The Vatican as a World Power/Chapter 8

by Joseph Bernhart

From the beginning of the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, political, social and spiritual dangers inundated the Papacy, which was still more imperilled when the Barque of Peter was given many a bad pilot, and compelled to witness many a scene of fighting for possession of the helm. All too seldom were the quarrellers dominated by the cry which Peter had directed to his sleeping Lord, "Help us Master, lest we perish."

The ancient order of things, which we who stand at a distance superficially term the Middle Ages, was caught in an eddy of forces. The European "nations" shook the Empire to its foundations. France demanded hegemony, brought the exiled Papacy under its control, and spread a new conception of the state among the peoples. Philosophy followed a course that led to pure secularism, and another course that led to the absolute self-sufficiency of the individual soul. Both estranged it from the Church. Apocalyptic feelings preyed on men's emotions, carrying them now to epidemics of despair concerning the world and its rulers, and now to the burning hope that an Emperor- Messiah, or a Pope like unto an angel, was to come. Monastic move- ments of uncompromising renouncement of the world joined with prophets of the absolute state in a struggle against the temporal power and rule of the Roman See. The government of the Church itself crumbled under the effort to serve both God and men.

Celestine, the hermit, had retreated from daemonic forces. Soon sorrow caused his death, thus releasing him from bondage in Castle Fumone in the Campagna. But in life and death he clung like an evil shadow to the heels of the Pope who supplanted him.

Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani, formerly a canon of Lyons cathedral, called himself Pope Boniface VIII. He received the tiara at the age of sixty; and as a sign of his claim to the fullness of all power, he gave it the new form of the dual crown. Occasionally, the chroniclers say, he exchanged his Papal vestments for the mantle of the Caesars. He was a man of giant stature and unbounded energy, and retained his full forces until death. So strong a character was naturally feated

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rather than liked. He was a ruler from sole to crown; but when negotiations were in progress he remained silent and allowed his ministers to speak. No princes or ambassadors were admitted to his presence until they had announced the object and the reason of their visit. His superstitions seem to have been more developed than his faith. Like other emancipated minds of his time for instance Frederic II, who at the end had faith only in his astrologer he ques- tioned the stars, wore a ring in which he believed that his helpful spirit was present, relied on the magic influence of his amulet, and clung to the strange knife which he carried as a protection against poison. Nevertheless he threatened those who practiced magic with eternal damnation. The reputation of this Pope is based in part also on rumours of the sacrilegious and heretical manner in which he made fun of the teachings and customs of the Church, of sodomy, and of the assassination of Celestine. None of this has ever been proved; but there is at least such a wealth of references to his vicious tongue that this is indissociable from his name. Beyond all doubt is the rude, sarcastic coldness with which he expressed his contempt for mankind. All things considered, a saying which cropped up during a meeting between him and the great Franciscan poet to whom he proved fatal is most pertinent. The Pope said to him: "I saw in a dream a great bell without a hammer what does it mean?" Jacopone replied: "It means you, a man without a heart." And many shared that view, cursing the Pope's famous physician for having extended his life.

But his enemies were no better than he. Throughout the whole great drama of Boniface the destroyer and self-destroyer, he remains the towering figure, and he alone is tinged by the tragedy of a strong man following his evil star to the end. How could historians have doubted that tragedy? The past folded in like a storm about his throne; and he on the throne was a storm unto himself. The faith he placed in the Papacy was not that of the great Popes before him. His tablets were not brought from Sinai, fresh from God's own Hand. He was not Moses but Aaron. The law in his despotic hands was not the law of his own heart. His zeal for the greatness of the Papacy was merely a personal passion. He was eager to become a powerful figure, with the help of the power of the Papacy. This he did but merely made the power subservient to himself. Therewith the throne

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was made a sacrifice to the ruler; but the ruler was in the end sacrificed to his throne!

The objective o this Pope was to bring to fulfilment the policy of Gregory and Innocent III. The whole earth was to be subject to the Roman Church; all princes were to hold their land in fief to the Roman See. A Christendom unified and living in peace under the dominion of the Papacy was to conquer Islam. But literally every- thing failed: the peoples had grown different, and the human mind had changed. It was in vain that Boniface backed the Valois King in Naples against the power of Aragon in Sicily. The Island King- dom remained Spanish. He tried to end the war between France and England for possession of the rich province of Flanders, since this war constantly consumed the taxes collected from Church property. Then in 1296 he issued an edict which was to bring home anew to European governments the validity of canon law. Unless the Pope gave his assent, priests were forbidden to pay taxes to laymen or make gifts to them under penalty of the ban; and under the same penalty princes and officials were forbidden either to collect or to receive such moneys. The bull began "CUricis laicos" and averred chat all history proved that the layman is the mortal enemy of the priest. The truth of this doctrine of the irreconcilable opposition between Church and State, as well as the truth of the curse that lies on a State-Church which seeks to escape that necessary fruitful struggle, the Pope was to ex- perience personally. England and especially France resisted him.

France, for decades the greatest power in Europe, had not grown strong without the help of the Papacy and its moneys. Now it began to look upon itself as the natural daughter of the Imperium Romanum. The German Charlemagne lived on in imagination as a romantic hero, the protector of a kingdom animated by an imperialistic urge which had been obvious since the Crusades of St. Louis had established a definite French Mediterranean policy, and since Charles of Anjou had triumphed over the Hohenstaufens in the South. When feudal resistance at home grew weaker, and a middle class participating in the life of the state grew stronger, the universalistic ambitions of Philippe le Beau also came into conflict with the Papacy, which claimed to be heir to the Empire. Two ambitions for world dominion thus clashed. There was no lack of legal justification, in the philosophk

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sense, on the side of the worldly power. At the universities the legalists, teachers of Roman law, functioned as theorists of govern- ment and masters of a public opinion favourable to an absolute and universal kingship. They set forth the political goals of the French crown in these slogans: universal world peace, a European League of Nations under French leadership as a substitute for the Imperial, uni- versal monarchy, an international court of arbitration, a grant of the patrimonium Petri to France in the form of a loan, and secularization of Church property in exchange for an annual income.

Philippe, who was in need of money as a result of the war with England, insisted that he had the right to tax the churches and monasteries of his country. He answered the Papal bull by for- bidding the export of gold and silver without the permission of the King, and by restraining the Papal collectors. Then Boniface issued new, friendly decrees which weakened his proud bull, and kept up a semblance of peace by canonizing Louis IX, Philippe's ancestor.

Meanwhile there was a ferment in the circles closest to the Pope. Two cardinals of the mighty family of Colonna were wroth with him because he had taken sides in a family quarrel over property. When they committed high treason by establishing relations with Frederic of Aragon, Boniface demanded that they surrender their castles. This they refused to do and aroused fresh antipathies in the ranks of the Pope's other enemies. The King of France and the University of Paris were invited to review the abdication of Celestine and the election of Boniface. Religious of the strict dispensation in the Franciscan Order, among them poor Jacopone, who was pious and satirical alike, were induced to take up the fight in written and oral discourse. A third Colonna stole money belonging to the Curia, which a highly favoured Papal relative had brought to Rome. Boniface got the treas- ure back, demanded that the robber be turned over to justice, and insisted furthermore that the Colonna must evacuate two of their castles as well as Palestrina, their city. The answer was a manifesto that was nailed to the Church doors of Rome. This said that Celestine had abdicated illegally, that Gaetani was not rightfully a Pope, and that the matter should be settled by a general Council meeting with the future true Pope. Boniface punished the cardinals, who had elected him and had celebrated the occasion with a banquet, with demotion

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and excommunication. He declared that the accursed race of Co- lonna, together with all their possessions, were at the mercy of anyone who wished to take them, summoned all to join in a war (for which women on their deathbeds bequeathed money) , and levelled Palestrina and the Castles to the ground. Twelve of the fourteen Cardinals of the College sundered relations with the Colonna. The two guilty noblemen fled to France, where they plotted vengeance.

