The Historians' History of the World 08

The latter was in very truth too weak to keep his word; moreover he was himself deposed by the secret machinations of his pope Boniface IX (1400). On the other hand, by the decree of a new national synod France withdrew from the obedience of Benedict; Castile followed her example (1398), and this pope was kept a prisoner at Avignon. It was not till after the lapse of many years, and the breach of express engagements, that Benedict succeeded in regaining the church of France to his obedience (1403) by the help of the duke of Orleans, who at that time had won the ascendency at court. It was quickly manifest how little he meant to keep these promises; but as the Italian cardinals imposed similar engagements upon their new pope Innocent VII, on his election in 1404, even only with a view to save appearances, it was necessary to open negotiations. The fruitlessness of this proceeding increased the general discontent; France threatened her pope with a fresh withdrawal of allegiance (national council of January, 1407), when at length both the popes agreed upon a personal interview at Savona in September, 1407. Benedict appeared there in person; however, Gregory XII went only as far as Lucca, and opened fresh negotiations for another place of congress. This public breach of promise roused the Roman cardinals; they forsook their pope Gregory, and renounced their allegiance to him, at the same time that France withdrew from the obedience of Benedict. Benedict indeed escaped the imprisonment with which he was threatened, by flight to Perpignan; but the cardinals of both obediences united at Livorno (Leghorn) and summoned a general council at Pisa in March, 1409, with a view to the termination of the schism.

[1378-1417 A.D.]

The schism with its church oppression furnished the impulse, the weakness of the papal see gave the long desired opportunity for an unbiased trial of the existing state of the church; it led men to opinions which had hitherto only been mooted in violent struggles with the popes, and so not without an appearance of passion and party spirit; but now they struck root so deeply, even among the most faithful adherents of the church, that they could never again be entirely suppressed. Many an anxious gaze was turned backwards to the earlier and better ages of the church, in order to discover in its constitution the remedy for the scandals of the present. This was a problem of learning. Its representatives, the universities, particularly that of Paris, were listened to with eager attention, and attained an influence which was formidable even to the popes. This comparison of the present with the earlier ages of the church could not but lead to many convictions unfavourable to the papal see.

True there were but isolated individuals who advanced so far upon this line of thought as to wish the papacy quite removed from the church as the source of all her evils. But even its truest adherents now acknowledged the immoderate extension of papal power, and the monstrous exaggeration of the papal dignity. They discovered in the bent of the papacy to secular power the prime cause of all mischief, and even to the schism, and they wished the times back again when the emperors could convoke synods by their own authority to strangle a schism at its birth. No less general was the discontent expressed against the papal church oppressions, and the wish to remove them by limitations of the papal power. Hitherto only adversaries of the popes, at open war with them, had appealed to a general council as a higher authority, but during the schism circumstances led to a general acknowledgment that such a council must rank above the pope. After the Council of Pisa was summoned to terminate the contest between the two popes, and set a limit to the abuses of papal power, the canonists vied with each other in demonstrating this new opinion so injurious to the papacy, of the superiority of general councils to the pope, and thus the papal system of the last century seemed to be threatened with total overthrow.

RELATION OF THE NATIONAL CHURCHES TO THE STATE

A Bishop of the Fourteenth Century