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Three Popes at a Time: The Great Western Schism

Robert of Geneva, created cardinal by Gregory XI and leader of the military force that enabled Gregory to return to Rome, was present at the conclave that elected Urban. He was the first to do him homage but was also one of the first to react against him. He played a leading role in the drama that led up to his own unanimous election in September (the three Italian cardinals abstained but concurred). The new pope was neither the first nor the last churchman to be a skilled soldier and an accomplished politician. He was chosen as pope, however, most probably because he was related to both the German imperial family and the French royal family, and it was thought that with these and his other political connections he could rally support for the deposition of Urban and his own election. As it turned out, he was only partially successful in doing so. In the meantime, he tried by military force to establish himself in Rome and central Italy but was repulsed. On May 22, 1379, Clement, accompanied by the cardinals, bade goodbye to Italy for good and established himself and his curia in Avignon.

The two popes excommunicated each other. The schism that ensued was certainly not the first papal schism, nor would it be the last. But it was important in ways the others were not. It dragged on for almost forty years, two generations. It seemed then and now almost impossible to resolve on juridical or historical grounds. Never before, for instance, had the same cardinals elected the two contending popes. For every reason favoring the validity of Urban, a reason could be found favoring Clement. In the Vatican Archives there is a hefty portfolio called the Libri de Schismate (Documents on the Schism), a collection of testimonies and arguments from contemporaries, the examination of which has consistently proved inconclusive for deciding who was the rightful pope.

Saint Catherine of Siena stuck by Urban and called the cardinals who deserted him “devils in human form,” but Saint Vincent Ferrer, a Dominican like Catherine, sided with Clement. The Catholic church has never made a formal pronouncement on the claimants, but especially in the past hundred years the Holy See has in the lists of popes it regularly publishes always sided with the Roman over the Avignonese line.

Here are the issues. The election of Urban was irregular, done under duress. That is clear. After the election, however, when the danger dissipated, the cardinals did Urban homage, participated in his enthronement, and performed other actions that indicated they themselves accepted the election as valid. Then Urban began to act strangely. All canonists agreed that an incapacitated person could not validly act as the head of a corporation. But was Urban truly deranged or at least incompetent to such a degree that he could not validly function? His subsequent actions as pope point in such directions. He went to war with partisans of Clement in Italy, which helped plunge the peninsula into violence and anarchy. At one point he had cardinals whom he accused of plotting against him tortured and put to death. The pontificate was an almost unmitigated disaster, but it was not the first.

No matter who was right and who was wrong, the damage had been done. What especially made this schism such a calamity was that it became a truly international affair, not just a squabble between baronial factions in Rome. It divided nation against nation. The French of course supported Clement, which meant the English supported Urban, which meant the Scots supported Clement. And so it went. Hungary, Poland, Scandinavia, Flanders, the Empire, and the northern Italian states rallied to Urban. Aragon, Castile, León, Burgundy, Savoy, and Naples went with Clement. This listing does not, however, do justice to the complexity of the situation because allegiances shifted and because princes, counts, and other magnates did not necessarily follow the lead of their sovereigns. The Hundred Years War between England and France continued its dreary course, further exacerbating the problem. Confusion reached down to the grass roots as the rival popes supported different bishops for a given town or city—and tried to exact taxes from them.

The rulers of Europe, despite their rivalries and their occasional attempts to draw advantage from the situation, were increasingly scandalized by it and began seeking means as best they could to provide a solution. When Clement died at Avignon in 1394, the cardinals took oaths stipulating that if they were elected they would do everything in their power to end the schism. With that they quickly and unanimously elected Pedro de Luna, who took the name Benedict XIII. He had been the sole Spanish cardinal at the election of Urban and the last cardinal to desert him. But he deserted because he finally became convinced that Urban was so incapable of governing that his election was voided. From that point forward he was utterly committed to the rightness of Clement’s cause and therefore of his own.

Shortly after his election King Charles VI of France sent a delegation to Avignon led by his uncle and brother urging the new pope to abdicate, but with Benedict the delegation had not the slightest chance of success. The rebuff marked the beginning of a weakening French support for Avignon. Charles then went to work with other princes. Two years later, 1397, an Anglo-French delegation got nowhere with him, and a German delegation the following year met with the same result.

Clement and Benedict were the only two popes of the Avignon line throughout the schism. In the Roman line there were four. When Urban died in Rome in 1380, Boniface IX, a compromise candidate, succeeded him. During his fifteen year reign, he made no effort to end the schism and, unlike Benedict in Avignon, was under no serious pressure to do so. His successor Innocent VII, pope for two years, swore before his election to do everything possible to end the schism but did nothing. When Gregory XII was elected in 1406, he took a similar oath, seems sincerely to have meant it but, elderly, vacillating, and easily swayed, he was incapable of pursuing a solution with the persistence and conviction it required.