The Pope declared the year 1300 a year of grace for the universal Church. Vast crowds of pilgrims, among them sick riding in car- riages and old people borne on the shoulders of their children, tramped to this first "jubilee" at the graves of the Apostles. Dante saw them come. The money they donated was literally raked together in St. Peter's; and yet this popular movement, produced by piety as well as other things, took place in the light of a setting sun. During the same year Philippe's Privy-Councillor William Nogaret, the descend- ant of an Albigensian heretic who had fallen a victim to the Pope, dwelt in Rome; and together with the ambassador of the German King Albrecht, he played a trump card against the Curia a new alliance between the French and German monarchs. The object was to prevent the Pope from establishing his family as rulers of Tuscany and from securing still other advantages for his own country. If one were to credit Nogaret's private report, one should have to conclude that Boniface was deaf to all suggestions from the ambassadors, and sought only to poison the friendship of the two kings while besmirch- ing their honour. The Frenchman, whom a compatriot termed a body without a soul, returned home with pestiferous gossip concerning Boniface. But he and the Pope were to cross swords once more.

In 1301 Rome sent a legate to Paris with a request for a Crusade and a bevy of admonitions. But this legate was an imperious bishop and himself a Frenchman. He irritated the King and was taken into custody by the State Council as a traitor. Boniface demanded that he be set free, summoned the French prelates to Rome, reissued the bull Clericis laicos and finally promulgated a new bull, Ausculta fili, by which the King himself was removed from the throne. The language was sharp but not mordant enough to serve the French designs. It was burned immediately and replaced with a counterfeit bull still more gruff in diction. The King solemnly threatened his sons with

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the curse and disinheritance if they should ever recognize any other overlords in France save him and God alone. A national assembly in Notre-Dame then burned the counterfeit bull after it had been read, endorsed the actions taken by the King to establish the freedom of his domain, and forbade the prelates to participate in the next Roman Council. Nevertheless half of the higher clergy went to the Eternal City; and Philippe stripped these disobedient ones of their worldly possessions and sent an embassy to forbid the "suspect" Pope to inter- fere in the affairs of France.

The Council decided to issue that classical definition of the Papal system which is known as the bull Unam Sanctam, of November 18, 1302. It was drawn up on the basis of a tract concerning ecclesiastical politics written by ^Egidius Romanus (Colonna), a disciple of St. Thomas from whose teachings he differed widely in many respects. The meaning of the bull is contained in these sentences: the spiritual power has authority to establish the worldly power, and to judge it when it is not good; and it is necessary to salvation to believe that all human creatures are subjects of the Pope. There was no new stone in this all too daring structure, the inner law of which was pure logic and the outer development of which was steel-like deduction. Au- thority, in so far as it is based at all upon eternal verities and not upon the whims of rulers or the accidents of power, presupposes the unity and inviolability of an order valid beyond the limits of time. If the Church was already the form of Christianity, and was recognized by Christianity as such, Boniface was right. This Church must either have a single head or remain a two-headed monster, reposing upon two fundaments like the Manichean world of the Albigensians.

King Philippe won over to his side the French cardinal who had delivered the Papal demands, gathered his Councillors of State in the Louvre, and directed against Boniface all the weapons which his jurists and the active Colonna at his court had long since gathered and sharpened. Nogaret made the address in which the attack was de- livered and it was a diabolic masterpiece. Taking for his text II Peter 2, 1-3, he stressed like a pulpit orator the convincing reasons for "throwing this scandalous Pope into prison." Philippe listened and declared himself in agreement. He gave the appearance of acting only according to the urgent demands of his Councillors, a practice to which

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he had always clung. Moreover he wore the aura of a saviour of the Church, which Nogaret had skillfully placed about him. The Peers assembled in the summer of 1303, and heard read a dreadful catalogue of the Pope's crimes. Yet the valid principle that the Apostolic See could be judged by no one demanded that further steps be taken to lend an air of justification to the French plan. It was necessary to declare that Boniface was not the lawful Pope. Philippe could be sure that his people were animated by a strong feeling of national unity, and that there would be a favourable response in other countries.

It was in vain that Boniface cleansed himself with an oath. No- garet went to Italy, borrowed money from his King's bank, made a treaty with the Anjous of Naples who had enjoyed for two hundred years the fruits of their friendship with the Popes, and gained followers as well as troops. Meanwhile the Pope had been compelled by quar- relling factions to retire to Anagni. Here in his native city, where his powerful relatives had important possessions, he thought himself safe and prepared to impose the ban on Philippe. But his opponents were more numerous than he had realized. Cardinals, too, deserted him, among them Napoleon of the House of Orsini, the most violent antagonist of the Colonna. Perhaps this friend of the French was the real instigator of the fate which overtook Boniface. The new bull was to be proclaimed on September 8th. Once again it insisted upon the whole fullness of power given to the followers of Peter. They could rule the peoples with an iron rod, and break their kings like vessels made of clay. The anathema was hurled at Philippe; and his subjects were released from their oaths of loyalty.

But that bull was not read. At dawn on the 8th of September, Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna entered the gates of Anagni with hun- dreds of horsemen and footmen. The gates were open because the podesta was one of the conspirators. The troops joined forces with the city militia and stormed the Palace of the Gaetani, which was connected with the Cathedral. Those who could not flee were cut down or made prisoners. Nogaret and Sciarra marched across the bodies of those who had fallen and entered the Pope's room. He sat in his pontifical attire on the throne, bowed over a cross and the keys which he held in his hand. They shouted at him and demanded his surrender. Sciarra struck him in the face with his mailed fist, but

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Boniface remained every inch a man. They could take his life now that he had been betrayed, but not his dignity. He was seized and placed under strict arrest. He refused food and drink for fear of being poisoned. Meanwhile citizens and mercenaries plundered the treasury, the cathedral, and the houses of his favourites. On the loth of September, a Gaetani approached from the Campagna in order to help free the Pope with the aid of other burghers of the city. Nogaret was wounded but he and Sciarra escaped. Boniface stood on the steps of the Palace, addressed the people, and forgave his enemies. A week later he proceeded to Rome under an armed guard. The Orsini with four hundred horsemen rode out to meet him, thus as- suring the safety of his person. The journey lasted three days. The people received him reverently; but once he had entered the Vatican, which residence he had substituted for the Lateran, he was soon made to understand that he was the prisoner of the Orsini. He lived still another month and had time to repent especially his ardent love for money. Then he died ex tremore cordu imagining that every- one who approached sought to make him a prisoner. The date was October n, 1303. He had ordered a magnificent funeral for himself, but this was ruined by a fearful storm which visited Rome.

One of his loyal cardinals then reigned for a little less than a year as Benedict XL He went to Perugia, city of the Guelphs, and there hurled anathemas at those who had carried out the attack upon the Pope. But the danger of a schism was so great that he was compelled to treat with consideration Philippe and the Roman enemies of the Gaetani.

There followed a long, difficult Conclave, the outcome of which was a victory for the French party in the College. A Gascon, the Arch- bishop of Bordeaux, was elected but did not go to Italy. He permitted himself to be crowned as Clement V at Lyons in die presence of his King. After frequently changing his See, he took up residence at Avignon in 1309. The city was a fief of the King of Naples. There- with began the Babylonian exile of the Papacy. This sad chapter of its history lasted seventy years. After the Papacy had failed in its effort to reconstruct the Church in Europe as a hierocratic universal state, it now carried out in close alliance with France an attack upon

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the Imperial idea. The Curia set its centralism and fiscalism in their stiffest versions against the objective of the states, which was to in- corporate the Church and the clergy politically, economically and morally in their organisms. These two evils clung together, under- mining the Papacy and the Church alike, and gradually turning out to be the causes that led to the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Dante described the transition of the Curia into a dependency of France in allegorical terms. Beatrice, who here images -the spiritual power of the Church, steps from the chariot of the ecclesia triumphant and reminds the poet of the great events which have taken place in post- apostolic times. The eagle of the Holy Roman Empire fills the vehicle with its feathers (which are the donations made to the Roman See) , but at the same time there cling to all sides of the chariot the monstrous beasts of the seven capital sins. The place which Beatrice has aban- doned is taken by an unworthy Pope at whose side there stands the giant France, who by turns caresses and strikes him and finally drives the chariot off into the woods the exile of Avignon. The "ditty work" began with a "a shepherd without a law."

