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There are three really remarkable councils in the fifteenth century--
councils of a new kind altogether--that took place all within forty years:
Pisa, where two rival popes were declared no popes at all (on their refusal
to resign) and a third was elected, a council never reckoned as a General
Council; Constance, which deposed the pope who summoned it (the Pisan
pope), accepted the resignation of one of those "deposed" at Pisa, deposed
the third of the rivals, and finally elected a pope whom the whole Church
acknowledged as pope; Basel, a council lawfully called, dissolved, then
revived, then dissolved again on its refusal to accept translation to
Ferrara, and finally--as a kind of rival to the Ferrara council--condemned
anew, to be for all time henceforth (and especially for the sixty years
that followed) the very symbol of the theory that popes are subject to
General Councils, and to make the very word "council" ominous in papal
ears.
Once more we must look back, for our clue to the incredible, to still
earlier troubles, to the struggle between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip the
Fair of France (1285-1314). From this famous clash, as a kind of by-
product, there came, two years after the death of Boniface, the election of
a French pope, Clement V (1305-14). He was the fifth French pope in less
than fifty years, but he inaugurated a new tradition when he continued to
reside in France, in a tiny principality--the Comtat Venaissin--which was
already papal territory.[305] For seventy-three years all the popes were
French, and all but all of the cardinals. Then, in 1378, persuaded by St.
Catherine of Siena, Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome, in the face of the
almost unanimous opposition of his Curia.
Only two months after his return the pope died, and it was in a city
dominated by mobs howling "Death to the French," and "This time pick an
Italian" that the terrified cardinals (eleven French, three Italians, one
Spaniard) chose for pope an Italian archbishop, Urban VI. It is necessary
to bear all this in mind (and much more), for we are at the moment when the
Great Schism of the West is about to happen, a regime when for nearly forty
years, two sets of popes fought for the control of the Church, with half
Europe backing each--a dreadful scandal, and a complicated practical
problem of law and politics, for the thousands of anxious men in
responsible positions who wished to restore unity. The three fifteenth-
century councils, and all their turbulent revolutionary history, were the
practical expression of this anxiety. It was the scandals, the spiritual
tragedies wrought in every diocese of Christendom by the schism, for two
generations, that fired the men who organised the councils, who had no
precedent to guide them, who had no help from either of the papal rivals;
and who by the time the schism was thirty years old, had no means of
certifying themselves which line of popes was the true line, whether the
Romans, descended through Urban VI, or the Avignon line descended from his
rival Clement VII, elected five months after the election of Urban by the
very cardinals who had elected Urban, by all of them.
At the outset of this story, the reader, so accustomed to national and
international crises where public men give one another the lie, more or
less, and where the newspapers supply an abundance of documentation, more
or less complete--the modern reader must make the effort of realising this
bygone world of 1400-50 with the restricted conveniences which were all
that the men of the time possessed. He must realise that it was inevitable
that, in the matter of good faith, there was soon nothing to choose between
one side or the other. Here, to support this statement is the witness of a
contemporary, who for his learning, his position in public life, and the
integrity of his own life, is beyond all reproach, St. Antoninus,
Archbishop of Florence, who was born in 1389. In his history of his own
times he says, about the disputed point which of the two lines of popes was
the true line: "There were many discussions about this matter; and many
books were written in defence of both sides. Through all the time that the
division lasted, both parts (or obediences) could count among their
supporters men exceedingly learned, both in theology and Canon Law, and
also men of most holy life and (what is more striking still) outstanding by
the miracles they wrought; yet it was never possible so to decide the
question that no doubts remained in the minds of the majority of men"[306]
From the very first months of the schism the one road to unity seemed, to
some of those best fitted to judge, to be through the action of a General
Council. Such was at any rate the suggestion of the University of Paris to
the French king in the year 1380. And the cardinals of the Avignon pope,
Clement VII, gave him the same advice, some fourteen years later--somewhat
to his dismay, for he seems to have glimpsed behind their no doubt orthodox
intentions, the dim line of the controversy that was about to shake
Christendom, viz., Are popes the ultimate master, or General Councils?