The situation seemed beyond redemption. Pressure from on high had been tried and did not work. What about a military solution? This possibility, called the via actionis (“the action solution”), was discussed in the universities as well as the royal courts but got nowhere for a variety of reasons. The easiest solution was to persuade one of the popes to resign in favor of the other, the via cessionis (“conceding”). It had been tried and failed, and prospects for future success with it seemed dim. How about both resigning to clear the way for a new election, or at least meeting together to work out a solution via compromessi (“compromise”)?

After Gregory’s election in Rome in 1406, pressure built from within both colleges of cardinals to force the two popes to meet. After stormy discussions and negotiations the popes agreed to do so. They were to meet at the latest by November 1, 1407, in Savona, a city on the Ligurian coast near Genoa that, though Italian in culture, was Avignonese in its allegiance. The popes set out, but Benedict stalled at Portovenere and Gregory at Lucca, within a day’s journey of each other. They negotiated for months. The French monarchy was so disgusted with the farce that in May 1408, it officially withdrew its support from Benedict and declared itself neutral, a heavy blow. Benedict excommunicated the king.

Gregory’s cardinals grew ever more exasperated with his delaying tactics, and in the same month of May they practically all deserted him, fled to nearby Pisa, joined forces with four of Benedict’s cardinals, and in early July felt they had sufficient support to send out a summons to a general council to be held at Pisa the next year, in March 1409. They received an encouragingly positive response from most rulers and bishops. The council opened as planned. In attendance were twenty-two cardinals, eighty bishops plus one hundred proxies, forty-one priors or heads of religious orders, eighty-seven abbots, and three hundred canonists and theologians. Both popes were summoned but did not respond. In their absence they were deposed, and in their place a joint conclave of both Benedict’s and Gregory’s cardinals elected Pietro Philarghi as Alexander V.

In his Dictatus Papae three and a half centuries earlier, Pope Gregory VII had declared, “The pope is judged by no one.” Even before the Dictatus this was an accepted principle of canon law, but the original formulation, which continued to be accepted and discussed by canonists throughout the period, was longer, “The pope is judged by no one unless he should be found to deviate from the faith” (Papa a nemine judicatur nisi deprehendatur a fide devius). Canonists and theologians serenely discussed, therefore, the possibility that a pope might fall into heresy and that, if he did, he could be “judged,” that is, deposed. They came to define heresy broadly so as to include giving grave scandal, for such scandal led the faithful into heresy or schism.

But judged by whom? The traditional court of appeal in the church from the earliest times was a council, so it is not surprising that canonists proposed or assumed that a council was the body to which the task fell—the via concilii. Thus, in the decades leading up to Pisa, 1409, the idea that a council might be needed to end the Schism had gained strength and was ever more widely proposed as required by the desperate straits of the church. This was the situation in which Conciliarism was born, a theory about the superior authority of councils in relationship to the papacy.

Unfortunately, the term covers at least two understandings of that relationship, which has led to considerable confusion. The first, agreed to by most mainline canonists at the time, was that under certain circumstances a council might have to act against a pope. For the most part this seems to be the interpretation operative at Pisa and later at Constance. The second was more radical and, at least in the West, untraditional: that councils are the supreme authority, of whose decrees the popes are merely executors. This understanding gained ground in some circles after the Schism was resolved and provoked, of course, strong papal reaction. There were, besides, many variations on both these understandings.

Since both the via cessionis and the via compromessi had failed, and the via actionis was repugnant, the via concilii was the only alternative left. The cardinals who convoked Pisa were on solid, if not uncontested, canonical ground. When Pisa opened, therefore, the archbishop of Milan expounded sixteen reasons why under the circumstances a council could with full legitimacy proceed against the two popes. Much later in the century the next pope after Alexander V to take that name was at the time universally recognized as Alexander VI and has been thus known ever since. Moreover, until 1947, the Vatican itself in its official annual “catalog,” the Annuario Pontificio, consistently listed both Alexander and his successor as the legitimate popes. The Annuario therefore terminated Gregory XII’s pontificate in 1409, an implicit recognition of the legitimacy of Pisa’s deposition of him.

However legitimate Pisa was, it did not work. France, England, Bohemia, Prussia, and northern Italy rallied to Alexander, and sentiment in favor of Alexander was otherwise widespread. But the two original popes, especially Gregory, managed to hold onto the loyalty, not very solid, of some constituencies. Then Alexander died suddenly after a pontificate of less than a year, which led to the hasty election of Baldassare Cossa, John XXIII. The new pope, who had been a driving force at Pisa, was probably elected because he was a soldier, somebody who could move against Gregory’s allies to secure Rome and the environs. John was a poor choice made for a poor reason, and he soon alienated many who had supported Pisa. There were now three popes instead of two. The via concilii had made matters worse, not better.

The prospects for a solution seemed more distant than ever. At this point Emperor-elect Sigismund took the initiative, playing a role his predecessors had played at least since the time of Henry III. When after a three-party contest for the imperial throne he finally triumphed in 1410, he took the resolution of the Schism as a highest priority and went to work persuading John to convoke a council at Constance for that purpose. He obviously considered John the legitimate, or at least the most probably legitimate of the contending popes. John, wary and reluctant but hopeful the council would help him consolidate his position, finally agreed and convoked the council to meet in 1414.