This was Clement V (13051314) , a valiant promoter of learning,, but a Pontiff of feeble policy. He himself was sickly and no match for the ruthless King, He had left the Papal treasure behind at Assisi and sometimes thought of going back to Rome. But his fear of the tumults in that city, as well as the will of Philippe, bound him to his more peaceful habitat above the blue Rhone. There he suc- cumbed to the "Clementine Fair" haggling over ecclesiastical posi- tions and dignities. He wasted on relatives and flatterers the money which his Christendom had given for a Crusade. He made friends among the princes instead of striving to rehabilitate the Papal finances, which had been utterly undermined by the events of Anagni. All banks refused to extend credit. At Avignon he also assented to all the moral demands of the Colonna, lifted or softened the bulls which his predecessor had directed at France, and through his cowardly "yes" and "amen" kept alive the fight which the vengeful King was making on Boniface, who now that he was dead was also to be damned as a heretic. Through this the King finally brought about the destruction of the Knights Templar, found guilty or every vice and sacrilege by a committee of the Inquisition, and so gained for himself a neat fortune.

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Hundreds of Knights had already lost their lives through torture, prison and death by fire, when the General Council of Vienne, the last to be held for a hundred years, ended the tragedy of the Order in 1312. Philippe was to have his will not through a decision given by judges but thanks to a measure taken by the apostolic administration so that, as Clement said in his sermon, "Our beloved son the King of France may not be given scandal." This was not the only favour which Philippe, who personally attended the Council with an elaborate retinue, was there shown by the Pope. Though the Council restored to Boniface VIII his honour, Clement also declared the King, a man of "well-meaning zeal," free of all blame in connection with the attack at Anagni, He also forgave William Nogaret, who protested his innocence. He himself, the viceroy of Christ, had washed his hands like Pilate, and given that peace which the world alone can give. Meanwhile he remained deaf to the still modest, but gravely concerned voices which pleaded for the reform of the Church and the conversion of the Papacy. An English chronicler of the time prayed thus: "Oh, Lord Jesus, either remove the Pope or weaken the power with which he acts against his people. For whoever misuses the power entrusted to him merits that it be taken away from him."

Meanwhile Henry VIII of Luxembourg had followed the murdered Albrecht of Habsburg as King of Germany. Clement himself had been favourably disposed toward Henry from the beginning and had sponsored his candidacy in order to stave off the threatened election of Charles of Valois, brother of Philippe le Beau. It was with his con- sent that this knighdy ruler, himself half a Frenchman, came to Rome in 1312 to be jubilantly welcomed by Ghibelline Italy as its saviour from self-destruction, and to receive the Imperial crown from the hands of three cardinals. But the peace did not last long. Henry, en- couraged by his successes in upper Italy, made an alliance against the Anjou monarch, Robert of Naples, with Frederic of Sicily, an old enemy of the Curia. Then he publicly proclaimed Robert the foe of the Empire; and once again Pope and Emperor were at swords points. But death prevented a war. Henry died at Sienna in 1313 and was buried in the Campo Santo at Pisa. The next year Clement also said farewell to earth, which had been kind to him. The French King followed soon thereafter.

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The idea of world empire had not died. Lamentations over the dissolution of the Imperial state were heard anew. But in gazing backward and indulging the hope that a Hohenstaufen monarch would return, men also conjured up a dream-image of a ruler who would bring peace to all the world. Dante was the creator of that image, or at least its most fiery prophet. In composing an elegy for the dead Henry he did not join one side or the other in the conflict over the decadent Imperial throne. He was neither Guelph nor Ghibelline. The object of his desire was the humanization of mankind. Trust- ing in the divine gift of reason, he summoned all mankind to under- take the building up of a hwm&na civilitas in which what is potentially best in human nature or can proceed from it, would be realized. The popular republics might rule themselves; but above them there must stand one who was love for justice incarnate, and who represented the world monarchy which the national states join after having banded themselves together. This "one" was to be the Emperor, Dante's Emperor. He was not Caesar, not a despot, not a lord holding others in fief. He would not ask for power; what he would seek was justice the divinely constituted order (divina voluntas if sum jus} . He would have the power to bind and to loose in an earthly sense; but as the administrator of justice, of the divine will, the Emperor's task would also be as essential and as lofty in character as that of the Pope. They are given equal authority, which each of them exercises in his sphere with unimpeachable righteousness. They are mutually subject to each other, in so far as the realm of the temporal and of the spiritual interweave; and they must work in unison to create the humanity eternally intended by God. For this reason there must be established a clearly defined dual order based on the divine will. For while the Christian Cross is the sign of salvation, the eagle which ^Eneas once brought to Rome has also its own part in the continuous work of redemption. Mankind, which is a pilgrim along the road to salvation, needs the two-fold leadership of Church and Empire. Our common goal and our common moral imperative are manifested in the one; and the other has been ordained to remove the obstacles which lie in the way. The power of the eagle is not given the state merely as a state according to the natural order that rises out of natural law, but rather to the state as an entity transformed by Christianity. This state is

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conscious of its dependency upon the Cross; and only in relationship to that cross are its significance and value perfected. Nevertheless the divinely ordained relationship between the two powers permits no confusion of the spheres and no encroachment on the one by the other. In natural law and earthly history the state has priority; but in the history of salvation, and inside the order of grace which is the sub- stratum of redemption, the Church has the primacy. May the sword remain the sword and the pastoral staff the pastoral staff. Peter hint- self arises and passes judgment on a worldly Papacy, enmeshed in politics. His blood and the blood of many of his followers did not flow for the sake of a rich church. His keys are no battle flags, no seals placed on letters conferring freedom at a price. Christianity must not be sundered into clergy and laity; the Bible must not be forgotten while one reads the decretals until the margins are worn, Dante's sketch was born out of the dire need of the Christian element in history, and yet history gave him as little attention as it has paid to every political philosopher who has argued for a peaceful division of the authority bestowed upon the two powers.

Joachim of Fiore, his followers, and a spiritualistic Franciscanism had found a voice in Dante's Monarchia and Commedia. A short three years after the poet's death the Defensor Pacis, written (1324) by Marcilius of Padua and John of Jandun, doctors of the University of Paris, drew a picture of a secular prince who is God's viceroy and sits as sovereign ruler over Pope and Church. This revolutionary book was directed against the Papacy as a disturber of the peace. It de- clared that the teaching concerning the fullness of power had proved the ruin of the Church, which as a community of the faithful is of godlike character. Her sovereign is Christ alone; she should be with- out possessions, serving the spirit only. The bearer of ecclesiastical authority is not the Pope but the Christian community, and the high- est instance of the Church is the general Council summoned only to decide matters of faith. In the Council intelligent laymen who know the Bible are also to have a seat and a voice. Thus in the Church also all legislation finally rests with the people. Priests open the way to God by preaching and administering the Sacraments. All have the same power, and none of them, the Pope included, is authorized to interfere in secular matters. His primacy rests only upon legal

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grounds not above suspicion, since the sojourn of Peter in Rome can- not be proved from the Bible, which also does not establish his priority over the other Apostles excepting perhaps in age. The Bishop of Rome is not entitled to call himself Peter's successor or to consider himself superior to any other bishop. Only the Bible merits uncon- ditional belief; and no other writings, least of all decrees of the Pope, are to be similarly trusted. The right to use force does not belong to the Holy See, but to the prince who as the highest lawgiver also summons die Council. And yet this prince in turn merely acts in behalf of the citizenry. He is responsible to the people, which is the sovereign bearer of all civil rights. Laicistic, naturalistic and revolu- tionary to the core, these writers who before Machiavelli's time were subder than Machiavelli, regarded the "sect" of Christianity as the most estimable of religious factions, and assigned it to the place they adjudged befitting inside the political order they conjured up out of purely secularist thinking. The first and ultimate objective of this vi& moderna was therefore necessarily a maiming blow at the Papacy. The contemporary philosophy of the Averroists, the scepticism of other schools, and the opposition of those who sponsored an ideal of poverty (a vigorous movement fed from deep religious springs) to the Curia, threatened the Papacy from within the world of Christ and that of anti-Christ alike.

John XXII (1316-1334) received the tiara as an old man of seventy- two years, after a long drawn-out battle between the French and the Italian cardinals. Like all Popes of the period of exile he was a Frenchman. Born the son of a cobbler, he grew up to be an educator and the chancellor of Robert of Naples. Later he became Archbishop of Avignon and Cardinal; and his always imperious will had grown hard as steel. He was astonishingly energetic, learned, of modest personal habits, open-minded toward the intellectual problems and social needs of the time, and adroit in the defense of die rights and powers of his office. Later times would both admire and denounce him as a great financial genius. Dante said maliciously that he honoured not Peter and Paul, but the image of John the Baptist on the guilders of Florence. A shrewd calculator, he made use of a system of taxation which included a great number of questionable sources of money from episcopal consecrations, newly established prelacies and

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abbeys, and Papal claims on a number of appointments, dispensations and dutiable pleas which could be artificially dragged out, and so raised receipts of the Curia to an annual average of nearly 230,000 guilders in gold. The Camera Apostolica took in money as it never had before, and in a short time was equipped to bear the enormous burdens in- cident to the wars which broke out under this and subsequent pontifi- cates.

