiritual transformation in Christ. Avignon’s abuses merely confirmed the convictions of those who already thought of the Church and her mission as a blasphemous work of Satan. This was the major reason why her scandals were so detested by orthodox believers. Their reactions ranged from the harsh, prophetic, and well-known attacks of St. Bridget to the practical adoption by various cities and countries of complicated political measures limiting or even prohibiting papal misrule entirely. In Germany, for instance:
"In October, 1372, the monasteries and abbies in Cologne entered into a compact to resist Pope Gregory XI in his proposed levy of a tithe on their revenues. The wording of their document manifests the depth of the feeling which prevailed in Germany against the Court of Avignon. ‘In consequence’, it says, ‘of the exactions with which the Papal Court burdens the clergy, the Apostolic See has fallen into such contempt that the Catholic Faith in these parts seems to be seriously imperiled. The laity speak slightingly of the Church because, departing from the custom of former days, she hardly ever sends forth preachers or reformers, but, rather, ostentatious men, cunning, selfish and greedy. Things have come to such a pass that few are Christians more than in name.’ The example of Cologne was soon followed." (Ibid., 91-92)
Chaotic conditions in a France crippled by the Hundred Years’ War eventually threatened the security, both physical and financial, of Avignon. Still, before a return to Rome could be contemplated, the Eternal City had itself to be pacified. Pacification required a calming not only of the power of a large number of local notables and their mercenary bands, but also of many others from central Italy, Naples, and as far afield as Milan. Different popes tried diverse tactics. Innocent VI (1352-1362) relied upon the military-backed mission of Cardinal Alborñoz (1353-1363), while his Benedictine successor, Urban V (1362-1370), bet on a personal sojourn in Italy and peaceful persuasion. Gregory XI (1370-1378) returned permanently to Rome in early 1377 before the work of pacification was in any way complete. He died on March 27th, 1378, as the situation hung between negotiations and a potentially very expensive papal war with the neighboring Republic of Florence.
The Great Western Schism
The conclave that met at Rome in April of 1378 was ill-prepared and heated. Two Gallic factions, both of which disliked Italy, nevertheless felt compelled to promise the threatening inhabitants of the Eternal City that they would once again be given a pope who was at least Italian. So fearful were some of the electors of the possible reaction of the parochial-minded mob to their choice of the Archbishop of Bari, Bartholomoeo Prignani, as Pope Urban VI (1378-1389), that they temporarily passed off the half-dead Roman Cardinal Tebaldeschi as the new pontiff, and then fled for their lives. But the well-known Urban actually proved to be acceptable to the local citizenry, his coronation was performed without incident, and the frightened Princes of the Church returned. Unfortunately for them, however, this pure, austere, and learned man quickly alienated his electors and their corrupt entourage through reform measures reflecting a "naturally arbitrary and extremely violent and imprudent" character (Ibid., 122).
"But instead of proceeding with the prudence and moderation demanded by a task of such peculiar difficulty, he suffered himself from the first to be carried away by the passionate impetuosity of his temper ….The very next day after his coronation he gave offence to many Bishops and Prelates who were sojourning in Rome, some of them for business, and some without any such reason. When, after Vespers, they paid him their respects in the great Chapel of the Vatican, he called them perjurers, because they had left their churches. A fortnight later, preaching in open consistory, he condemned the morals of the Cardinals and Prelates in such harsh and unmeasured terms, that all were deeply wounded….Urban also issued ordinances against the luxury of the Cardinals, and these measures were no doubt most excellent. Would only that the Pope had proceeded in a less violent and uncompromising manner! He certainly did not take the best way of reforming the worldly-minded Cardinals, when, in the Consistory, he sharply bade one of them be silent, and called out to the others ‘Cease your foolish chattering!’ nor again, when he told Cardinal Orsini that he was a blockhead….St. Catherine of Siena was aware of the severity with which Urban VI was endeavouring to carry out his reforms, and immediately exhorted and warned him. ‘Justice without mercy’, she wrote to the Pope, ‘will be injustice rather than justice.’ ‘Do what you have to do with moderation’, she said in another letter, ‘and with good will and a peaceful heart, for excess destroys rather than builds up. For the sake of your Crucified Lord, keep these hasty movements of your nature a little in check.’" (Ibid., pp. 123-124).
Urban remained intransigent, convincing many of the men around him, worldly or not, that he had gone stark raving mad. By August 9th, the thirteen Gallic cardinals had had enough, and condemned his election as coerced and correspondingly illicit. Then, on September 20th, at Fondi, south of Rome, with the quiet support of their three Italian counterparts, they elected Robert of Geneva as Pope Clement VII (1378-1394) in his place. The Great Western Schism had begun.