Again, in the conclave of 1389 when the Roman pope Urban VI died, and in
that of 1404, the cardinals all swore that, whichever of them was elected,
he would summon a General Council, and lay the great problem before it.
And in all these years there was a continuous discussion in the world of
theologians and lawyers and royal councillors, not only as to ways and
means, practical plans to end the schism, but as to rights and duties: the
rights of subjects to take control when rulers show themselves incapable or
unwilling, and the Church seems to be drifting to its ruin; the rights of
bishops vis-a-vis their chief, the pope; the rights of the learned, expert
in the theology of the Church and its law; the rights of the clergy in
general; the rights of the laity, i.e., the vast majority of the members of
the Church, if this needs saying. All manner of theories, and
interpretations of law, and of past events, came in these desperate years
into men's minds. The new ideas, the suggested solutions, passed from one
university to another, and were passionately discussed at all levels of
society. As, no doubt, were the rival popes, of both of whom (long before
the crisis of 1408 which produced the first of these councils, Pisa) all
parties were heartily sick and tired--because of solemn promises to resign
made only to be broken, promises to negotiate with one another followed
repeatedly by endless justifying evasions.
What happened in 1408 was that the rival colleges of cardinals each
deserted its pope, and coming together issued a joint summons to a General
Council to meet in the Italian city of Pisa, November 1, 1409. And all
Christendom responded, save the two kingdoms of Aragon and Scotland (which
still stood by the Avignon pope) and southern Italy which still held with
the Roman pope.
By the time the council opened at Pisa, almost the whole body of the
followers of the rival popes had deserted to the neutral position of the
cardinals and their council. It was numerically a splendid gathering, and
very representative: 500 active members, that is to say voters, at the
great sessions where the popes were condemned--of whom 84 were bishops and
another 102 proxies of absent bishops. There were, besides, 100
representatives of cathedral chapters, representatives of 13 universities,
and 300 doctors either of theology or of Canon Law--now, for the first
time, here given a vote. The "General Council" had indeed a new look. It
greatly resembled a parliament, a single-chamber parliament. Seventeen
reigning princes sent ambassadors.
Another novel feature was the absolute unanimity of the council. There were
no discussions, none were needed. All gladly assented to the forms in which
the purpose that had brought them together was set out. The two rivals
disposed of, i.e., excommunicated and deposed, it was the council that bade
the cardinals set up a conclave and fill the presumed vacant throne. After
ten days' seclusion they elected the archbishop of Milan, who took the
style of Alexander V, and was duly crowned. He, too, was a very old man,
and within the year he died. Whereupon the cardinals elected the strong man
of the Council of Pisa, Baldassare Cossa, who called himself by a name that
is lately familiar to all of us, John XXIII.
These elections, the first at least, were followed by a vast distribution
of ecclesiastical spoil to all comers, and a generous renunciation of papal
financial claims, and a lifting of excommunications levied for nonpayment
of papal taxes. All through these thirty years of controversy--as in the
history of the previous seventy years and more--two notes never ceased to
sound against the popes: the way they used their right to appoint to all
offices anywhere in the Church, and the increasing burden of the taxes they
levied on the clergy and the harsh methods of their collectors. Nor will
these complaints ever cease until, a hundred years or more later, the use
of these powers really is abandoned.
It was Pope John XXIII who summoned the sixteenth General Council, the
Council of Constance, December 9, 1413 It was to meet on the following
November 1. The pope had not done this willingly and cheerfully, but
compelled by the emperor Sigismund, at a crisis in John's own fortunes
brought about very largely by his own evil life and by a curious loss of
practical capacity that seemed to descend on him once he was elected. He
was bound, by a decree passed at Pisa, to assemble a General Council in
1412. It met indeed, at Rome, but almost no one attended, and very soon
John adjourned it. The faithful--those in a position to influence events--
realised that this pope was no reformer. Gradually the whole body grew
restive, princes began (for their own ends ) to issue harsh threats, and
when the King of Naples moved on Rome the desperate pope fled to Florence,
whence he made an urgent appeal for help to the emperor Sigismund. His
envoys and the emperor planned together the calling of a new council, and
then Sigismund imposed this on the pope. As John XXIII made his solemn
entry into the Swiss city, October 28, 1414, he was full of apprehension.