The princes and states whose friendship John needed in order to restore complete dominion of the Papacy in Italy also received their goodly share of this store of red gold. This restoration was the major goal of his policy. It was for its sake that he persevered in his fiscal policy and his struggle with the Empire. Ludwig the Bavarian and Frederic of Austria battled for the throne, and the House of Wittels- bach gained a victory: it was, so insisted Avignon, to recognize the Papal right to administration of the Empire in Italy, custodian of which at the rime was Robert of Naples. The Bavarian prince, who had already sent his German Imperial vicar to Italy, took no heed of the Pope's declaration that a king must first have Papal endorsement; and spurning a sharp demand that he lay down his Imperial office, he himself marched southward and supported the struggle which Lom- bard Ghibellines were carrying on against the sundering of Italy from the Empire. When he had drawn down upon himself the ban, Ludwig resorted to another weapon against John: the Pope himself was declared a heretic, because during a dispute with the Franciscans he had repudiated the solemn contention of the Order that Christ and his Apostles had owned no property. The political struggle was confused with theological and religious warfare; and for a decade it seemed as if the Empire and the Church were facing serious disaster. John XXII defended his omnipotence more doggedly than ever a Pope before him; and round the banned and wavering Emperor, there gathered disciples of the Saint of Assist and of Marcilius of Padua. Yes, worlds otherwise irreconcilable found themselves in unison in men like the English Ockham, the philosopher and theologian who wore the habit of Francis, and yet taught a most uncompromising brand of Gesaro-Papism. Doubtless Ockham could form an idea of a Church without a Papacy. John spared none. During the years 13271328, when he also repudiated some sentences of Master Eck-

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hardt, he condemned the Defensor Pads and excommunicated Ock- ham. But the ideas harboured by these daring souls were soon to stir in all the nations. They indicated the rise of a new trend in human thought, and retained their vigour long after those who had first con- ceived them were dead.

Ludwig himself was frightened by the teachings of Marcilius, but during 1328 he did not hesitate to receive the Imperial crown from the hand of the city's ruler, Sciarra Colonna, in Rome and "in the name of the Roman people." Marcilius, appointed spiritual vicar of the city, could hardly boast that the people and their ruler already bore his ideal world in their hearts. The things that happened in Rome in no way mirrored the spirit of the Defensor Pacts. Faith in the Church was still deep and strong enough even to feed with its sap the young humanism which had begun to appear. Nor had the end of the Papacy come when the Emperor was induced to proclaim to a popular assembly gathered in St. Peter's Square that the "priest Jacob of Cahors, who calls himself John XXII" had been deposed. Soon thereafter a miserable creature made himself anti-Pope. The rejoicing was of short duration. Ludwig was quite destitute; and without having firmly established his sovereignty in Italy, he left Rome which with farcical pranks dishonoured him and his Pope and all Roman Germans, even the dead. In Pisa, too, the joke was on him when he ordered that the figure of Pope John should be burned in effigy before the eyes of the indignant people; for it was in this city that the anti- Pope was seized in 1330 and dragged off to Avignon. Dressed in his habit (he was a Friar Minor) with a rope tied around his neck, Lud- wig then threw himself at John's feet and wept. The Pope helped him to rise, removed the rope, cast his arms about him as a sign of forgive- ness, and kept him under very mild arrest until the end of his days. John could not, however, make a peace with Ludwig, who was bidden to abdicate because France desired the breakup of Germany, and Avignon wanted a Papal Italy. Princes and people still clung to their Emperor and he had a Franciscan following which strengthened his resistance to his opponents on the Rhone. Ockham and his disciples lived to witness with pleasure that the Pope defended in a sermon the dogmatically objectionable teaching that the just dead enjoy the fullness of beatific vision only after the last judgment. When John

THE AVIGNON EXILE 207

lay dying at the age of ninety and was no longer able to speak, the cardinals induced him to sign a written disavowal of that sermon.

During the next forty years of the exile, the French Papacy con- tinued to cling to its traditional policy. It had few friends either in the Church or among the rulers of states. In Germany, where the dreadful weight of the interdict lay like lead on all the living, the pious substituted a mystical religion of the soul for the empty houses of worship. France and the Pope were identified. The tension be- tween Rome and Avignon grew deeper and gave rise to a political and cultural antagonism between Italy and France. In England the old trend towards a state Church waxed stronger particularly after the last of the Capets died (1328) , and the hundred years of war with the Valois monarchs embittered people towards the country that was serv- ing as Papal host. In addition the Curia carried out an uncompromis- ing administrational measure by which the indigenous Church was potted with an alien clergy. France itself was losing the grip on power and compelled the Pope to share its fate.

Benedict XII (13341342), a jovial, hard-drinking Cistercian of plebeian ancestry, was vastly more than "the helmsman of the bark o Peter, put asleep by wine,*' whom Petrarch described in his satirical letters. The Romans invited him to return, but he was kept in France because the King feared the loss of Papal influence. Then he began to build the great palace in Avignon which, with its spare and forbid- ding walls, even today frowns on the loveliness of the surrounding landscape. He honestly strove to reach a settlement with Ludwig of Bavaria, but Philippe VI threatened that if the reconciliation were effected he would resort to a second Anagni. The German Imperial princes gave the title of German Emperor a new resonance when they formed an association of electors at Rense, and at the same time mani- fested increased hostility to Avignon. The King and Emperor (they said) was he who had been chosen by the Prince-Electors, even though the Pope might not confirm their choice. To the Papacy there was reserved only the right to crown the Emperor. All negotiations ulti- mately proved bootless when Ludwig, who knew no bounds in his attempts to strengthen his dynasty and who could appeal for support to Ockham and his conception of the state, proceeded on his own -

208 CATASTROPHE

thority to annul the marriage of Duchess Margareta Maultasch and marry her to his son. The chaotic situation lasted until the German Prince-Electors, dissatisfied with their Emperor, themselves granted the urgent request of the new Pope Clement VI and brought about a sudden change. They sundered themselves from Ludwig, who was now an ally of England, and once again the object of the ban to which terrible curses were appended; and they hoped to realize Ger- many's profound desire for peace by electing Charles of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, who had been recommended by his friend the Pope. Him they elected German King, and soon thereafter Ludwig died. During the long reign of the shrewd, carefully calculating Rex Cleri- corttm (13461378), the Avignon Popes played their part to the end. Clement VI (1342-1352) cannot be regarded by an objective his- torian as any better than Petrarch's description implies, though Petrarch was a satirist of his times. The poet had come to Avignon from Florence as a boy with his family, had seen a good deal of the world as a student and a traveller, and had built for himself in quiet Vaucluse, close to the Papal palace, a refuge from a world which he hated and loved, idealized and despised with equal ardour. Crowned with the poet's wreath in Rome, he returned to the city of his Laura in 1342, Petrarch lived from 1304 to 1374, so that he was almost exactly con- temporaneous with the Avignon exile. As he observed the conduct of the Popes, he conceived the idea for his acrid and venomous Letters without a Name. Clement VI, whom he himself served in a politi- cal capacity, is the villain of the piece. This cynical man of the world, who has chosen the epicurean art of living rather than the Church for his bride, is seen rejoicing in the fact that he need not live in the "vulgar hut" of the Roman Lateran. Stretched out com- fortably in his gorgeous apartment, he looks about at his herd. He rides to the hunt, followed by a proud retinue, beside his beloved niece, Cecilia Semitamis who dominates the whole palace with her charms. A future Pope, if he should let the mask fall (says Petrarch) would ship the whole Curia to Bagdad: not seven Gregorys could make good the damage done to the Church by two Clements, the V and the VL The laments of other contemporaries establish the validity of Petrarch's satire. St. Brigitta, the mystic and reformatricc of Sweden, who took up residence in Rome as the widowed mother of

THE BLACK PLAGUE 209

many children and there exhorted the princes, denounced the Popes and clamoured for an end of the exile, herself told Clement that he was an amator carnis, a lover of the flesh.