Rome had undergone a "mystic invasion" (Histoire du christianisme VI, 93) due to the return of the Papacy to the Eternal City. Saints like Catherine of Siena, one of the generals leading that holy assault, were scandalized by the action of the renegade cardinals, and begged for their peaceful return to the allegiance of Urban VI. But the "Roman" pope thought that he could solve his woes through military force alone. He called a Crusade against Queen Joanna of Naples, who had offered sanctuary to Clement, and succeeded in forcing his competitor out of Italy after the Battle of Marino. This initial victory did not, however, prevent Clement from returning triumphantly to Avignon (June 29th, 1379). Here, he was able to make immediate good use of the bulk of the papal administrative apparatus, which had never followed Gregory XI to Italy in the first place.
By 1379, both sides, their bases established, began a fervent competition for political and financial support. Tax collectors from Rome and Avignon appeared almost everywhere. Bankers, with their usual concern for even-handedness, often served both pontiffs simultaneously. In many dioceses, two bishops and two cathedral chapters emerged, with the very validity of the masses offered by the opposing sides coming under theoretical and actual physical attack. Pro-Urban bishops were barred entry to certain Sees and pro-Clement prelates to others. Serious Catholics looked upon the spectacle with an equal mixture of confusion and horror. Archbishop Peter Tenorio of Toledo prayed simply, in the Canon of the Mass, for the man who was truly pope, since he himself could not determine who that might be. Still, at least he continued to offer supplication. In some places, public worship ceased altogether. (Pastor, I, 141-146),
Supporters of Urban included most of the States of the Church, the Emperor, Flanders, England, and Portugal. Clement gained the backing of important sections of the hopelessly splintered Empire, such as Speyer and Mainz, along with Savoy, Scotland, and—after much soul searching and delay--Aragon, Castile, and Navarre. Many French prelates and the University of Paris were terribly troubled by the split. Nevertheless, the Kingdom of France accepted Clement in 1379 after an orchestrated public assembly of the sort perfected by the legalists of Philip the Fair to give that monarch’s crimes a broad respectability. The University’s coerced public stamp of arrival in 1383 led faculty and students who disagreed with the decision to leave for new centers of higher learning like Heidelberg and Lerida. Many cities and some states, like Naples, really could not make up their minds concerning whom they wished to support, or switched their allegiance due to dynastic changes. The mystic front eventually divided in two along with the rest of Christendom, Catherine of Siena remaining firmly with Urban, Vincent Ferrer and Peter of Luxembourg with Clement.
The Roman line of popes suffered due to its lack of administrative structures. It has a badly documented history. We know that Urban’s situation remained forever troubled. He had miserable relations with his twenty-nine newly created Cardinals, some of whom he imprisoned, tortured, and put to death under atrocious conditions. Difficulties with Naples pursued him throughout his reign, while he continued the very abuses that he had so vigorously condemned when they were perpetrated by others. Prignani was followed onto the throne of Peter by a sick, badly cultivated, and impossibly simoniac Boniface IX (Pietro Tomacelli, 2 November 1389-1 October, 1404). Boniface was perpetually destitute and lived by dubious expedients, offering enough examples of sales of benefices and plenary indulgences, Jubilee corruption, and outright robbery to give credence to Nicholas de Clémangis’ claim, in his book On the Ruin of the Church (1401), that "money was the origin of the Schism and the root of all the confusion." (Pastor, I, 146) He was succeeded by Innocent VII (Cosimo Megliorati, 17 October, 1404-6 November, 1406), and Gregory XII (Angelo Corrario, 30 November, 1406-4 July, 1415).
Avignon’s line is much better known. It is also simpler to memorize. Clement VII, who died on 16 September, 1394, was followed only by the Aragonese Benedict XIII (Pedro de Luna , 28 September, 1394-either 29 November 1422 or 23 May, 1423). Nevertheless, this one superhumanly wily figure, ordained a priest only after his election, gave the Roman popes more than a run for their money for the prize of greatest irritant to prostrate Christendom.
As the original protagonists of the Schism died, more and more contemporaries began to echo Archbishop Tenorio’s fear that there might not be any definitive way to know who the true pope really was. Perplexity was accompanied by an expansion of local and national efforts to ensure self-protection. Aragon had very speedily organized its own Apostolic Camera to collect Church taxes. England soon re-enacted laws to fill the kingdom’s bishoprics promulgated during earlier tiffs with the pre-1378 Avignon Papacy. Others then followed suit, with certain rulers beginning to enjoy the benefits of the game so much as to argue that there should be as many popes as there were political jurisdictions. Peter Suchenwirt related popular reactions to the situation in simple poetic form:
"In Rome itself we have a Pope--in Avignon another;(Ibid., 140)
And each one claims to be alone--the true and lawful ruler.
