sided with Urban VI. in Rome, Scotland with Clement VII.,
his rival; Flanders followed England; Urban secured Germany,
Hungary and the northern kingdoms; while Spain, after remaining
neutral for a time, went over to Clement. Western
Christendom had now two papal courts'to support. The schism
extended down to the bishoprics, and even to the monasteries
and parishes, where partisans of the rival popes struggled to
obtain possession of sees and benefices. The urgent necessity
for healing the schism, the difficulty of uniting the colleges
of cardinals, and the prolonged and futile negotiations carried
on between the rival popes inevitably raised the whole question
of the papal supremacy, and led to the search for a still higher
ecclesiastical authority, which, when the normal system of
choosing the head of the Church broke down, might re-establish
that ecclesiastical unity to which all Europe as yet clung.
The idea of the supreme power on earth of a general council
of Christendom, deliberating in the name of the Holy Spirit,
convoked, if necessary, independently of the popes, was defended
by many, and advocated by the university of Paris.
The futile council of Pisa in 1409, however, only served to
increase to three the number of rival representatives of God
on earth. The considerable pamphlet literature of the time
substantiates the conclusion of an eminent modern Catholic
historian, Ludwig Pastor, who declares that the crisis through
which the church passed in this terrible period of the schism
was the most serious in all its history. It was at just this
period, when the rival popes were engaged in a life-and-death
struggle, that heretical movements appeared in England,
France, Italy, Germany, and especially in Bohemia, which
threatened the whole ecclesiastical order.
The council of Constance assembled in 1414 under auspices hopeful not only for the extinction of the schism but for the general reform of the Church. Its members showed no patience with doctrinal innovations, even such moderate ones as John Huss represented. TheyThe councils of Constance and Basel. turned him over to the secular arm for execution, although they did not thereby succeed in checking the growth of heresy in Bohemia (see Huss). The healing of the schism proved no very difficult matter; but the council hoped not only to restore unity and suppress heresy, but to re-establish general councils as a regular element in the legislation of the Church. The decree Sacrosancta (April 1415) proclaimed that a general council assembled in the Holy Spirit and representing the Catholic Church militant had its power immediately from Christ, and was supreme over every one in the Church, not excluding the pope, in all matters pertaining to the faith and reformation of the Church of God in head and members. The decree Frequens (October 1417) provided for the regular convocation of councils in the future. As to ecclesiastical abuses the council could do very little, and finally satisfied itself with making out a list of those which the new pope was required to remedy in co-operation with the.deputies chosen by the council. The list serves as an excellent summary of the evils of the papal monarchy as recognized by the unimpeachable orthodox. It included: the number, character and nationality of the cardinals, the abuse of the “reservations” made by the apostolic see, the annates, the collation to benefices, expectative favours, cases to be brought before the papal, Curia (including appeals), functions of the papal chancery and penitentiary, benefices in oommendam, confirmation of elections, income during vacancies, indulgences, tenths, for what reasons and how is a pope to be corrected or deposed. The pope and the representatives of the council made no serious effort to remedy the abuses suggested under these several captions; but the idea of the superiority of a council over the pope, and the right of those who felt aggrieved by papal decisions to appeal to a future council, remained a serious menace to the theory of papal absolutism. The decree Frequens was not wholly neglected; though the next council, at Siena, came to naught, the council at Basel, whose chief business was to put an end to the terrible religious war that had been raging between the Bohemians and Germans, was. destined to cause Eugenius IV. much anxiety. It reaffirmed the decree Sacrosancta, and refused to recognize the validity of a bull Eugenius issued in December 1431 dissolving it. Two years later political reverses forced the pope to sanction the existence of the council, which not only concluded a treaty with the Bohemian heretics but abolished the papal fees for appointments, confirmation and consecration—above all, the annates—and greatly reduced papal reservations; it issued indulgences, imposed tenths, and established rules for the government of the papal states. France, however, withdrew its support from the council, and in 1438, under purely national auspices, by the 'famous Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, adjusted the relations of the Gallican Church to the papacy; and Eugenius soon found himself in a position to repudiate the council and summoned a new one to assemble in 1438 at Ferrara under his control to take up the important question of the pending union with the Greek Church. The higher clergy deserted the council of Basel, and left matters in the hands of the lower clergy, who chose an anti-pope; but the rump council gradually lost credit and its lingering members were finally dispersed. The Various nations were left to make terms with a reviving papacy. England had already taken measures to check the papal claims. France in the Pragmatic Sanction reformulated the claim of the councils to be superior to the pope, as Well as the decision of the council of Basel in regard to elections, annates and other dues, limitations on ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and appeals to the- pope. While the canonical elections were re-established, the prerogatives of the crown were greatly increased, as in England. In short, the national ecclesiastical independence of the French Church was established. The German diet of Regensburg (1439) ratified in the main the decrees of the council of Basel, which clearly gratihed the electors, princes and prelates; and Germany for the first time joined the ranks of the countries which subjected the decrees of the highest ecclesiastical instance to the place! or approval of the civil authorities. But there was no strong power, as in England and France, to attend to the execution of the provisions.
In 1448 Eugenius’s successor, Nicholas V., concluded a concordat with the emperor Frederick III. as representative of the German nation. This confined itself to papal appointments and the annates. In practice it restored the former range of papal reservations, and extendedGermany and the papacy in the 15th century. the papal right of appointment to all benefices (except the higher offices in cathedrals and collegiate churches) which fell vacant during the odd months. It also accorded him the right to confirm all newly elected prelates and to receive the annates. Nothing was said in the concordat of a great part of the chief subjects of complaint. This gave the princes an excuse for the theory that the decrees of Constance and Basel were still in force, limiting the papal prerogatives in all respects not noticed in the concordat. It was Germany which gave the restored papacy the greatest amount of anxiety during the generation following the dissolution of the council of Basel. In the “recesses” or formal statements issued at the conclusion of the sessions of the diet one can follow the trend of opinion among the German princes, secular and ecclesiastical. The pope is constantly accused of violating the concordat, and constant demands are made for a general council, or at least a national one, which should undertake to remedy the abuses. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks afforded a new excuse for papal taxation. In 1453 crusading bull was issued imposing a tenth on all benefices of the earth to equip an expedition against the infidel. The diet held at Frankfort in 1456 recalled the fact that the council of Constance had forbidden the pope to impose tenths without the consent of the clergy in the region affected, and that it was clear that he proposed to “pull the German sheep’s fleece over its ears.” A German correspondent of Aeneas Sylvius assures him in 1457 that “thousands of tricks are devised by the Roman see which enables it to extract the money from our pockets very
