Clementines. Urban and Clement both died, but each received successors. It looked as if Christendom might witness a double headship becoming part of the permanent constitution of the Church. It was the glory of France, and, in particular, of the famous University of Paris, then at the height of its power, to intervene and take steps in behalf of unity. It was now A.D. 1400. The Avignon line was now represented by Peter de Luna, entitled Benedict XIII.; the Italian line by Angelo Corario, entitled Gregory XII. Christendom was scandalised by their mutual excommunications.
The state of the Church was deplorable. Gregory asserted that as Pope he was above law; Benedict that no appeal from a Pope was permissible.[1] This, says Bossuet, was the first time in Christendom that a Pope ventured expressly to condemn all appeals from his authority.[2] A recent historian of the Papacy says:—
"The amount of evil wrought by the Schism of 1378, the longest known in the history of the Papacy, can only be estimated when we reflect that it occurred at a moment when thorough reform in ecclesiastical affairs was a most urgent need. This was now utterly out of the question; and indeed all evils which had crept into ecclesiastical life were infinitely increased. Respect for the Holy See was also greatly impaired, and the Popes became more than ever dependent on the temporal power, for the Schism allowed each Prince to choose which Pope he would acknowledge. In the eyes of the people the simple fact of a double Papacy must have shaken the authority of the Holy See to its very foundations. It may truly be said that these fifty years of Schism prepared the way for the great Apostasy of the sixteenth century."[3]
Through all this crisis, the Sorbonne, the theological