The world is troubled and perplext--twere better we had none;
Than two to rule o’er Christendom--where God would have but one.
He chose St. Peter who his fault--with bitter tears bewailed;
As you may read the story told--upon the sacred page.
Christ gave St. Peter power to bind--and also power to loose;
Now men are binding here and there--Lord loose our bonds we pray!"
Meanwhile, the number of apocalyptic-minded lamentations and expressions of heretical contempt grew ever higher:
"The preaching of a Saint Vincent Ferrer responded to the expectations of the crowds to whom he announced the arrival of the Antichrist. The whole labor of Gerson displays his horror before the peril that the schism caused the Church to run. It is to the people which the preaching of Wycliffe and Huss were addressed. The numerous prophecies of the epoch, Hildegarde, Saint Briget, Ermine, Telesphorus well illustrate the popular inquietude. The recluse, Marie Robine…saw ‘appear before Christ all the curates of the world, the priors, the abbés, the bishops, the pope and twelve cardinals; they were simply dressed, but their words were lying….Against them was raised the cry of vengeance of all those who died, through their fault, without being succored."(Histoire du Christianisme, VI, 107-108).
Once again, the greatest undeserving loser in the entire pathetic experience was the magnificent medieval movement for giving flesh to all the consequences of the Incarnation; for transforming all things in Christ. "They say that the world must be renewed", the pious Giovanni dalle Celle cried out, indicating, the enormous temptation of even the most orthodox thinkers to abandon the long-terms goals of so many holy monastic and papal reformers; "I say, it must be destroyed". (Pastor, I, 145).
No Solution "By the Book"
Three suggestions were offered, and played with by both the Roman and the Avignon Courts, as means of exiting from the Schism: the Via facti, or reliance on military support; the Via concessionis, which sought a solution to the problem through joint resignation; and, finally, the Via conventionis, or resolution of the division through the meeting either of representative cardinals of both papal courts or a General Church Council. Despite the early appeal to the Via facti, employed both by Urban and Clement--the Avignon pope in alliance with France and its claims to the Kingdom of Naples-- the future really lay with the latter two suggestions.
Jean Gerson, the great theologian and later Chancellor of the University of Paris, in both a discourse of 1391 and a treatise Super materiam unionis Ecclesiae, saw the path to sanity in a joint resignation of both men for the common good of Christendom. The ten thousand graduates of the University of Paris who placed their comments regarding possible means for ending the confusion in a chest at the Church of St. Marthurin in January of 1393 thought the same. They urged the calling of a commission or a General Council only should mutual abdication fail. Others, however, were already mapping out the precise route that the Via conventionis would have to take. These even included firm supporters of Urban VI like Henry of Langenstein, Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Paris, who addressed the subject in his Proposition of Peace for the Union and Reformation of the Church by a General Council of 1381.
Political pressure of some sort would be required to get either of these two approaches involving resignation or conciliar negotiation moving. Gerson and Philippe de Mèzières, a prolific, devout, crusading and spiritual author of the day, argued that such pressure must inevitably come from the King of France. Charles VI (1380-1422) was certainly willing to play the role of royal nudge, though his increasing insanity ensured that any French activity would be sifted more and more through the conflicting influences of his brother Louis, the Duke of Orleans, his cousin John, the Duke of Burgundy, and his uncle, the Duke of Berry.
Although Clement VII had enough influence with the French Court to deflect such growing pressures, and the good sense to die before they became overwhelming, his successor, Benedict, was under the gun from the very outset of his reign. The new Avignon pontiff had, after all, hesitantly taken an oath, along with the other papabili during the Conclave, to resign if his Roman counterpart did the same. He repeated this solemn promise, voluntarily, after his election. When it instead became clear that he had repudiated his pledge and showed some preference for the Via facti, the French government turned against him. A Council of Paris, in early 1395, presided over by Simon de Cramaud, Bishop of Poitiers and a notable representative of that legalist Gallican spirit which was again very much active in its push for vigorous state interference in Church affairs, publicly called for the joint abdication of the two popes. The king’s relatives, accompanied by university experts, went to Avignon from May 22 to July 9th in a frustrating mission to get Benedict to agree to the Via cessionis. Negotiators were dispatched to other countries, like England, to obtain their backing for the proposal as well.