It is nevertheless true that a man of firmer character than this gallant Pontiff could not have risked going back to Rome. Devotees of armed might were everywhere busy carving little kingdoms out of the Papal provinces; and Rome itself presented an unparallelled pageant of an- archy. After the nobles had been defeated, the romantic spirit of Cola di Rienzi strutted about for a while, dressed in shreds of die past splendour of Rome and the Empire. This tribune of the people had delighted the Pope in Avignon and had won the friendship of Petrarch. But after his fall, Charles IV, to whose court in Prague he had fled, turned him over to the Pope as a heretic. The Avignon which he now beheld anew had meanwhile been purchased by Queen Joanna of Naples and made the property of the Roman See. This it remained until the French Revolution.

The Black Plague was now abroad. The Pope lived behind his thick walls as if in quarantine and received no one. A third of the population of Europe was buried in common graves, and those who survived trembled before the Lord God. New processions of Flagel- lantes, scourging their naked backs as they sang the Kyrie Eleison, moved through the land. A wave of religious enthusiasm brought hosts of pilgrims to Rome for the jubilee of 1350. Some of the laughter that was heard was the laughter of despair. In Avignon there was circulated in 1351 a "Letter of Lucifer to the Pope, His Viceroy on Earth." In it die Prince of Darkness thanks the Sovereign Pontiff, his cardinals and his prelates, for all the aid given him in his struggle against Christ. Victory was no longer remote. He sent greetings to them all, in the name also of their mother, Pride, and of all her sister Vices. A novella in Boccaccio's Decameron breathes the same spirit. Thus turbulent disgrundement of the era of the plague arose from hearts as devoted to the Church as that of Petrarch hearts that agreed with Dante, Rienzi, and all the humanists, that the Papal exile was a desecration of the Papacy and Italy alike. In their opposition to France and Avignon, they were abetted by more serious minds who, desiring cultural autonomy, strove to bring about a na- tional renaissance against all barbarians, including the French. In

210 CATASTROPHE

x^

Boccaccio's tale, the Christian merchant Gianotto convinces his fpend Abraham, the Jew of Paris, of the truth of Christianity. Against Gianotto's will and counsel the Jew decided to study his new faith in the city where the Curia is established. Gianotto now believes that all is lost. But Abraham returns resolved to enter the Church. He declares (and this is at once the comfort and the insight of this whole , period) to his pleasantly surprised friend: the Pope and his associates seek to blot out Christianity from the world and the hearts of men; and the fact that it nevertheless exists and flourishes proves that it must be of God.

Clement died soon thereafter of terror caused by the Lucifer letter. During his last years he had appeared in a much better light, as the giver of aid to victims of the pest, the author of measures taken to curb the madness of the Flagellantes, and the centre of resistance to a persecution of the Jews, who were believed to have brought on the plague by poisoning the wells and bewitching the atmosphere. He was followed by a simple, earnest man who took the name of Innocent VI (13521362). He curbed the maladministration of the Curia, which had now become wholly French, released Rienzi from imprison- ment, brought about a peace between France and England, and re- mained on fairly good terms with the Emperor, who received the Imperial crown when he came to Rome, though no popular enthusiasm embellished the ceremony. Charles issued a Golden Bull in 1355, which, without referring to the hody debated rights of the Pope, de- clared the Electoral-Princes sole possessors of the right to vote, and in exchange for cash gave the Italian cities freedom and the Italian princes their independence. The fact that he abandoned the right to mingle in Italian affairs meant that the German Empire was bounded on die south by the Alps. Once again Cola di Rienzi awakened the national yearning of his native city, to which he had gone after the Pope had set him free. Innocent had hoped to subdue the city by means of this tribune, but instead the man ruled so tyrannically that the people rose and slew him.

The unfortunate Rienzi had left Avignon on a Papal mission. He was to accompany the clerical general and statesman Albornoz whose task it was to reconquer the rebellious cities of the Papal States. Cardi- nal Albornoz, whom his Spanish countrymen today still regard as the

URBAN V RETURNS TO ROME 211

greatest political genius of their race, named Rienzi Senator of Rome as a boon to the people. Then, during the four years after 1353, he completed his task with firmness and magnanimity. He utilized the pauses between battles to write a text of common law for the Papal States; and the wisdom of this treatise was to prove its worth down to the time of Napoleon.

The "widowed" Rome uttered many a lament that the absence of the Papacy prevented the renaissance of her ardently desired ancient glory. All but a few persons looked upon the Avignon Popes as legitimate. The master of all places, said Petrarch, can live in any and every place: where the Pope is, there is Rome also. But there was great rejoicing when Urban V (1362-1370) decided to return. The Emperor himself had come to Avignon to persuade this holy, morally impeccable monk, whose labours in behalf of culture were dictated by a lofty purpose, to break the French bonds. Nevertheless the Pope, who returned with his Curia in 1367 and an escort of a fleet of sixty galleys furnished by the Italian sea powers, faced difficult times. As he landed in the harbour of Corneto, Albornoz, now a tired old man, welcomed him on his knees. Certain jealous persons suspected him of having spent money for his own profit; and when he had cleared himself by riding up to the Papal dwelling in a cart drawn by oxen and presenting to the Pope the keys of the cities and fortresses he had conquered, the great Spaniard died assured of the Pope's thanks and confidence. Undoubtedly he was the second founder of the Papal States. Soon Urban was to realize what he had lost in this man. Florence, the most powerful political entity in Italy, fomented a rebel- lion among the citizens of die Papal States against the rule of alien French officials. Naples and the Visconti of Milan profited. Robber bands were the real masters as the gentle Pope, a lonely stranger, waited in Viterbo until the Eternal City had grown sufficiently calm to permit his entry.

What destruction and what misery there were in long abandoned Rome! Grass grew in the streets and on it the sheep pastured. They even found green forage in St. Peter's, and between the broken pave- ment stones of the Lateran. The yellow Tiber flowed over the ruins of fallen bridges; basilicas lay covered with dust and dirt; and the Vatican Palace stared emptily at the signs of decadence everywhere

212

CATASTROPHE

about, and at a wilderness of abandoned gardens. Charles IV also came to Rome so that his wife could be crowned, but the Empire headed by this merchant had squeezed too much money out of the land to make possible the thought of giving aid to the Pope. The attacks on Urban's wealth and temporal power continued, and the unfortunate stranger was once more driven back to the Rhone. Dur- ing the same year he died with the cross upon his breast, shaken with remorse over the fact that he had gone back to Avignon. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy of St. Brigitta, who had urged him to remain. It was not until the election of Gregory XI (1370-1378) , a French Pope, that the Apostolic See could once again be erected beside the graves of the Apostles and remain there. He saw that everything was lost if he stayed in Avignon any longer. The most difficult struggle he had to face was with Florence, for this ancient Guelph Republic raised the banner of the Italian national spirit against the French leadership of the Church and against the rule of strangers within its own boundaries. It assumed the leadership of a league of cities formed to combat all tyrants. Gregory imposed the gravest ecclesiastical penalties on Florence and at last sent an army against the urban league. Robert of Geneva, Cardinal and handsome soldier, took command of his Breton mercenaries, and heaped cruelty on cruelty. As a result of the blood-bath with which he avenged a desperate rebellion of the citizens of Cesana, there was lifted no praise in honour of the returning viceroy of Jesus Christ.

In older to bring about peace with Florence, Catherine Benincasa o Siena, daughter of a dyer, had summoned up all the fervour and power of her ecstatic souL Like Joan d'Arc, this Saint unfolded a political activity based on mystical impulses. She was a master of both effective speech and a powerful epistolary style, and exercised a profound influence upon the life of her time. Though she could not induce Florence to make peace, she did rouse the conscience of the Pope in the palace of Avignon. Toward the close of 1376 he left and landed in Ostia, sighing over the bleak impression made upon him by the shores to which he had come. That evening the Romans appeared in large numbers, gave him dominion over their city, and paid homage to him with torch dances and the blare of trumpets. A galley brought him up the Tiber to St. Paul's. Here he cast anchor and spent the

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA 213

night, which had already fallen while he was still aboard ship. Catherine had counselled him in vain to enter the city with no ap- purtenances of war, carrying only the crucifix and singing psalms. Two thousand troops of Robert's army accompanied the festive entry into the city on the next day, and the Pope rode on a white palfrey. The houses were festooned with tapestries and a shower of flowers descended from the roofs. St. Peter's cathedral, which had seen no Pope during two generations, received the procession in the light of 18,000 lamps.

