from Constance, accompanied only by a single servant, and took refuge first in the castle of Schaffhausen, then in that of Laufenburg, then at Freiburg-im-Breisgau, and finally at Brisach, whence he hoped to reach Alsace, and doubtless ultimately Avignon, under the protection of an escort sent by the duke of Burgundy. The news of the pope’s escape was received at Constance with an extraordinary outburst of rage, and led to the subversive decrees of the 4th and 5th sessions, which proclaimed the superiority of the council over the pope. Duke Frederick of Austria had hitherto sheltered John’s flight; but, laid under the ban of the empire, attacked by powerful armies, and feeling that he was courting ruin, he preferred to give up the pontiff who had trusted to him. John was brought back to Freiburg (April 27), and there in vain attempted to appease the wrath which he had aroused by more or less vague promises of resignation. His trial, however, was already beginning. The three cardinals whom he charged with his defence hastily declined this compromising task. Seventy-four charges were drawn up, only twenty of which were set aside after the witnesses had been heard. The accusation of having poisoned Alexander V. and his doctor at Bologna was not maintained. But enough deeds of immorality, tyranny, ambition and simony were found proved to justify the severest judgment. He was suspended from his functions as pope on the 14th of May 1415, and deposed on the following 29th of May.
However irregular this sentence may have been from the canonical point of view (for the accusers do not seem to have actually proved the crime of heresy, which was necessary, according to most scholars of the period, to justify the deposition of a sovereign pontiff), the condemned pope was not long in confirming it. Baldassare Cossa, now as humble and resigned as he had before been energetic and tenacious, on his transference to the castle of Rudolfzell admitted the wrong which he had done by his flight, refused to bring forward anything in his defence, acquiesced entirely in the judgment of the council which he declared to be infallible, and finally, as an extreme precaution, ratified motu proprio the sentence of deposition, declaring that he freely and willingly renounced any rights which he might still have in the papacy. This fact has subsequently been often quoted against those who have appealed to the events of 1415 to maintain that a council can depose a pope who is scandalizator ecclesiae.
Cossa kept his word never to appeal against the sentence which stripped him of the pontificate. He was held prisoner for three years in Germany, but in the end bought his liberty from the count palatine. He used this liberty only to go to Florence, in 1419, and throw himself on the mercy of the legitimate pope. Martin V. appointed him cardinal-bishop of Tusculum, a dignity which Cossa only enjoyed for a few months. He died on the 22nd of December 1419, and all visitors to the Baptistery at Florence may admire, under its high baldacchino, the sombre figure sculptured by Donatello of the dethroned pontiff, who had at least the merit of bowing his head under his chastisement, and of contributing by his passive resignation to the extinction of the series of popes which sprang from the council of Pisa. (N. V.)
JOHN I. (925–976), surnamed Tzimisces, East Roman emperor,
was born of a distinguished Cappadocian family. After helping
his uncle Nicephorus Phocas (q.v.) to obtain the throne and to
restore the empire’s eastern provinces he was deprived of his
command by an intrigue, upon which he retaliated by conspiring
with Nicephorus’ wife Theophania to assassinate him. Elected
ruler in his stead, John proceeded to justify his usurpation by
the energy with which he repelled the foreign invaders of the
empire. In a series of campaigns against the newly established
Russian power (970–973) he drove the enemy out of Thrace,
crossed Mt Haemus and besieged the fortress of Dorystolon on
the Danube. In several hard-fought battles he broke the
strength of the Russians so completely that they left him master
of eastern Bulgaria. He further secured his northern frontier by
transplanting to Thrace some colonies of Paulicians whom he
suspected of sympathising with their Saracen neighbours in the
east. In 974 he turned against the Abassid empire and easily
recovered the inland parts of Syria and the middle reaches of
the Euphrates. He died suddenly in 976 on his return from his
second campaign against the Saracens. John’s surname was
apparently derived from the Armenian tshemshkik (red boot).