Benedict adamantly rejected requests for his early retirement. When his stubbornness became clear, the University of Paris radicalized, its utilitarian-minded canonists above all others. Anti-papal writings multiplied. A new Council, attended by three hundred archbishops, bishops, abbots of monasteries, and delegates from each cathedral chapter and university, once again presided over by de Cramaud, met in May 1398 to tackle the problem. Thoughtful, careful theologians like Gerson and his great teacher and friend, the future Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly, urged tremendous moderation in dealing with Benedict. If for no other reason, they argued, moderation was dictated by the need to avoid giving scandal to ordinary believers. Nevertheless, the Council, stirred by the preaching of two Gallicans, the Abbé Pierre Leroy of Mount St. Michel and Bishop Gilles Deschamps of Coutances, withdrew its support from the Avignon pope and established a new Church order for the Kingdom of France. A number of Benedict’s cardinals eventually joined in the action. Withdrawal of obedience was followed, in September, by an outright assault on Avignon and a lengthy siege of the Apostolic Palace by a royal army under the command of a French Marshal.
But all did not work out well with this 1398 settlement. The anti-Benedict Blitzkrieg shocked even many of those people who were not disposed to be friendly to him. English policy changed with the death of the pro-French King Richard II. A Gallican Church in a semi-chaotic France proved easily controlled by ambitious noblemen and the women whom they wished to please. Further disputes among the king’s close relatives, opposition from a clergy which discovered that corrupt and hateful Church taxes were being more efficiently collected by royal officials, and growth of precisely that scandal among the common faithful feared by Gerson and d’Ailly condemned the Gallican scheme to a swift death. The coup de grace came with the pope’s dramatic escape from his besieged palace on May 11, 1403 to freedom in Provence. On May 28th of that same year, an assembly of bishops gave up the rebellion and restored French obedience to Benedict and the Avignon line.
Still, restoration of obedience did not mean surrender to Benedict’s obstinacy and perceived perjury. Jean Gerson, in a sermon preached before the pope in Tarascon, on New Year’s Day, 1404, continued to urge pursuit of every lawful means to end the schism. The radicalized University of Paris remained exceedingly hostile to him and attracted to still more heretical and legalist theories of ecclesiastical order, ones that recalled the arguments of William of Ockham and Marsilius of Padua alongside those of Philip the Fair’s anticlerical advisors. These theories viewed the popes as simply useful instruments of the Church at large, which, through the agency of General Councils—and the State standing behind them--could judge pontiffs and limit or even withdraw their powers should necessity demand it.
By this point, however, sincere and less radical supporters of the Via cessionis were encouraged by hopeful noises coming out of Rome. Boniface had steadfastly refused all proposals for healing the split, profited from his competitor’s woes, and seen his prestige rise through the relative success of the Jubilee pilgrimage to the Eternal City in 1400. But now his successor, Innocent VII (1404-1406), claimed that he would never even have been elected had Benedict XIII shown some readiness to resign. Innocent thus pledged his full support to a swift and peaceful resolution of the dilemma.
Benedict, alas, had now once again given his heart over to the Via facti, and was making military advances into Italy and pumping reliable financial resources to fund them. Renewed indignation over his selfish inflexibility stimulated the radicals of the University of Paris and the Burgundian party allied with them to seize the advantage, open direct negotiations with Innocent, and declare a second withdrawal of obedience from Avignon in January of 1407. Irritation with Benedict became more strident still due to his strange tango with Innocent’s successor, Gregory XII. This began in December of 1407, when both men agreed to meet together to discuss the Via cessionis at Savona. Benedict’s subsequent delays and hedging led to Gregory’s annoyed abandonment of the project. That renunciation was followed by the Avignon pope’s dubious change of heart, his swift appearance at the designated meeting place, and the shedding of many crocodile tears over the absence of his Roman sparring partner. Dietrich von Nieheim, in a satirical Letter of Satan to Giovanni Dominici of Ragusa (Gregory’s nephew and advisor), expressed the nagging belief of many horrified observers that this comedy of contradictory moves may have been a fraud contrived from the very outset by two incomparably hypocritical pontiffs to stymie real efforts to obtain their resignations.
By 1408, all Christendom was in a Via conventionis uproar, moderates and radicals alike. The Avignon and Roman popes were left dependent on local support, Benedict retiring to Perpignan, on the safer territory of his native Aragon, and Gregory to the cities of a variety of Italian patrons. Given these unfortunate circumstances, seven of Gregory’s cardinals and four of those from the Avignon line gathered at Livorno, in Italy, to begin negotiations for a way to end the farce on their own steam. Their number eventually reached nineteen, and, with the help of both political as well as theological and canonical backing, these princes of the Church called the Christian world to Council in Pisa on March 25th, 1409.
