Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

unmeasured terms. He forbade them to accept pensions, and ordered that

all business brought to the Curia should be dispatched without fees or

gifts of any kind. When the cardinals murmured he commanded them to

"cease your foolish chattering"; when Cardinal Orsini protested the

Pope called him a "blockhead"; when the Cardinal of Limoges objected

Urban rushed at him to strike him. Hearing of all this, St.

Catherine sent the fiery Pontiff a warning: "Do what you have to do

with moderation... with good will and a peaceful heart, for excess

destroys rather than builds up. For the sake of the crucified Lord

keep these hasty movements of your nature a little in check." `05142

Urban, heedless, announced his intention to appoint enough Italian

cardinals to give Italy a majority in the College.

The French cardinals gathered in Anagni, and planned revolt. On

August 9, 1378, they issued a manifesto declaring Urban's election

invalid as having been made under duress of the Roman mob. All the

Italian cardinals joined them, and at Fondi on September 20 the entire

College proclaimed Robert of Geneva to be the true pope. Robert, as

Clement VII, took up his residence at Avignon, while Urban clung to

his pontifical office in Rome. The Papal Schism so inaugurated was one

more result of the rising national state; in effect it was an attempt

by France to retain the vital aid of the papacy in her war with

England and in any future contest with Germany or Italy. The lead of

France was followed by Naples, Spain, and Scotland; but England,

Flanders, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, and Portugal accepted

Urban, and the Church became the political plaything of the rival

camps. The confusion reached a pitch that aroused the scornful

laughter of expanding Islam. Half the Christian world held the other

half to be heretical, blasphemous, and excommunicate. St. Catherine

denounced Clement VII as a Judas; St. Vincent Ferrer applied the

same term to Urban VI. `05143 Each side claimed that sacraments

administered by priests of the opposite obedience were invalid, and

that the children so baptized, the penitents so shriven, the dying

so anointed, remained in a state of mortal sin, doomed to hell or

limbo if death should supervene. Mutual hatred rose to a fervor

equaled only in the bitterest wars. When many of Urban's newly

appointed cardinals plotted to place him in confinement as a

dangerous incompetent, he had seven of them arrested, tortured, and

put to death (1385).

His own death (1389) brought no compromise; the fourteen cardinals

surviving in his camp made Piero Tomacelli Pope Boniface IX, and the

divided nations prolonged the divided papacy. When Clement VII died

(1394) the cardinals at Avignon named Pedro de Luna to be Benedict

XIII. Charles VI of France proposed that both popes should resign;

Benedict refused. In 1399 Boniface IX proclaimed a jubilee for the

following year. Realizing that many potential pilgrims would be kept

at home by the chaos and insecurity of the times, he empowered his

agents to give the full indulgence of the jubilee to any Christian

who, having confessed his sins and done due penance, should contribute

to the Roman Church the sum that a trip to Rome would have cost him.

The collectors were not scrupulous theologians; many of them offered

the indulgence without requiring confession; Boniface reproved them,

but he felt that no one could make better use than he of money so

secured; even amid the acute pains of the stone, said his secretary,

Boniface "did not cease to thirst for gold." `05144 When some

collectors tried to cheat him he had them tortured till they

disgorged. Other collectors were torn to pieces by the Roman mob for

letting Christians get the jubilee indulgence without coming to

spend money in Rome. `05145 Amid the jubilee celebrations and

solemnities the Colonna family aroused the people to demand the

restoration of republican government. When Boniface refused, the

Colonna led an army of eight thousand against him; the aging pope

stood siege resolutely in Sant' Angelo; the people turned against

the Colonna, the rebel army dispersed, and thirty-one leaders of the

revolt were jailed. One of them was promised his life if he would

serve as executioner of the rest; he consented, and hanged thirty men,

including his father and his brother. `05146

On the death of Boniface and the election of Innocent VII (1404),

revolt broke out again, and Innocent fled to Viterbo. The Roman mob,

led by Giovanni Colonna, sacked the Vatican, smeared the emblems of

Innocent with mud, and scattered papal registers and historic bulls

through the streets (1405). `05147 Then the people, bethinking

themselves that Rome without the popes would be ruined, made their

peace with Innocent, who returned in triumph and, a few days later,

died (1406).