He had helped two popes out of their place for far less shocking actions
than what men were now alleging against himself.
The council that awaited him was made up after the new fashion inaugurated
at Pisa. Not all its members by any means were assembled by the opening
date. But ultimately there were present, it is held, over 600 ecclesiastics
with a say in the council, 183 of them bishops, 300 doctors of theology and
Canon Law; and an innumerable horde of less important clerics, and the
suites of these magnificent ecclesiastical lords from Germany especially.
Once again it was as the Estates of Christendom that the General Council
presented itself.
The council's first task was to organise its procedure. As it turned out,
all earlier precedents were abandoned. It was through entirely new
machinery that the schism was to be ended and the Church reformed. With
John XXIII there had come from Italy bishops enough to outvote the rest.
They now overplayed their hand by proposing to limit the council's activity
to organising the destruction of John's rivals. The English and the Germans
arrived to find Italians and French already at odds about this, and they
ranged themselves against the Italians. It was proposed that the council
should be organised by nations, as the University of Paris was organised--
Italians, French, Germans, English. In the decisive meetings--the sessions-
-each nation should have only one vote, and how that vote should be cast
would be for the nationals to decide in separate preliminary meetings. In
these national meetings not bishops only, and abbots, would have a vote,
but the proctors of absentee prelates, the representatives of cathedral
chapters and universities and all the doctors of theology and Canon Law--
the parliamentary principle, once more. And John XXIII had no choice but to
agree.
To work out this complex scheme, and secure its adoption had taken weeks of
work. It was now March 1415, and a new crisis arose. The pope had been
increasingly uneasy as his chances diminished. A pamphlet denouncing his
sins in the plainest words unnerved him altogether, and on the night of
March 20 he fled from Constance, with but a single attendant, to the
dominions of Frederick of Hapsburg. The confusion he meant to produce was
realised. While the mob pillaged the palace that had accommodated him, the
bishops--many of them--thought only of returning to their homes. The
council, as John had hoped, was going to break up. But the emperor's
presence saved the day. He restored order in the town and persuaded the
bishops to continue their work. The council met and in a violently
antipapal mood it resolved that the pope's absence made no difference to
the council's status and authority, that it would not break up until it had
reformed the Church, and that it could not be transferred to another city
without its own consent. Here was revolution--like that of the Tennis Court
oath of the Third Estate in 1789.
The pope's reaction to the messages sent from the council only stiffened
its determination. On April 5 resolutions were adopted that were a
manifesto of antipapalism, and destined to be active in the Church for
centuries. The first of them, the classic decree Sacrosancta, needs to be
set out in detail. "This holy Council of Constance ... declares, in the
first place, that, lawfully come together in the Holy Spirit, being a
General Council and representing the Catholic Church, it holds an authority
directly [derived] from
Christ, which authority everyone, of whatever status or dignity, even the
pope, is bound to obey in those matters concerning the faith, the
extirpation of the said Schism, and the reformation of the Church in head
and members. It declares, furthermore, that whoever contumeliously scorns
to obey the commands and the laws of this holy council, or of any other
General Council lawfully assembled [commands, etc. referring to the matters
stated], he is to be duly punished, whatever his status or dignity, even
though he is the pope."[307]
Another resolution stated that the pope's flight was a criminal act,
rendering him suspect of heresy, and yet another that within the council
there was full freedom of action.
This crisis that opened on March 20 lasted for ten weeks or so. The pope
offered to resign--at a price: the red hat, control of Italy and Avignon,
and 30,000 gold coins. He fled farther, was arrested, tried, and on May 29
deposed by the council, for the crime of his flight, for simony, and for
his bad life. He accepted his sentence, and ratified it with an oath, and
passed under guard to a German prison.