Almost five hundred fathers sat at their assembly, twenty two cardinals and eighty bishops among them, though scholars predominated, jurists most noticeably. Moderates like Gerson and d’Ailly were present alongside more radical heretical and legalist elements, including the president of the gathering, the seemingly ubiquitous Simon de Cramaud. All, whether reluctantly or jubilantly, knew that they were there to judge, rebuke, and potentially remove both claimants to the Papacy. Witnesses were heard testifying to papal cruelties, secret agreements, perjuries, and even dabbling in sorcery. Benedict and Gregory, both of whom refused to answer the Council’s order to appear, were jointly condemned and excommunicated on June 5th, 1409. The cardinals who summoned the council were thereupon delegated to select what the canonist Francesco Zabarella now called merely the principle minister and servant of the Church. Their choice, on June 26th, 1409, fell on Peter Philarghi, the Greek-born Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, who took the name of Alexander V. Alexander’s short reign was followed, in 1410, by the election of the man who many suspected of having poisoned him: Baldassare Cossa, the governor of Bologna, thereafter styled Pope John XXIII.
Despite the fact that the Pisan popes were able to gain considerable European-wide backing, and John XXIII even to establish himself in Rome, their two competitors remained a permanent nuisance. Gregory and Benedict retained support in important countries. Both held or tried to hold councils of their own to back up their legitimacy. Moreover, the Pisan faction was itself very quickly plagued by internal disputes. Everyone came to loathe cardinals of all description as an extraordinarily venal, ambitious, and incompetent body of men. Many Italians militating in Pisan ranks bristled at French influence and the spread of heretical and legalist ideals therein. While reform was on the lips of all, each national group had different ideas of what constituted a scandal requiring instant action: for some, it was the pro-papal teaching of the omnipresent Franciscan friars; for others, it was the failure of the Church to secure positions for the graduates of the vocal University of Paris. A new reform council, which his Pisan electors obliged John XXIII to hold, met just long enough in Rome to turn disgustedly against this pontiff as the chief obstacle to purification of the Church.
Finally, the perennial struggle for the Neapolitan throne having taken a perilous turn, the Pisan pope was forced to quit the Eternal City and petition the rulers of Europe for new political protection. Help, under the circumstances of that particular moment in time, was only available from Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor since 1410. Sigsmund was personally eager to rebuild the shattered prestige of his realm and contribute to doing so by finding a definitive way out of the continuing papal horror show. He and his Empire had never accepted the results of Pisa, so their defense of John XXIII was a tricky one to say the least. It came to entail the summoning of yet another Council, which opened at Constance on November 1, 1414, with the usual suspects from throughout Europe—practically all of them--in attendance.
John initially presided at Constance as the legitimate pontiff. Nevertheless, Sigismund and the Council Fathers, Gerson and D’Ailly prominent among them, soon saw the abdication of all three popes as an essential prerequisite to enjoyment of a single universally recognized head of the Church. Hopes for the success of this renewed appeal to the Via concessionis were temporarily complicated by the fact that the erratic John, who swore to abdicate in March of 1415, changed his mind and fled the city for the Black Forest to try his luck anew. His efforts floundered, and, becoming aware of the desperation of his position, he ultimately threw himself on the Council’s mercy. Its fathers found him guilty of being an unworthy and unlawful pope, removed him on May 29th , and popped him straight into prison.
Events now took a dramatic turn. The aged Gregory XII spontaneously and unexpectedly offered his own abdication. Interestingly enough, though already considered deposed by Pisa, he managed to bow out in a manner that most subsequent writers argue to have bolstered Rome’s claim to possess the legitimate line of pontiffs. Ludwig von Pastor describes the abdication scene as follows:
"The way in which this was done is of the highest significance, and must by no means be viewed as a concession in non-essentials to the assembled Bishops. Gregory XII, the one legitimate Pope, sent his plenipotentiary, Malatesta, to Constance, where the prelates of his obedience had already arrived, and now summoned the Bishops to a Council. His Cardinal-Legate, who had made his entry into the city as such, read Gregory’s Bull of Convention to the assembled Bishops, who solemnly acknowledged it. Malatesta then informed this Synod, (i.e., the beefed-up Council of Constance—author’s note) which Gregory XII had constituted, of his abdication (4 July, 1415). His summons had given the Synod a legal basis. (Pastor, I, pp. 200-201).