Gregory lived out another restless year lamenting his return. As he was dying a sombre message was brought to him from England. This country, which a decade before (1366) had seen the parliament of Edward III terminate its status as a fief of the Holy See, now wit- nessed a strong movement against Rome as the result of Wyclif s teachings. This Oxford theologian at first upheld the ideal of a poor Church; but then he went farther and recommended a secularized state church which was to combat monasticism, accept the Bible as the sole authority of the faithful, and attack the Papacy on the ground that Christ alone was the true Pope. Gregory anathematized eighteen of Wyclif s earlier theses and imposed the ban on him. Sensing the coming of a schism and bearing no love for the men and women who had urged him to return to Rome they had, he thought, confused their own erratic fantasies with Divine revelation he died in 1378, the last French Pope.

The schism proved a reality. It began in the year when Charles IV, the self-same Emperor who had prepared the way for a firmer bond between the German crown and the Papacy, died. The weak- ness of the Empire under the succeeding kings Wenceslaus and Rupprecht, the persistent efforts of France to dominate the Curia, the English struggle over a national church, the internecine strife of the Italian republics, the dissolution of the Papal States into small prin- cipalities, and a hundred years of destructive warfare between the Provencal, Hungarian and Southern Italian Anjous for the kingdom of Naples all this helped during a whole generation to unsettle the nations likewise unable to decide who was the lawfully elected Pope, The question of obediences made this schism a temptation for European Christianity to split up into French, Italian, Spanish, German and

2i 4 CATASTROPHE

English Churches. A chronicler of the fortunes of Peter's See might weU despair as he went over this troubled segment of time upon which no ray of light falls from above.

A stormy conclave which a mob of Francophobes invaded in order to insist upon a Roman or at least an Italian Pope, led hastily to the choice of a Cakbrian, Urban VI (1378-1389) . This turbulent Pon- tiff repudiated every custom and practice that had originated in Avignon. Some cardinals left Rome; others declared the election illegal, and with the help of France and Naples elected Robert of Geneva, little more than a purple clad bandit-general, as Clement VII (1378-1394). He was driven out of San Angelo by the Romans, escaped to Naples where he also found no followers, and then took a ship for Avignon. He appointed sufficient cardinals in addition to the six who had remained there to constitute a full College; and the King aided this newly constructed Curia with every means at his disposal. The Popes exchanged bans again and again, until the whole of Christianity was excommunicated from the Church. Peo- ples and princes were divided in obedience. Germany, Scandinavia and England joined with Italy in recognizing Urban VI, while Naples, Savoy, Scotland and later on also Spain and France recognized Clement VII. On both sides murders were committed. Monasteries and churches fell into ruin, the learned and the unlearned were locked in argument, and the Orders were of such divided minds that though Catherine of Siena and Vincent Ferrer, powerful preacher of penance and missionary to the Jews, both wore the same Dominican habit they supported different Popes. She took up the cause of Urban, and he urged the rights of Clement.

It was little wonder that men like Wyclif were able to reap a goodly harvest. How could a realm divided against itself endure? Should not one leave the Devil and Beelzebub to their certain destiny? Deeper minds thought otherwise. They clung fast to the idea of a supreme moral instance and of a representation of the eternal in the body of the Church. But the life of the members was not to be saved unless the head were first saved. If other times had had to protect die Church against the Papacy, these times were perforce compelled to rescue Church and Papacy alike from the Popes. The enemies enthroned on the Tiber and the Rhone had blotted out the maxim,

WYCLIF 215

older than a thousand years, that the Pope could be judged by no one. The "common sense" (sensus communis) o the Church, long since summoned to the rescue by the absolutism of the Roman See itself, now had to enter the breach. Self-help through a kind of parliamentary rule seemed to be the only way out of the chaotic state of affairs. Two German theologians, Conrad of Gelnhausen and Henry of Langenstein (the second of whom also appealed to the authority of St. Hildegard of Bingen) conferred in Paris during 1380 and developed out of ideas once sponsored by Ockham and Marcilius of Padua their theory that in rime of need the Church is empowered to summon General Councils despite the Popes, and that to the decisions of such Councils the Bishops of Rome are also subject. This suggestion was endorsed by the university and was nursed by many minds until the situation grew so desperate that recourse to it was unavoidable.

Pope Urban's policy in Naples was nothing but a series of wild adventures. When he unearthed a conspiracy against himself, he ordered the execution of five of the cardinals who had participated. The indignation aroused by this inhuman Pontiff was so great that when he died there was turbulent rejoicing. Yet the hope that the Roman College would not seek to elect a successor was doomed to disappointment. Urban was followed by the young and uneducated Boniface IX (13891404) . The schism caused him little concern but the Papal finances alarmed him since Church moneys were now paid into two Curiac and the pecuniary stability of his throne was thereby undermined. But the gold which his pedlars of indulgences brought home, whenever they did not pocket it themselves, he turned over to his relatives. Though the repute of this simonistic Pontiff was bad, the best minds of the University of Paris nevertheless urged that a new French election be postponed when Clement died in Avignon during the middle years of Boniface's pontificate. In vain had Pierre d'Ailly, Jean Charlier de Gerson, and Nicholas of Clemanges rec- ommended three roads toward peace to Clement before he died: the voluntary retirement of both Popes and a new election, or a decision by a court of arbitration selected from both camps, or a General Coun- cil. Their advice was now again in vain. Although the young king, the mentally unsettled Charles VI, had during a lucid moment him-

216 CATASTROPHE

self endorsed their recommendations, the cardinals elected Pedro di Luna, a Spaniard, Benedict XIII (1394-1417).

With unbending determination, this Pope who loved to rule re- sisted every plea o the Crown and of the University that he make an effort to reach a settlement. He was an admirer of St. Catherine of Siena and earnestly weighed plans to reform the Church; but for the sake of these plans he betrayed the Church and his genius alike. He was a little Hildebrand on a misguided errand, France itself as well as his native kingdoms of Castile and Navarre abrogated obedience to him, and for three years held him a prisoner in Avignon. Before his election he had sworn an oath to labour for the unity of the Church, but he lived up to this solemn promise by entering into meaningless negotiations with his opponent, after whose death the recalcitrant Romans elected a Pope of their own. Soon afterward he, too, died, and then they chose the aged Venetian cardinal who became Gregory XII (1406-1415). Both Popes pledged themselves to meet on the coast of Liguria and there exchange resignations; but the plan came to naught. With truly military caution they approached each other until only a small space intervened. According to the deposition of his secretary, Gregory said that he could live only on land and there- fore could not enter the water, while Benedict stated that he could live only on water and therefore could not go on land. All hope was gone. In Rome, the Pope, who indulged his favourites, still sur- rounded himself in his old age with a prodigal court. Finally even his own cardinals abandoned him. Meanwhile the Avignon party in France confronted a difficult situation when their benefactor, the Duke of Orleans who exercised the regency, was murdered. There- upon the cardinals of this Curia also urged that an understanding be reached with Rome. The two Colleges met in common assembly at Livorno and agreed that a Council should convene in Pisa during 1409. It was high time. Following the example set by English statesmen, France too had seriously undermined the position of the Papacy by declaring (1408) that it was illegal for the Popes to make appoint- ments to benefices or to tax the clergy. Gallicanism was in the as- cendancy. In common with Anglicanism it declared that the Pope might pasture his sheep but was not to fleece them. -

On the day appointed, the Council convened in the cathedral.

THREEFOLD Though both of the Popes had been invited, neither appeared. Thereupon the Council conferred upon itself the authority it lacked, so that Gerson and d'Ailly crowned their theory with victory. The assembly deposed both Popes and chose the archbishop of Milan, who had been born in Greece, as Alexander V. He closed the Council of Pisa and postponed the reform for which the countries were clamouring until such time as another Council could convene. The rightful cardinals lent him their support and the greater part of the Church followed suit, but unity of obedience was so far from being established that matters were now worse than before. After Alexander suddenly died, the man who had dominated him and the Council completed, as John XXIII (1410–1415), what one chronicler termed "the accursed trinity of the Papacy." This unscrupulous and lucky Neapolitan was far more suited to the role of a criminal than to that of a Pope (after him no other Pontiff took the name of John) and the number of those who ardently desired a great council of reform increased.