While this crisis kept Constance in an interested excitement, lovers of
peace and unity in the tiny entourage of Gregory XII were busy negotiating
with the council. The outcome of these delicate exchanges was the scene on
July 4, when in a session not presided over by any ecclesiastic, but by a
layman--the emperor--and so not (to all appearances) an assembled council
of the Church, one of Gregory's cardinals, sent as legate, read a bull,
dated three months earlier, not recognising the council but formally
convoking it, and authorising it to work for the restoration of unity. This
cardinal, the saintly Dominican, John Dominici, then pronounced the formula
convoking the General Council, and the assembly consented to be convoked in
the name (as it was expressed) "of the lord who in his own obedience, is
called Gregory XII." Next a second bull of Gregory's was read that
authorised the second legate he had sent--the prince, Carlo Malatesta--to
make in the pope's name a full, irrevocable resignation of the papacy. And
Malatesta thereupon made the renunciation, and the council accepted it. The
session ended with a new summons to the third of the rivals, Benedict XIII,
to yield to the council's authority.
But the Aragonese pope--who still had Spain and Scotland to support him--
dwelt now in his family's ancient fortress of Peniscola on the
Mediterranean coast of Spain. His wits were as bright as ever, at eighty-
six, and his determination to be recognised by all as lawful pope. All his
great powers of manoeuvre came once more into play when the emperor,
personally, now made the long journey to negotiate with him (July 14-
October). But this time the famous ingenuity was too much even for
Benedict's own royal supporters, and when he threatened to depose them if
they dared to withdraw, the sovereigns accepted the challenge, and went
over to the side of the council, December 13, 1415. It was now a year and a
month since the council had opened, and the only man living who claimed to
be pope actually ruled no more than his own personal servants and
bodyguard. The council began the slow process of making a legal end of him.
This called for--among other things--a second expedition to Spain to serve
the citation. And before even this was despatched the council, in decency
to the new fifth nation--Spain--could not act until the Spanish
representatives had come to Constance. So that it was not until March 1417
that the trial really began. It ended, with a sentence of deposition, July
26--two years, almost to the very day, since the emperor took leave of the
council, bound for Peniscola and the attempt to win the pope's abdication.
The council might now proceed to its second task, reform. But should it not
wait until a pope was first elected? Or would it be easier--less
embarrassing?--to push through the inevitably drastic reforms while the
Holy See was vacant?
To set up a commission of thirty-five members to draft decrees reforming
all that was amiss in the Church had been one of the Council's first acts
once it had disposed of John XXIII. And for seven months these grave
matters were passionately debated. The core of the vast subject was the
two-fold development of the papal authority in recent centuries, namely,
the way in which the popes had come to intervene, in the matter of
appointments to offices of every kind, in every diocese of the Christian
world, and their highly developed, centralised system of the taxation of
the whole revenues of the universal church. The question was raised whether
the whole business of these papal appointments (more accurately provisions)
should not be abolished, the system itself having become one vast abuse.
And here the reformers were divided. Against the bishops, who would have
swept it away, the university interest--and there were three hundred
doctors active members of the council--protested that the Holy See paid far
more attention than the bishops to the claims of the educated clergy. And
to those who would have swept away the whole taxation system, it had to be
pointed out that the popes must have some fixed source of revenue to pay
the immense cost of the general administration of the Church. Then, before
the findings of the commission were ready for general criticism, the
council found itself swamped by the practical matter of the general day-to-
day administration of the Church.
From the date of Gregory XII's abdication there was, effectively, no pope
reigning, and the Curia Romana had simply fallen apart. The parliamant, so
to speak, now had no time for law-making so busy was it with problems of
administration. There was also the matter of the two celebrated Czech
heretics, John Huss and Jerome of Prague, tried by the council, condemned,
and duly burned at the stake. There was the appeal to the council on the
very lively controversy of the defence of the murder of the Duke of
Burgundy by the orders of the Duke of Orleans--an incident in the history
of the quarrel between the regents of France during the insanity of King
Charles VI. From this murder a civil war had developed, and a new English
invasion of France, which country, at this very moment, seemed from both
these causes to have fallen into complete anarchy. One leading light of the
French university world, John Petit, had written a book defending the
murder; subjects (this was his theme) are morally justified who kill
tyrants. The matter was referred to the council, and the discussion was not
on purely academic lines. Ultimately it decided against the new theory that
tyrannicide is lawful.[308] The negotiations that brought in the Spaniards as
a fifth nation were another matter that distracted the council's attention
from its second principal objective.