Only the Avignon pope, now in Aragon, was left. Personal efforts by Sigismund to obtain Benedict’s voluntary withdrawal delayed proceedings against him for some time. Negotiations having finally failed, the Council tried him in absentia, declaring his deposition by July of 1417. Support for de Luna faded away, and he himself fled, along with three remaining Cardinals, to the fortress of Peñiscola. The way was thus sufficiently well cleared for Odo Colonna to be elected the sole truly serious pope on 11 November, 1417, though by an innovative method involving the addition of national representatives to the cardinals united in conclave. He took the name of Martin V (1417-1431). The new pope confirmed the Council’s grant to the ex-Gregory XII of the Cardinal Bishopric of Porto and made him permanent papal legate in the March of Ancona. John XXIII went from prison life to the position of Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum. Benedict lived unreconciled until his death in 1422 or 1423, leaving two warring successors behind him. One of these, a mysterious Benedict XIV, lived and died somewhere in France. The other, Gil Muñoz, Pope Clement VIII, finally abdicated in 1429 and was rewarded with the Bishopric of Majorca. Clement VIII’s College of Cardinals then brought a final and rather unsurprising end to the Great Western Schism by entering into conclave in Peñsicola and formally electing Martin V as his successor.
But the Schism, so many decades in duration, had not, exactly, ended "by the book", according to crystal-clear existing canonical rules. Just look at the complications involved in the solution to the problem again. How "legal" was the pressure exerted by Sigismund and the other secular powers and university scholars in gaining the desired results? Had it not precisely been the contention of the Church, since the time of the reforms of the eleventh century, that such intervention in the affairs of the Papacy was nefarious? What rendered this particular involvement permissible? What was the legality of the strange addition of national electors to the College of Cardinals in the Constance conclave? And what about the man elected? If Gregory XII really was the legitimate Pope, what did this have to say about the actions of Odo Colonna, one of his renegade cardinals? The future Martin V had, after all, fled Rome, taken part in the Council of Pisa, and helped to elect Alexander V and John XXIII. Why did he not have to do penance for his "schismatic" activity before becoming Supreme Pontiff? But, then again, how could he have humbled himself without rendering the abdication of his former master, Gregory XII, itself ludicrous? And what should one think of Alexander V? The next universally recognized Clement and Benedict took up the numbering that had been used by the Avignon pontiffs of those names (VII and XIII), therefore, historically identifying them as anti-popes. On the other hand, the next Alexander, Rodrigo Borgia, who ought, by right, to have styled himself the fifth of that line, assumed that he was the sixth. Does this mean that he believed Alexander V to have been legitimate? Apparently. If so, then how could the simultaneously reigning Gregory XII have also been the true pope? And why was Alexander’s successor, John XXIII, not valid, as Angelo Roncalli appears to have made clear in 1958 by adopting the numbering previously used by Baldassare Cossa?
What all this says to me is that the Church recognized that she was dealing, in the Great Western Schism, with a specific historical problem for whose resolution she did not have all the answers at her fingertips. Under these trying circumstances she therefore had to rely solely on the one thing that she knew to be absolutely certain: that Christ would never abandon His Bride. Just because there was confusion and division over who, exactly, the pope might be, such perplexity did not signify that there was no pontiff at all. There had to be a legitimate pope, but the immediate problem was obtaining a legitimate pope to whom everyone would give his obedience. Just because existing, fallible Canon Law and its interpreters could not adequately and effectively identify him did not mean that the Mystical Body had to throw in the towel and close up shop. The Word was more powerful than the words of the law books and the dicta of the canonists. And if keeping the Bride of Christ alive and well temporarily involved a bewildered respect of the otherwise problematic interventions of Parisian pedants, renegade cardinals, puppet electors promoting parochial national causes, and emperors evoking powers rejected several centuries earlier, all could be forgiven in the end. What counted in the uncertainties of the perplexing moment was the sanctity of the absolutely proper goal of reestablishing a unified Papacy. Judged in this context, the actions of Pisa, Constance, Sigismund, and Odo Colonna to end the Great Western Schism come off fairly well. They bore little resemblance to other, more wickedly irregular maneuvers in the Church’s past, such as those which the famous Robber Council of Ephesus permitted itself in the Fifth Century. Does this mean that there were no bad motivation and heretical, legalist, or simply wrongheaded theories whatsoever at play in the conclusion of the Great Western Nightmare? Not at all. There were plenty. But a Church which did not know precisely how to confront these ills while seeking to emerge from her practical labyrinth seems to have thought their judgment best left to history and Almighty God.
