which the popes possessed was misused for the purpose of crushing political enemies. To equip armed forces against their adversaries, the contending popes raised money by taxing the faithful, selling absolutions and benefices, and other simoniacal means. Each pope being only able to claim a certain number of countries as belonging to his “obedience,” as it was called, the papal agents became ever more extortionate. It is only by taking these facts into account that we can explain the spirit of intense hatred and scorn with which contemporary, even moderate writers, some of whom had been papal officials, speak of the Roman Church. It was natural that at such a period pious and unworldly men, when contrasting the events of their times with their own ideals, should feel an intense longing for the true Church of Christ as they conceived it.
When Pope Urban VI. died in 1389, the cardinals of his obedience, fearing that the termination of the schism might prove disadvantageous to them, immediately chose as Urban’s successor the Neapolitan cardinal, Piero Tomacelli, who took the title of Boniface IX. Similarly, after the death of Clement VII. in 1394, the Spaniard, Peter de Luna, who took the name of Benedict XIII., was elected pope by the cardinals of Clement’s obedience. The cardinals of both obediences, with characteristic insincerity and falseness, continued meanwhile to maintain that their greatest wish was to terminate the schism. This, however, for the time appeared impossible, nor did the deaths of Boniface IX. in 1404, and of his successor Innocent VII. in 1406, change the situation. Pope Gregory XII. was immediately chosen as the successor of Innocent, and though he conformed to the custom of his predecessors by stating that he wished to re-establish the unity of the church, it was thoroughly understood that, to each of the two popes and to his adherents, unity of the church meant the recognition of the pope of their obedience and the division of the benefices of the church among his principal partisans.