 

It was to prove a boon to the Papacy that there still existed an Imperial authority which had not abandoned the idea that part of its function was to exercise a protectorate over the Church. After a three-fold Imperial schism, Sigismund became master of Germany in 1410 and could deal with the monstrous apparition of a three-fold schism in the Papacy. The hopes of the tottering Church rested on him alone. With energy and diplomacy he brought about the Council of Constance. This was a European congress of spiritual and temporal leaders, and means more in the history of the Papacy than merely an attempt to end the schism through arbitration. The Council attempted to undermine the absolutism of the Papal universal monarchy by emphasizing the democratic and national elements in the constitution of the Church. Nevertheless the monarchical system was not surmounted either during the debates of the four years during which the Council remained in session, or during the eighteen years which the Council of Basel consumed. Nevertheless the nations strengthened in the political as well as in the spiritual sense their desire for self-determination. The deepest reason for this outcome, which cannot at all be ascribed to a great Papal personality (for no such personality appeared during these two decades), must be seen CATASTROPHE

to lie from the human point of view in the dogmatic and political essence of the Catholic Church. The iron determination to govern is the result of the Church's belief in the unity and inviolability of the law which it knows itself called upon to administer as the repre- sentative of the divinely established universal monarchy proclaimed in Christian revelation.

Sigismund realized the danger that lay in an aggressive Ottoman Empire, and was in addition confronted with religious and political up- heaval in Bohemia. The spirit of the Wyclifites had compelled Eng- land's parliament to legalize capital punishment as the only means of dealing with the Lollards, and it was now undermining civic order in the German eastern provinces as well. Prague, with its flourishing university, was the headquarters of these innovators. The Czech de- sire for political independence clashed with German tradition; and friends of ecclesiastical reform like Huss and Hieronymus were carried away by the fervour of their attack on a shameless traffic in indulgences and on a prelacy which had forgotten God to the point where their legitimate belief in their calling to cleanse the temple was tinged with Wyclifites ideas. They appealed from an errant Church to the Bible, from the Pope to Christ, and from the authority of existing institutions to personal conscience and conviction. In their zeal for the ideal Church they apostasized from the real Church.

The Emperor insisted upon obedience to Pope John. When he came to Italy, he then forced this Pope, who had been compelled to flee to Naples from Rome by the armies of Ladislas, to issue invitations to the Council. The choice of the German city of Constance indi- cated to John that whatever was done would be done inside the realm subject to Sigismund's authority. Therefore he sought at the same time to gain the support of Duke Frederic of Austria and John of Bur- gundy, both hostile to Sigismund. As he crossed the snow covered Arlberg and looked down upon the Bodensee, he said with a premo- nition of his destiny: "This, then, is the trap in which foxes are caught."

In Constance he was lodged in the bishop's palace. The public ses- sions were held in it and in the cathedral, and the discussions were con- cerned with the schism, with heresy and reform of the Church in all its members. They dealt also with the Bohemian question, the war

THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE 219

between England and France, and many other problems which con- cerned the peoples of Europe. The novel order of procedure adopted was in itself an expression of the Council theory: ballots were cast ac- cording to nations and not according to individuals. Italy with the whole College of Cardinals had only one vote, as did Germany, France and England. Huss was already living in the city, provided with an Imperial letter of conduct which did not, however, guarantee him protection against the ecclesiastical penal courts since it was only a political pass. Pope John, granted all the honours of a legitimate Sovereign Pontiff, presided over the first public session on November 16, 1414. Sigismund appeared at Christmas time and was soon also a witness of a practically universal desire to desert John. During the second general session the Pope, who himself opened the meeting with High Mass, had to read amidst great excitement a declaration whereby he was obliged to abdicate provided the other two Popes did likewise. This document was preceded by a list of grievances in the fearful mirror of which the Pope could not help seeing that his cause was hopeless. An attempt by the French delegates to transfer the Coun- cil to French territory gave him new assurance, but this was as bootless as was his desire to come to terms with the Spanish Pope through a personal meeting in Nizza. This encounter Sigismund sought to reserve for himself, and he was supported by the majority of the Coun- cil. Then with the aid of Duke Frederic the Pope managed to escape from Constance at dusk on the 2oth of March, despite all precautions taken by Sigismund. Safe in Burgundy or France he could have disregarded the vote of the Council to suspend his activities or have ordered (for he was not deposed as yet) the assembly to remove to the West. But the effort did not succeed. His sensational adventure in escape ended in a Mannheim prison, from which he was released only in 1419, after Italy had again conferred ecclesiastical honours upon him.

On the morning after the flight the Emperor himself rode through the streets with a blare of trumpets. At this time Constance was the principal city of Europe a market centre, a camp and a forum alike. Twenty thousand foreigners resided permanently within its walls. Its highly developed industrial life, the excellent conduct of which has been much praised, was in danger of sudden collapse if the con-

220 CATASTROPHE

gregated masses fled in a panic. In all probability even the smallest money-lender or dealer in bread was seized with fright, but Sigismund announced the Pope's escape and at the same time urged all to remain, promising to protect the city. Two weeks later, on April 6th, 1415, the Council met in permanent session and reached the following con- clusion, from which only a few of its members dissented: that the Council of Constance represented the entire Church on earth, that it received its power directly from Christ, and that therefore everyone, including the Pope, was obliged to obey it. In a trial that followed John XXIII was deposed, on May 29th, as a simonist and an offender against the code of the Papacy. Broken in spirit, he had already re- ceived in Radolfszel the implacable decree from the mouth of some of his loyal followers. They could now kiss only his hands and his lips and not his foot. On the day when the verdict was announced, he ordered the Papal cross removed from his room. At the same time a goldsmith of Constance was ordered to break up his seal and coat of arms.

On July 4th, Gregory XII, then almost ninety, proclaimed through a legate that he was willing to abdicate under certain conditions. Two days later Huss was put to death at the stake. Neither the Pope nor a Papal tribunal imposed this terrible sentence. It was decreed by the Council of Reform, the spiritual prime movers of which, Gerson and d' Ailly, had themselves vied with each other in opposing the Pope and the hierarchy. This deed, from which the bloody Hussite wars took their rise, followed the example given by the English Crown, and as a seemingly up-to-date method of fighting against revolution excited the Council and the rest of the world far less than it would so many more modern dogmatists of a dogmaless freedom. A year later Muss's courageous friend Hieronymus was also burned at the stake; and the throng of humanists who spent their time in Constance and the "sur- rounding country as diplomatic officials, investigators, and antiquar- ians had occasion to marvel at the spiritual fortitude of a martyr. Among them were Poggio and a future Pope ^Eneas Silvio.

With less difficulty the Council solved the problem of how to de- pose Pedro di Luna, Benedict XIII. He still had a following of four cardinals; and though nearly ninety he ruled the eastern coast of Spain from his castle on a crag above Pensacola, and wrote in imitation of

THE SPANISH SCHISM 221

Boethius a treatise "Concerning the Comforts of Theology." Sigis- mund himself had visited Benedict in his former residence at Perpignan and had tried in vain to induce him to conform with the decrees o the Council. Now, however, he persuaded the countries which were in obedience to this Pope Aragon, Castile, Navarre and Scotland to sign the Treaty of Narbonne in mid-December, 1415, and there- with to sever the relationship. By this time St. Vincent Ferrer of Valencia, a holy and influential Dominican preacher, had become an important figure in the situation. This apostle, whose mind never seemed to grow old, had made a futile effort to persuade the anti-Pope, whose countryman he was and whose confessor he had once been, to abdicate. He still clung to his purpose, negotiated with the Emperor in opposition to Benedict, discussed the matter with the kings of France and Aragon, and at length declared that for the sake of unity Benedict must go. Finally the Spanish entered the Council as the fifth nation, and during the summer of 1417 joined the other powers in voting that Pedro di Luna be deposed. Though Benedict died in 1424, the burlesque of the Spanish schism continued.