No Awakening "on the Cheap"
But this decision did not mean that firm correction of the spiritual, intellectual, political, and social problems giving birth to the nightmare of the Great Western Schism in the first place could be avoided. The Church’s main task, as always, was that of offering salvation and reconnecting with the profound work of giving flesh to the consequences of the Incarnation which the medieval reform movement understood to be central to the task of saving souls. If she were to shoulder this burden properly, then if was essential for her to digest the lessons of her recent diversity, to understand all the forces working against transformation in Christ, including those in her own bosom, and to seek advice from every single bit of wisdom offered by her Sacred Tradition. Unfortunately, however, her ability to grapple with this crucial but daunting mission had been crippled through the recent chaos. The entire reputation of the Papacy and all those forces historically allied with it had been dragged deeply into the mud by the forty year schismatic circus. Martin V was left to return to a still troubled and half-devastated Rome practically penniless and unprotected. He and most of his immediate successors saw no other choice than to bury themselves in petty financial concerns and peninsular politics merely to be able to survive. Meanwhile, opponents regularly called up heretical and legalist conciliar theories to keep the ever suspect "chief minister of the Church" in line. The Council of Basel, which stayed in session from 1431 until 1449, soon went so far down the road of anti-Romanism as to depose the "tyrannical" Eugene IV (1431-1447) and create a new schism under the antipope Felix V (1441-1449). Curia and cardinals remained universally detested and viewed by nations and cities merely as tools to be manipulated to attain papal approval of their own parochial desires. And while a conciliar reform of Church and society to restore a happier, mythological Apostolic Age was very vocally discussed, the world weariness, cynicism, and anti-incarnational outlooks of powerful ecclesiastical and secular forces made swift, substantive improvement an absolute impossibility. The Council of Basel, as Geiler von Kaysberg, a contemporary critic noted, was not even powerful enough to reform a single convent of nuns in the city in which it was still in session, once the municipal council stood in its way. There simply appeared to be no element of late medieval society, ecclesiastical or secular, healthy enough to think through and give sufficient support for Christendom’s climb above petty concerns to more lofty heights. The view would be wasted on those who arrived there under current circumstances anyway. Hence Ludwig von Pastor’s citation of John Nider, a Dominican thinker dedicated to Church reform, with respect to the hope of improvement:
"Is there any hope for a general reformation of the Church in its Head and its members? ‘I have’, answers Nider, ‘absolutely none in the present time, or in the immediate future; for goodwill is wanting among the subjects, the evil disposition of the prelates constitutes an obstacle, and, finally, it is profitable for God’s elect to be tried by persecution from the wicked. You may see an analogy in the art of building. An architect, however skillful he may be, can never erect an edifice unless he has suitable material of wood or stone. And if there is wood or stone in sufficient quantity, but no master-builder, there will be no proper house or dwelling. And, if you knew that a house would not be fitting for your friend, or when built would be a trouble for him, you certainly would be prudent enough not to build it." (Pastor, I, 355-356).
Pastor, mercifully, has another more encouraging reason for quoting this passage from Nider. He wishes to show that, despite the enormous obstacles in their way, some contemporaries who grasped the importance of the earlier medieval reform movement were quietly and slowly once again working to effect serious change according to its precepts. Such men understood that the Church took a self-destructive "low road" when she gave her primary attention to fallible political, legal, and administrative means of carrying out her mission. A primary attention to such measures overturned the hierarchy of values and opened her up to the cynicism of those who really in their heart of hearts did not believe in raising nature to the greater glory of God. They wished her to move boldly and confidently down the "high road", to become a "fool for Christ", to subordinate her natural tools to the greater task of making all of nature a conduit for grace.
"High road" reformers constructed out of the rubble of the Great Western Schism the magnificent achievements of Christian Humanism, the Tridentine Reformation, Baroque culture, and the post-French revolutionary Catholic revival. Over the centuries, they have given to the Church a deeper knowledge of everything in her jewel box: Scripture, Patrology, Scholasticism, and the Classical culture proving nature’s ability to cooperate with grace. They have shown her how all of these jewels compel her to more vigorous missionary work and the creation of a social order open to Christ. Perhaps most importantly for practical purposes, they have delineated for her, more clearly than ever before, exactly who her chief enemy is, and where his greatest strength lies.
That enemy, at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century, is the same one identified at the opening of this article. It is the union of all those world-weary, cynical, hypocritical, and heretical forces which either practically or theoretically deny that transformation of all things in Christ which is so central to the work of saving souls. It is that alliance which had already become immensely powerful and troublesome in the age preceding the years of the Great Western Schism. It is that coalition whose power was increased by certain aspects of the Renaissance, and even more strengthened by the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the playing out of all of their manifold anti-incarnational and naturalist presuppositions from the 1500’s down through to the present.