His successor, Gregory XII, invited Benedict XIII to a conference.

Benedict offered to resign if Gregory would do likewise; Gregory's

relatives dissuaded him from consent. Some of his cardinals withdrew

to Pisa, and called for a general council to elect a pope acceptable

to all Christendom. The King of France again urged Benedict to resign;

when Benedict again refused, France renounced its allegiance, and

adopted an attitude of neutrality. Deserted by his cardinals, Benedict

fled to Spain. His cardinals joined with those who had left Gregory,

and together they issued a call for a council to be held at Pisa on

March 25, 1409.

II. THE COUNCILS AND THE POPES: 1409-18

-

Rebellious philosophers, almost a century before, had laid the

foundations of the "conciliar movement." William of Occam protested

against identifying the Church with the clergy; the Church, he said,

is the congregation of all the faithful; that whole has authority

superior to any part; it may delegate its authority to a general

council, which should have the power to elect, reprove, punish, or

depose the pope. `05148 A general council, said Marsilius of Padua, is

the gathered intelligence of Christendom; how shall any one man dare

set up his own intelligence above it? Such a council should be

composed not only of clergy but also of laymen elected by the

people; and its deliberations should be free from domination by the

pope. `05149 Heinrich von Langenstein, a German theologian at the

University of Paris, in a tract Concilium Pacis (1381), applied

these ideas to the Papal Schism. Whatever logic there might be (said

Heinrich) in the arguments of the popes for their supreme, God-derived

authority, a crisis had arisen from which logic offered no escape;

only a power outside the popes, and superior to the cardinals, could

rescue the Church from the chaos that was crippling her; and that

authority could only be a general council. Jean Gerson, chancellor

of the University of Paris, in a sermon preached at Tarascon before

Benedict XIII himself, reasoned that since the exclusive power of

the pope to call a general council had failed to end the Schism,

that rule must be abrogated for the emergency, and a general council

must be otherwise summoned, and must assume the authority to end the

crisis. `051410

The Council of Pisa met as scheduled. In the majestic cathedral

gathered twenty-six cardinals, four patriarchs, twelve archbishops,

eighty bishops, eighty-seven abbots, the generals of all the great

monastic orders, delegates from all major universities, three

hundred doctors of canon law, ambassadors from all the governments

of Europe except those of Hungary, Naples, Spain, Scandinavia, and

Scotland. The Council declared itself canonical (valid in Church

law) and ecumenical (representing the whole Christian world)- a

claim which ignored the Greek and Russian Orthodox Church. It summoned

Benedict and Gregory to appear before it; neither appearing, it

declared them deposed, and named the Cardinal of Milan as Pope

Alexander V (1409). It instructed the new Pope to call another general

council before May, 1412, and adjourned.

It had hoped to end the Schism, but as both Benedict and Gregory

refused to recognize its authority, the result was that there were now

three popes instead of two. Alexander V did not help matters by

dying (1410); his cardinals chose as his successor John XXIII, the

most unmanageable man to occupy the papal throne since his predecessor

of that name. Baldassare Cossa had been made papal vicar of Bologna by

Boniface IX; he had governed the city like a condottiere, with

absolute and unscrupulous power; he had taxed everything, including

prostitution, gambling, and usury; according to his secretary, he

had seduced two hundred virgins, matrons, widows, and nuns. `051411

But he was a man of precious ability in politics and war; he had

accumulated great wealth, and commanded a force of troops personally

loyal to him; perhaps he could conquer the Papal States from

Gregory, and reduce Gregory to impecunious submission.

John XXIII delayed as long as he could to call the council decreed

at Pisa. But in 1411 Sigismund became King of the Romans, and the

uncrowned but generally acknowledged head of the Holy Roman Empire. He

compelled John to call a council, and chose Constance for its seat

as free from Italian intimidation and open to Imperial influence.