See E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. vi. (ed. Bury, 1896); G. Finlay, History of Greece, ii. 334–360 (ed. 1877); G. Schlumberger, L’Épopée Byzantine, i. 1–326 (1896).
JOHN II. (1088–1143), surnamed Comnenus and also Kalojoannes (John the Good), East Roman emperor, was the eldest son of the East Roman emperor Alexius, whom he succeeded in 1118. On account of his mild and just reign he has been called the Byzantine Marcus Aurelius. By the personal purity of his character he effected a notable improvement in the manners of his age, but he displayed little vigour in internal administration or in
extirpating the long-standing corruptions of the government. Nor did his various successes against the Hungarians, Servians and Seljuk Turks, whom he pressed hard in Asia Minor and proposed to expel from Jerusalem, add much to the stability of his empire. He was accidentally killed during a wild-boar hunt on Mt Taurus, on the 8th of April 1143.
See E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, v. 228 seq. (ed. Bury, 1896).
JOHN III. (1193–1254), surnamed Vatatzes and also Ducas,
East Roman emperor, earned for himself such distinction as
a soldier that in 1222 he was chosen to succeed his father-in-law
Theodore I. Lascaris. He reorganized the remnant
of the East Roman empire, and by his administrative skill
made it the strongest and richest principality in the Levant.
Having secured his eastern frontier by an agreement with
the Turks, he set himself to recover the European possessions
of his predecessors. While his fleet harassed the Latins
in the Aegean Sea and extended his realm to Rhodes, his
army, reinforced by Frankish mercenaries, defeated the Latin
emperor’s forces in the open field. Though unsuccessful in a
siege of Constantinople, which he undertook in concert with the
Bulgarians (1235), he obtained supremacy over the despotats of
Thessalonica and Epirus. The ultimate recovery of Constantinople
by the Rhomaic emperors is chiefly due to his exertions.
See E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vi. 431–462 (ed. Bury, 1896); G. Finlay, History of Greece, iii. 196–320 (ed. 1877); A. Meliarakes, Ἱστορία τοῦ Βασιλείου τῆς Νικαίας καὶ τοῦ Δεσποτάτου τῆς Ἠπείρου, pp. 155–421 (1898).
JOHN IV. (c. 1250–c. 1300), surnamed Lascaris, East Roman
emperor, son of Theodore II. His father dying in 1258, Michael
Palaeologus conspired shortly after to make himself regent, and
in 1261 dethroned and blinded the boy monarch, and imprisoned
him in a remote castle, where he died a long time after.
See E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vi. 459–466 (ed. Bury, 1896); A. Meliarakes, Ἱστορία τοῦ Βασιλείου τῆς Νικαίας (Athens, 1898), pp. 491–528.
JOHN V. or VI. (1332–1391), surnamed Palaeologus, East Roman emperor, was the son of Andronicus III., whom he succeeded in 1341. At first he shared his sovereignty with his father’s friend John Cantacuzene, and after a quarrel with the latter was practically superseded by him for a number of years (1347–1355). His reign was marked by the gradual dissolution of the imperial power through the rebellion of his son Andronicus and by the encroachments of the Ottomans, to whom in 1381 John acknowledged himself tributary, after a vain attempt to secure the help of the popes by submitting to the supremacy of the Roman Church.
See E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vi. 495 seq., vii. 38 seq. (ed. Bury, 1896); E. Pears, The Destruction of the Greek Empire, pp. 70–96 (1903).
JOHN VI. or V. (c. 1292–1383), surnamed Cantacuzene, East Roman emperor, was born at Constantinople. Connected with the house of Palaeologus on his mother’s side, on the accession of Andronicus III. (1328) he was entrusted with the supreme administration of affairs. On the death of the emperor in 1341, Cantacuzene was left regent, and guardian of his son John Palaeologus, who was but nine years of age. Being suspected