But at last, in the summer 1417, a new reform commission was set up. All
the old controversies were immediately renewed, and by September the
council seemed about to break up. There was an evident fundamental
difference between the point of view of the cardinals and the council
generally. And the bishops and doctors began to debate whether cardinals
were of any value to religion, and whether the Sacred College should not be
abolished. The council was not unanimous in its radical notions. The
Italians, French, and Spaniards tended to support the cardinals. It was
from Germany and England that the revolutionary ideas came. And leading the
Germans was the powerful figure of the emperor, but for whom the council
would never have held together so long.
One last cause of dissension in this same summer was the double question
already mentioned, Should the pope be elected before the reform decrees
were passed? and how should he be elected? The Council was loth to trust
the cardinals with this, their essential function for centuries now. No
question could be graver than this last. At all costs the coming election
must be free from anything that might justify a future charge that it was
not valid. There must not be a second schism. It was a highly placed
English prelate who brought all parties to an agreement, Henry Beaufort,
bishop of Winchester, and uncle to the reigning King of England, Henry V.
He made three suggestions, which all accepted: the council to decree now
that, once the pope was elected, reform would be its sole concern; to
publish now the decrees it had ready; to set up a commission to decide how
the new pope should be elected.
Five decrees were accordingly published on October 5, 1417. The first, and
by far the most important in its consequences, is that called, from its
first word, Frequens. It is a kind of practical corollary to the decree
Sacrosancta already mentioned. Here is its text: "The frequent celebration
of General Councils is the best of all methods for tilling the Lord's
field, and for extirpating the weeds and thorns of heresy, schisms and
errors.... This it is that brings the Lord's vineyard to the fullness of
its fertility. The neglect to hold General Councils fosters and encourages
all the disorders here spoken of; the history of former times and the
events we ourselves are witness to make this very evident. Therefore, by
this perpetual law, we command that, from this time on, General Councils
shall be held as follows: the first within five years immediately following
the close of this present council; the second within seven years of the
close of the council immediately following this present council; and ever
afterwards thenceforward every ten years; all these councils to be held in
a place which the pope is bound to announce one month before the end of the
council, and with the approbation and consent of the council. Should the
pope fail to do this, then the council itself is to choose the place and
time. So that, in this way, by a kind of continuity, there shall always be
a council in session or the expectation of a council. The term appointed
for the coming council the pope may, with the consent of the cardinals,
shorten, but in no case may he make it any longer."[309] There is no need to
explain what a revolution in the government of the Church was thus
attempted.
A second decree of this same thirty-ninth session provides, with ingenious
detail, a quasi-automatic way to prevent the spread of any future
schism.[310]
At the fortieth session, October 30, a decree was passed binding the pope
about to be elected to proceed, in collaboration with the council, to
reform the Church "in its head and members" before the council is
dissolved. Eighteen heads of reform are listed.[311] Further than this list,
the council had still not dared to go, so acute were the dissensions. But
the Germans now suggested that the council confine itself to matters
affecting the whole Church, while the new pope should, in conference with
each of the nations, make a series of amendments to meet their particular
needs. This was agreed to.
The scheme for the election of the new pope was also adopted at the
fortieth session. For this time, and for this time only, said the council,
there were to be added as voters to the cardinals, six deputies for each of
the five nations. To secure election not only was a two-thirds majority of
the cardinals required (the law of 1179) but the like majority in each of
the five national deputations. The thirty deputies were elected, their
names published, and with the twenty-three cardinals they went into
conclave, on November 8, in the Merchants' Hall, around which the emperor
set a strong guard of troops--no mobs were, this time, to play any part in
the business. The conclave, despite the new complexities of its
constituents, did its work rapidly. On November 11 the new pope was
announced, the cardinal Odo Colonna. He took the name Martin V--the day
being the feast of that saint.
The advantage of an undoubted head to lead the council was now clearly
seen. The Germans, French, and Spaniards each sent in a list of desired
changes, and the pope, on January 20, 1418, sent in to the council a draft
of eighteen decrees based on the eighteen points of October 30. From these
the council worked out a set of even decrees, and on March 20 they were
published.