Taking the initiative from the Church like another Constantine,

Sigismund invited all prelates, princes, lords, and doctors in

Christendom to attend. Everybody in Europe responded except the

three popes and their retinues. So many dignitaries came, at their own

dignified leisure, that half a year was spent in assembling them.

When, finally, John XXIII consented to open the Council on November 5,

1414, only a fraction had arrived of the three patriarchs, twenty-nine

cardinals, thirty-three archbishops, one hundred and fifty bishops,

one hundred abbots, three hundred doctors of theology, fourteen

university deputies, twenty-six princes, one hundred and forty nobles,

and four thousand priests who were to make the completed Council the

largest in Christian history, and the most important since the Council

of Nicaea (325) had established the creed of the Church. Where

normally Constance had sheltered some six thousand inhabitants, it now

successfully housed and fed not only some five thousand delegates to

the Council, but, to attend to their wants, a host of servants,

secretaries, pedlars, physicians, quacks, minstrels, and fifteen

hundred prostitutes. `051412

The Council had hardly formulated its procedure when it was faced

with the dramatic desertion of the Pope who had convened it. John

XXIII was shocked to learn that his enemies were preparing to

present to the assembly a record of his life, crimes, and

incontinence. A committee advised him that this ignominy could be

averted if he would agree to join Gregory and Benedict in a

simultaneous abdication. `051413 He agreed; but suddenly he fled

from Constance disguised as a groom (March 20, 1415), and found refuge

in a castle at Schaffhausen with Frederick, Archduke of Austria and

foe to Sigismund. On March 29 he announced that all the promises

made by him in Constance had been drawn from him through fear of

violence, and could have no binding force. On April 6 the Council

issued a decree- Sacrosancta - which one historian has called "the

most revolutionary official document in the history of the

world": `051414

-

This holy synod of Constance, being a general council, and legally

assembled in the Holy Spirit for the praise of God and for ending

the present Schism, and for the union and reform of the Church of

God in its head and its members... ordains, declares, and decrees as

follows: First, it declares that this synod... represents the Church

Militant, and has its authority directly from Christ; and everybody,

of whatever rank or dignity, including also the pope, is bound to obey

this council in those things that pertain to the faith, to the

ending of this Schism, and to a general reform of the Church in its

head and members. Likewise it declares that if anyone, of whatever

rank, condition, or dignity, including also the pope, shall refuse

to obey the commands, statutes, ordinances, or orders of this holy

council, or of any other holy council properly assembled, in regard to

the ending of the Schism or to the reform of the Church, he shall be

subject to proper punishment... and, if necessary, recourse shall be

had to other aids of justice. `051415

-

Many cardinals protested against this decree, fearing that it

would end the power of the college of cardinals to elect the pope; the

Council overrode their opposition, and thereafter they played but a

minor role in its activities.

The Council now sent a committee to John XXIII to ask for his

abdication. Receiving no definite answer, it accepted (May 25) the

presentation of fifty-four charges against him as a pagan, an

oppressor, a liar, a simoniac, a traitor, a lecher, and a

thief; `051416 sixteen other accusations were suppressed as too

severe. `051417 On May 29 the Council deposed John XXIII; and broken

at last, he accepted the decree. Sigismund ordered him confined in the

castle of Heidelberg for the duration of the Council. He was

released in 1418, and found asylum and sustenance, as an old man, with

Cosimo de' Medici.

The Council celebrated its triumph with a parade through

Constance. When it returned to business it found itself in a quandary.

If it should choose another pope it would be restoring the threefold

division of Christendom, for many districts still obeyed Benedict or

Gregory. Gregory rescued the Council by an act at once subtle and

magnanimous: he agreed to resign, but only on condition that he should

be allowed to reconvene and legitimate the Council by his own papal

authority. On July 4, 1415, the Council, so reconvened, accepted

Gregory's resignation, confirmed the validity of his appointments, and

named him legate governor of Ancona, where he lived quietly the two

remaining years of his life.