For lack of an alternative, the via concilii was going to be tried again. This time, however, the council would take its time, do its utmost to observe all the niceties of canon law, and try to win as widespread support for its decisions as possible. It did not want a repeat of the problems that ensued after Pisa. The response to John’s convocation, though encouraging, was not overwhelming. But when on Christmas Day 1414, the emperor himself appeared at Constance, he gave the council a needed boost in prestige, and attendance began to grow. The Council of Constance, 1414–1418, eventually grew to be one of the largest assemblies of clergy and laity in the Middle Ages. At its peak it could probably boast close to nine hundred participants. It immediately set for itself a three-fold agenda: (1) end the schism, (2) reform the church “in head and members, in faith and discipline,” and (3) eradicate heresy.

John came to the council optimistic about his future, but he soon became aware of the growing sentiment for wiping the slate clean and also of displeasure at his behavior both before and after he became pope. After four months of council he became convinced the council would move against him. In mid-March 1415, therefore, he fled in disguise, thinking his action would either force the council to disband or call into question its legitimacy. He underestimated the determination of the participants to see the matter through, and he badly miscalculated the effect his flight had on them. His disruptive action only strengthened their resolve.

Two weeks later, March 30, the council issued its most famous decree, Haec Sancta, in which it asserted its authority over anybody who tried to frustrate its goal:

This holy synod of Constance, which is a general council . . . legitimately assembled in the Holy Spirit . . . has power immediately from Christ, and everyone of whatever state or dignity, even papal, is bound to obey it in those matters that pertain to the faith and to the eradication of the schism. Our most holy lord pope John XXIII may not move or transfer the Roman curia and its public office, or its or their officials from this city to another place.

Meanwhile, John had the misfortune to be caught and brought back to Constance under guard. He was tried for the usual crimes—simony, scandal, malfeasance, to which was added his perfidy in fleeing the council and trying to disrupt it. On May 29 the council deposed him and held him prisoner until a year after the council ended. After he was released, John was restored as a cardinal and treated graciously. When he died he was entombed with honor in a beautiful Renaissance monument in the baptistery of the cathedral of Florence, where it can be seen today.

The council then had to deal with Benedict and Gregory. While that long process was going on, it took up the business of heresy, which meant the Englishman John Wyclif, long dead, and a follower of his teachings in Bohemia, Jan Huss, very much alive. Wyclif (1330–1384), philosopher and theologian, had already been condemned by English bishops and by the papacy. He did not propose any great Trinitarian or Christological heresies but held that authority in both secular and ecclesiastical society was legitimate only if those who exercised it were in the state of grace. Influenced by the radical Franciscan movement, he used this teaching to denounce ecclesiastical wealth and the bishops and popes of his day, and he held doctrines on the Eucharist and other matters that clashed with orthodox positions. The council condemned, first, eighty-five and then another forty-five propositions attributed to this “pseudo-Christian.”

Jan Huss was summoned to the council to answer for his teachings and was granted a safe-conduct by the emperor. When he arrived, he was tried, found guilty of heresy, and saw thirty teachings attributed to him condemned. He refused to recant. The council handed him over to the secular authorities and, despite the safe-conduct, he was burned at the stake at Constance. This action of the council left scars in Bohemia that have never healed. In 1999 Pope John Paul II expressed “deep regret for the cruel death inflicted upon Jan Huss.”

Meanwhile the council’s negotiations with Gregory, now ninety years old, were moving swiftly ahead. He finally agreed to resign on condition that he could formally convoke the council in his own name, which the council agreed to allow him. On July 4, 1415, Gregory abdicated, and the two colleges of cardinals, his and John’s, were officially united into one.

The council had no such success with Benedict. No matter what stratagem it pursued, he refused to follow suite. The emperor himself went to see him at Perpignan to persuade him to abdicate honorably, but Benedict scoffed at the very idea. He was, however, now almost bereft of support. Finally, with no alternative left to it, on July 26, 1417, two years after Gregory’s resignation, the council deposed Benedict. With that measure Benedict’s support dwindled virtually to nothing, but he continued to breathe defiance until his death in 1423.

After Benedict’s deposition the council could now, after almost three years since its opening, move to the election of a new pope. Badly disillusioned, however, by the behavior of the popes, it issued the decree Frequens (“frequent’), which required that henceforth councils were to be held regularly: the first one five years after Constance, the second after seven more years, and then every ten years thereafter in perpetuity. Frequens was a resounding vote of no-confidence in papal leadership.

For the election of a new pope at Constance it suspended “for this time only” the usual rules and expanded the electors to include besides the twenty-two cardinals thirty other members of the council. This expanded electorate took only three days in November 1417, to elect Oddo (Otto) Colonna, an excellent choice, who took the name Martin V. The council published the news of his election, which was received with jubilation and accepted practically everywhere as the long-awaited resolution of the schism.