The Council was wrestling with the problem whether the reform of the Church should be discussed before the election of a new Pope or whether a new Pope should first be appointed to whom the reform might then be entrusted. In spite of the great tension between the French and the English (a war had broken out just a while before and France had suffered a severe blow at the Battle of Agincourt, the ef- fects of which were mitigated only as a result of the service rendered by St. Jeanne d'Arc in 1429) , the Council remained in session and arrived at definitive conclusions. Little was done in the matter of reform, though it was ruled that Councils must be summoned periodi- cally and that precautions must be taken against the threat of a new schism. These regulations were put in force and the form under which a new Papal election was to take place was decreed- In addi- tion to the College of twenty-three cardinals, six additional prelates from each of the five nations were given the right to vote.

The French were by no means pleased when on the nth of No- vember, 1417, an Italian Pope, Martin V (1417 1431) , emerged from the Conclave. He belonged to the family of Colonna which had

222 CATASTROPHE

caused trouble to many Popes, most particularly to Boniface at Anagni. Welcomed by the world as a saviour of unity, he received the threefold crown in the Cathedral of Constance. The ceremony was of such splendour that even Rome had seldom seen the equal.

Exactly a hundred years before ths re:\^!:-.ni of Luther, this Pope rode through a German city; and at his side the Roman King and the Prince-Elector of Brandenburg walked through the deep mud holding the bridle reins of his steed. The Papacy was saved, but the man who was now Pope did not save the Church. The spirit and the mission of the Council, which came to a close in 1418, had been com- mitted into faithless hands. The fact that his fascinating character had won over everyone helped little or not at all to reform the Church in all its members. He went to Florence and from there, by diplo- macy and military action, succeeded in liberating the Papal States from the power of Naples and wild robber bands. The Eternal City and the surrounding territory afforded a picture of misery as a result of the war and famine which had been visited upon them. In Sep- tember, 1424, the Pope made his entry through the Porta del Populo. He took up residence in the Vatican and rebuilt ruined churches, in- cluding the Basilica of the Lateran which had long before been de- stroyed by fire, and as a Pope-King established the monarchical unity of his temporal power.

For more than a hundred years afterward Papal policy remained intimately bound up with the lesser fortunes of Rome and Italy. The axis of this policy became the Papal States, the emphasis on which increased as rime went on, because though the universal Church had the power to levy taxes, the triumph of nationalist particularism formed part of the troubles which necessarily confronted the spiritual head of a territorial monarchy obliged to pay soldiers, maintain a court, support cardinals and embassies, and become the builder and benefactor of his city. Martin V soon proved to be an able regent of the temporal power and an equally slothful shepherd of his flock. Neither as Pope nor as prince was he fond of the councilar idea. This was a threat to the monarchical character of the Church, and every reform it sponsored diminished the income with which alone he could balance his budget. But the nations were so persistent in demanding the continuance of the work begun at Constance that the Pope was

THE COUNCIL OF BASEL 223

compelled after many evasions to summon the Council of Basel. Car- dinal Giuliano Gesarini, who had preached the crusade against the powerful rebellion of the Hussites, wrote the Pope that it was high rime to act. Martin appointed the Cardinal president of the Council and thereupon died.

Constance was dominated by an idea of the Papacy, the bearer of which (reminiscent of Dante's imperial president of the peoples) was to be caput ministeriale, a serving head, and so to strive to bring about through free co-operation with the members of the body of the Church the subordination of all things earthly to the laws of Christ, If one compares the spirit of this Council with the attitude of the old Church, one sees that in spite of many resemblances of a superficial kind there had taken place during a thousand years a transition from enthusiasm to reason and from visionary yearning for the Civitas Dei to a query put by men who knew history as to what the function of the Church really was. What place did philosophy and law assign to it in the complex of human existence, and what form of adjustment between the Church and the Papacy was desirable? This new structure had been half completed at Constance but it was to fall into complete ruin at Basel. Nevertheless the event also had its meaning and its conse- quences.

Eugene IV (14311447), an honest, strict Venetian religious, gave the Conclave the promise it exacted that he would carry out a reform of the Church and the Curia. He did not lack fanatical zeal, but he was wholly without political skill and intellectual vision. Though he may have been bound by the agreement made by his predecessor to summon a future Council of Union on the southern coast of Italy, his attempt to suspend the deliberations of Basel after they had scarce be- gun and to choose another site compelled all those who participated in the Council to oppose him from the beginning. Sigismund, the German princes and the King of France adopted a hostile attitude; Cardinal Oesarini joined forces with them and finally persuaded the Pope himself to abandon his plan. The decision of Constance that the highest powers of the Church were lodged in the Council was proclaimed anew; Pope Eugene was called upon to justify his attitude, and a movement to depose him was threatened. Sigismund went to Rome and during the last days of May, 1433, managed to have him-

224 CATASTROPHE

self crowned Emperor. The diplomacy he used made less of an im- pression on Eugene than did attacks staged by the Visconri and other enemies. They looked upon his disagreement with the Council as an excure for stirring up popular resentment and therewith tumult. Eu- gene recognized the authority of the Council by signing a formula submitted to him; but the reforms it decreed threatened to close the sources from which the Curia could obtain much needed money. When the Council of Union was broached a minority wished to con- voke in Italy while a majority sided with the French (the object here was to restore the Gallican Papacy) and favoured Avignon. There- with minds were sundered into two hostile camps. A spiritual cleav- age went hand in hand with a disagreement concerning policy. The stronger wing of those who favoured parliamentarianism became more and more radically democratic. Caesarini and others, including the notable philosophic pioneer Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, completely revised their attitude and once again linked up their ideal of popular government, humanism and culture with a sovereign ecclesiastical mon- archy. They attended the Council of Union which met in company with the Greeks and all other Oriental peoples in Ferrara during 1438. It removed to Florence after 1439, and later on completed in Rome the difficult task of reunion. This was, however, only short lived because the Eastern Empire had to surrender Hagia Sophia to Allah and his Prophet in 1453*

The Council of Basel continued under French leadership. Both Germany and France managed to derive political benefits from the edicts of reform issued before the breach with the Pope occurred. Declarations against Roman centralism and the system of tithes were declared a law of the state in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438). The German Prince-Electors who after Sigismund's death maintained a neutral attitude amidst the quarrels which disrupted the Church, resolved at the Reichstag of Mayence in 1439 to fU w French example in so far as their principalities were concerned. The **Rump Parliament" of Basel committed suicide by deposing Eugene and setting up an anti-Pope the last one in history. This Felix V (1439-1449) was the rich Duke Amadeus of Savoy, who after a long reign in Rippaille on the Lake of Geneva, became a hermit living in perfect comfort as the head of an order of religious knights. He had

THE COUNCIL OF BASEL 225

few supporters even in France. ./Eneas Silvio, the humanist, entered his service as secretary and lauded the spirit of Basel in the purest Latin, but abandoned the post three years later, entered the service of the German Imperial chancellery in 1442, and then as a convert to the idea of a strong Papacy laboured in behalf of Eugene IV. Together with Caspar Schlick, whom Sigismund had appointed Chancellor, and in co-operation with the travelling legates Nicholas of Cusa and Thomas ParentucelH (the next Pope), he used every means and every trick known to skillful diplomacy to bring about the end of German neutral- ity that was already favouring a breach with Eugene. He persuaded Frederic III, the weak representative of Habsburg power and German monarchy, to order the Council out of the imperial city of Basel, in- duced the princes to sign concordats (from these there developed later on the rights of princes over the churches in their territories) , and by means of the Concordat of Vienna (1448), which was declared an Imperial law in Aschaffenburg (1449) > he linked the German Church once more to a Papacy which could impose obligations but was itself above having such obligations imposed upon it. Pope Eugene did not live to see the completion of his work, but as he died he had the joy of knowing that the German ambassadors had professed obedience to him.

The wraith of the Council of Basel moved to Lausanne and there came to an end in 1449, a ^ ter ^ e ^ kad abdicated. The parliament in which, according to ^Eneas Silvio's account, the same bishops who defended their rights against Rome took to quarrelling with cooks and stable boys, ceased to possess any claim to existence. But the great chance to carry out reform in all departments of the Church was also not utilized by the Popes and the princes.

There are two kinds of sap which rise in the tree of the Church. Or rather there are two of which we are always made aware anew. The one now rose out of the world of that antiquity which again struggled toward rebirth, toward renaissance, and the other flowed from the Gospel that proclaims the death and rebirth of man into Christlikeness. These two forces were separated and merged, were wrapped in struggle, were persuaded to undergo reconciliation in that world of opposites which came by its reputation of inner unity simply because it was given an all-inclusive name the Renaissance.

THE