Benedict continued to resist, but his cardinals left him and made

their peace with the Council. On July 26, 1417, the Council deposed

him. He retired to his family stronghold near Valencia, and died there

at ninety, still counting himself pope. In October the Council

passed a decree- Frequens - requiring that another general council

should be convened within five years. On November 17 an electoral

committee of the Council chose Cardinal Oddone Colonna as Pope

Martin V. All Christendom accepted him, and after thirty-nine years of

chaos the Great Schism came to an end.

The Council had now accomplished its first purpose. But its

victory on this point defeated its other purpose- to reform the

Church. When Martin V found himself pope he assumed all the powers and

prerogatives of the papacy. He displaced Sigismund as president of the

Council, and with courteous and subtle address negotiated with each

national group in the Council a separate treaty of ecclesiastical

reform. By playing off each group against the others he persuaded each

to accept a minimum of reform, couched in carefully obscure language

which each party might interpret to save its emoluments and its

face. The Council yielded to him because it was tired. It had

labored for three years, it longed for home, and felt that a later

synod could take up in sharper detail the problem of reform. On

April 22, 1418, it declared itself dissolved.

III. THE TRIUMPH OF THE PAPACY: 1418-47

-

Martin V, though himself a Roman, could not go at once to Rome;

the roads were held by the condottiere Braccio da Montone; Martin

thought it safer to stay in Geneva, then Mantua, then Florence. When

at last he reached Rome (1420), he was shocked by the condition of the

city, by the dilapidation of the buildings and the people. The capital

of Christendom was one of the least civilized cities in Europe.

If Martin continued a characteristic abuse by appointing his Colonna

relatives to places of income and power, it may be because he had to

strengthen his family in order to have some physical security in the

Vatican. He had no army, but upon the Papal States, from every side,

pressed the armed forces of Naples, Florence, Venice, and Milan. The

Papal States, for the most part, had again fallen into the hands of

petty dictators who, though they called themselves vicars of the pope,

had assumed practically sovereign powers during the division of the

papacy. In Lombardy the clergy had for centuries been hostile to the

bishops of Rome. Beyond the Alps lay a disordered Christendom that had

lost most of its respect for the papacy, and grudged it financial

support.

Martin faced these difficulties with courage and success. Though

he had inherited an almost empty treasury, he allotted funds for the

partial rebuilding of his capital. His energetic measures drove the

brigands from the roads and Rome; he destroyed a robber stronghold

at Montelipo, and had its leaders beheaded. `051418 He restored

order in Rome, and codified its communal law. He appointed one of

the early humanists, Poggio Bracciolini, to be a papal secretary. He

engaged Gentile da Fabriano, Antonio Pisanello, and Masaccio to

paint frescoes in Santa Maria Maggiore and St. John in the Lateran. He

named men of intellect and character, like Giuliano Cesarini, Louis

Allemand, Domenico Capranica, and Prospero Colonna, to the college

of cardinals. He reorganized the Curia to effective functioning, but

found no way to finance it except by selling offices and services.

Since the Church had survived for a century without reform, but

could hardly survive a week without money, Martin judged money to be

more urgently needed than reform. Pursuant to the Frequens decree of

Constance, he called a council to meet at Pavia in 1423. It was

sparsely attended; plague compelled its transference to Siena; when it

proposed to assume absolute authority Martin ordered it to dissolve;

and the bishops, fearing for their sees, obeyed. To soothe the

spirit of reform Martin issued (1425) a bull detailing some

admirable changes in the procedure and financing of the Curia; but a

thousand obstacles and objections arose, and the proposals faded in

the quick oblivion of time. In 1430 a German envoy to Rome sent to his

prince a letter that almost sounded the tocsin of the Reformation:

-

Greed reigns supreme in the Roman court, and day by day finds new

devices... for extorting money from Germany under pretext of

ecclesiastical fees. Hence much outcry... and heartburnings;... also

many questions in regard to the papacy will arise, or else obedience

will at last be entirely renounced, to escape from these outrageous

exactions of the Italians; and this latter course, as I perceive;

would be acceptable to many countries. `051419

-

Martin's successor faced the accumulated problems of the papacy from

the background of a devout Franciscan monk ill equipped for

statesmanship. The papacy was a government more than a religion; the

popes had to be statesmen, sometimes warriors, and could rarely afford

to be saints. Eugenius IV was sometimes a saint. True, he was

obstinate and dourly inflexible, and the gout that gave him almost

constant pain in his hands helped his sea of troubles to make him

impatient and unsociable. But he lived ascetically, ate sparingly,

drank nothing but water, slept little, worked hard, attended

conscientiously to his religious duties, bore no malice against his

enemies, pardoned readily, gave generously, kept nothing for

himself, and was so modest that in public he seldom raised his eyes

from the ground. `051420 Yet few popes have earned so many foes.

The first were the cardinals who had elected him. As the price of

their votes, and to protect themselves from such one-man rule as

that of Martin, they had induced him to sign capitula - literally,

headings- promising them freedom of speech, guarantees for their

offices, control over half the revenues, and consultation with them on

all important affairs; such "capitulations" set a precedent

regularly followed in papal elections throughout the Renaissance.

Furthermore, Eugenius made powerful enemies of the Colonna.

Believing that Martin had transferred too much Church property to that

family, he ordered restoration of many parcels, and had Martin's

former secretary tortured almost to death to elicit information in the

matter. The Colonna made war upon the Pope; he defeated them with

soldiery sent him by Florence and Venice, but in the process he

aroused the hostility of Rome. Meanwhile the Council of Basel,

called by Martin, met in the first year (1431) of the new pontificate,

and proposed again to assert the supremacy of the councils over the

popes. Eugenius ordered it to dissolve; it refused, commanded him to

appear before it, and sent Milanese troops to attack him in Rome.

The Colonna seized the chance for revenge; they organized a revolution

in the city, and set up a republican government (1434). Eugenius

fled down the Tiber in a small boat pelted by the populace with

arrows, pikes, and stones. `051421 He found refuge in Florence, then

in Bologna; for nine years he and the Curia were exiles from Rome.

The majority of the delegates to the Council of Basel were French.

They aimed, as the bishop of Tours frankly said, "either to wrest

the Apostolic See from the Italians, or so to despoil it that it

will not matter where it abides." The Council therefore assumed one

after another the prerogatives of the papacy: it issued indulgences,

granted dispensations, appointed to benefices, and required that

annates should be paid to itself and not to the pope. Eugenius again

ordered its dissolution; it countered by deposing him (1439) and

naming Amadeus VIII of Savoy as Antipope Felix V; the Schism was

renewed. To complete the apparent defeat of Eugenius, Charles VII of

France convened at Bourges (1438) an assembly of French prelates,

princes, and lawyers, which proclaimed the supremacy of councils

over popes, and issued the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges:

ecclesiastical offices were henceforth to be filled through election

by the local chapter or clergy, but the king might make

"recommendations"; appeals to the Papal Curia were forbidden except

after exhausting all judicial possibilities in France; the

collection of annates by the pope was prohibited. `051422 This

Sanction in effect established an independent Gallican Church, and

made the king its master. A year later a diet at Mainz adopted

measures for a similar national church in Germany. The Bohemian Church

had separated itself from the papacy in the Hussite revolt; the

archbishop of Prague called the pope "the Beast of the

Apocalypse." `051423 The whole edifice of the Roman Church seemed

shattered beyond repair; the nationalistic Reformation seemed

established a century before Luther.

Eugenius was rescued by the Turks. As the Ottomans came ever

nearer to Constantinople, the Byzantines decided that Constantinople

was worth a Roman Mass, and that a reunion of Greek with Roman

Christianity was an indispensable prelude to securing military aid

from the West. The Emperor John VIII sent an embassy to Martin V

(1431) to propose a council of both churches. The Council of Basel

despatched envoys to John (1433), explaining that the Council was

superior in power to the pope, was under the protection of the Emperor

Sigismund, and would procure money and troops for the defense of

Constantinople if the Greek Church would deal with the Council

rather than with the Pope. Eugenius sent his own embassy, offering aid

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

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