These seven decrees, to which alone of the reforms of Constance he papal
approval was given, treat of the long-standing financial grievances of the
bishops, and the question of appointments to benefices. All exemptions from
the jurisdiction of the local bishop, granted since the death of Gregory XI
in 1378 (i.e., granted by the popes of any of the various lines ) are
abolished, all unions of benefices or incorporations,[312] too, which they
authorised, provided that the interested parties desire this. The pope
promises there will be no more grants of exemption from jurisdiction
without the local bishop's consent, and he also surrenders his rights to
draw the revenues of sees, abbeys, and other benefices while they are
vacant. All dispensations that allow a man to hold an ecclesiastical office
without being ordained or consecrated as the office demands are revoked,
and the pope promises that no more such will be granted. No more will the
pope tithe the revenues of priests and bishops for the profit of lay
princes, and Martin V pledged the Holy See never again to tithe the whole
body of the clergy except with the written consent of the cardinals and of
all the bishops he could consult in the emergency which moved him to act.
As to special tithes--i.e., of a particular country--the pope promised
never to levy such against the views of the majority of its bishops. And
never would this ecclesiastical tax be handed over to laymen to collect.
There is, too, a decree against simony of new and outspoken severity. This
vice, the pope declares, no one has yet succeeded in extirpating. All
simoniacal elections are henceforward, by the fact, null and void. Those
who disregard this law, and possess themselves of the revenues of the
office, are thieves, and must make restitution of the money taken before
they can be absolved. All parties to the simoniacal pact are, also by the
fact, excommunicated, even though (say, the decree) it is the pope himself.
The Council of Constance was now practically over. It only remained to go
through the formalities of closure.[313] It is matter for thought that what
had chiefly occupied the minds of those who there gave so much time to the
betterment of religious life, was the material organisation of religion--
testimony to the extent to which, for generations, abuses of
administration, the worship of administrators, had been choking the true
life. The material reforms enacted at Constance were indeed essential, if
religion was ever again to be healthy. But other things were needed also,
were even more necessary, and of these there was no mention in the great
debates: questions of the frequentation of the sacraments; of the way in
which the truths of faith were explained, "in season and out of season," to
the ordinary congregation; the education and training of the parochial
clergy; the duties of bishops to reside in the diocese to which they were
appointed, to visit regularly all its parishes and the religious houses
under epsicopal jurisdiction; their duty themselves to preach the gospel;
renewed observance of the law about provincial synods, the great check on
episcopal negligence; the state of theological teaching in the
universities. There was an abundance of crying needs, and the bishops at
Constance (to say nothing of the horde of learned clerics) were deaf; or if
they heard they were too closely occupied with the great problem of
securing that, in their respective spheres, each was more his own master
than before. The council is one of the great turning points of the history
of the Church. After Constance things were never the same again in one very
important matter. The ecclesiastical system, the system based on the
hitherto unquestioned general assumption of the pope's right to rule the
whole Church as its earthly master, this had there received a blow in the
face as surely as Boniface VIII at Anagni. To change the simile, rough
hands have been laid on the ark--hands of bishops, active in the cause of
God (very ostentatiously so, sitting in a General Council); things have
been done and things said--things impossible to harmonise with the
tradition--with all the apparent prestige of a General Council. If scandal
means a stumbling block, what were the three years of Constance to prove?
The theologian will find it an easy matter to explain exactly how far this
council, with its forty-six sessions, is truly a General Council lawfully
summoned in the Holy Spirit, with a real claim to have been divinely guided
in its acts. But at the time it dispersed, its prestige, immense and
unquestioned, covered (for the ordinary man) all the council had enacted.
No General Council had ever before sat continuously for so long a time; nor
occupied itself with such a matter of public interest as the place of the
pope in the Church's Constitution. And so delicate was the situation still,
with decrees like Sacrosancta ringing loud in men's ears, that for tears
the very popes dared hardly do more than hint at the ambiguities which the
prestige masked. The trouble engendered by the forty years of the schism
was by no means at an end. It was indeed to endure for hundreds of years to
come.
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