We, the living, are the unfortunate inhabitants of an age when this alliance has had its most striking, shocking, and complete successes. Anti-incarnationalist forces have, by our time, dismantled Christendom and turned the society in which we seek our salvation into a battleground of various forms of unbridled, naturalist willfulness. They have managed to do their work, in pluralist-dominated lands, while claiming to have shaped the most suitable environment for living the Catholic life. Horrifying to say, they have seduced both prelates and most members of the laity into praising and aiding their labors. They have reduced the Church to the sociological significance of a cheerleading squad for a technologically advanced but barbarian civilization, whose warehouses are filled with intellectual and material goods which lead men away from the light and back into the darkest recesses of Plato’s cave.
The turmoil and confusion experienced by Catholics in the last forty to fifty years of conciliar disaster have exposed us to a situation analogous to that faced by our ancestors of six centuries ago-- even if the specific difficulty of the legitimacy of the current Pope is, thankfully, not one of our problems. How can this disaster be turned round? Should it be any wonder that a proper response to and awakening from the contemporary ecclesiastical nightmare may be just as complex a matter as that experienced by our forbears? Will it really be any surprise that substantive improvement may require much criticism from scandalized believers? Can anyone honestly be stunned that some horrified men and women will not follow the advice of "moderates" who wish to make a hopelessly illogical distinction between an "acceptable" criticism of one or two abuses and their perpetrators and an "unacceptable" critique of the entirety of the scandal as far up on the totem pole as it extends? May it not also be the case that laity similar to the interfering Emperor Sigismund and prelates like the schismatic Cardinal Odo Colonna end up, in the long run, in the Church’s list of historic "good guys"? Alongside other noble figures working for high road reform more quietly "by the book"?
Our reform-minded brethren emerging from the Great Western Schism knew that there was no "cheap" way for them to exit from their ecclesiastical nightmare. Our only hope today lies in taking the same "high road" that they preached. This entails tearing ourselves away from a fixation on merely one or two of our immediate problems whose solution will not address our more fundamental woes. It requires recognition of the fact that our battle is part of a centuries-old fight for the right of the Incarnation to do what it must against enemies who will not allow it to work its miracle of grace, and that we need to use all the tools that Sacred Tradition and a natural world allied with her have to offer to win it. But are we really willing to take up such a challenge?
The history of the Church since the late Middle Ages has indicated that we are not yet ready to do so. For despite the glorious work that has been done in the past six hundred years to make Catholics more aware than ever before of the jewel box Tradition places before them, they have stubbornly persisted in making the stingiest use of it possible. Some have appealed to the desires of the reigning pope but not to those of past pontiffs; some to Scripture but not to the living authority of the Bride of Christ; some to St. Thomas but to none of the Church Fathers; some to St. Augustine while reviling the Scholastics; some to dogmatic purity but not to the social doctrine that teaches us how to practice our Faith; some to theology but not to history; some to the Holy Spirit in history but not in fixed and unchangeable truth. Everything truncated tempts us to put on blinders and eventually return to the "low road". Only exposure to the fullness of the Tradition can allow us to move from merely keeping the ecclesiastical boat afloat to winning the war for the soul of modernity.
The modernist vision is ultimately a willful one. Modern man does what he does because he chooses to do so, calling his choice "natural" and even dictated by the Holy Spirit. Perhaps God wishes us to redeem the willfulness so essential to modernity by an honest act of Catholic will: the will to pick up and read the whole book of Tradition; to appreciate all the spiritual and natural wisdom to be found working together in its various chapters; to open up its jewel box and use the gems that shine so brilliantly therein. If now is not the time to make such an act of will when will it arrive?
Short Bibliography:
Duby, G., France in the Middle Ages: 987-1460 (Blackwell, 1991)
Jedin, H. and Dolan, J., eds., A History of the Church (Crossroad, 1980,
Volume 4).
Mayeur, J-M., et. al., Histoire du christianisme (Desclée-Fayard, 1990, Volume 6, Un temps d’épreuves).
Oakley, F., The Western Church in the Late Middle Ages (Cornell, 1985).
Pastor, Ludwig von, The History of the Popes From the Close of the
Middle Ages (Herder, 1906, Volume 1).
Ullman, W., Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages (Methuen,
1972).
Ullman, W., The Origins of the Great Schism (Archon, 1967).
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