Church, among the most notable movements being those led by
John Wycliffe in England and John Huss on the Continent. At
last a council was called to decide who was the rightful
claimant to the papal throne. The council assembled at Pisa,
Italy, in 1409, but recognized neither of the then rival
popes--Gregory XII and Benedict XIII--Alexander V being
elected in their stead. The deposed popes, however, would
not give up their rule, and so the action of the council
added to the difficulty, since there were now three popes
instead of two.
Alexander V died ten months after his election, and the
cardinals chose as his successor Cardinal Cossa, who took
the name of John XXIII. The Church remained as much divided
as before. In 1412 Pope John, who was a shrewd and politic
man, opened at Rome a council for the reformation of the
Church, but there seems to have been little serious purpose
either on the part of John himself or of the ecclesiastics
who assembled; and practically nothing was done.
John was more concerned about his political relations with
various sovereigns. He was at war with Ladislaus, King of
Naples, who soon drove him from Rome. John fled to Florence,
and appealed to Sigismund, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire,
for assistance. But the Emperor would aid him only on
condition that the Pope should summon a new council to some
German city, in order to end the schism. At last John issued
a formal summons for a council to meet at Constance on
November 1, 1414. Before it assembled, Ladislaus died, and
Sigismund determined to conduct the council in the interest
of his imperial dignity and that of the German kingship,
which he also held.
The Council of Constance, like that of Pisa, had two very obvious
questions to consider: (1) The restoration of unity; and (2), if the
reforming party could have its way, the reform of the Church in its head
and members. But circumstances forced the council to consider a third
question, which had never been even touched in the discussions at Pisa.
This was reformation in its widest sense; not merely a constitutional
change in the relations of pope and hierarchy, but a vital change in
dogma and ritual. This question was brought to the front by the
so-called Hussite movement in Bohemia. The fundamental issues involved
were those which have been at the bottom of most subsequent disputes in
the Christian Church.
How far was the Christianity of the day unlike the Christianity to be
found in the record of Christ and his apostles? And the difference, if
any, was it a real and necessary difference consequent on the
development of society, or was it the result of abuses and innovations
introduced by fallible men? The orthodox took their stand upon the unity
and authority of the Church. The Church was the true foundation of
Christ and the inheritor of his spirit. Therefore what the Church
believed and taught, that alone was the true Christian doctrine; and the
forms and ceremonies of the Church were the necessary aids to faith. The
reformers, on the other hand, looked to Scripture for the fundamental
rules of life and conduct. Any deviation from these rules, no matter on
what authority, must be superfluous and might very probably be harmful.
The Council of Constance is one of the most notable assemblies in the
history of the world. In the number and fame of its members, in the
importance of its objects, and, above all, in the dramatic interest of
its records, it has few rivals. It is like the meeting of two worlds,
the old and the new, the mediæval and the modern. We find there
represented views which have hardly yet been fully accepted, which have
occupied the best minds of succeeding centuries; at the same time, the
council itself and its ceremonial carry us back to the times of the
Roman Empire, when church and state were scarcely yet dual, and when
Christianity was coextensive with one united empire. At Constance all
the ideas, religious and political, of the Middle Ages seem to be put
upon their trial. If that trial had ended in condemnation, there could
be no fitter point to mark the division between mediæval and modern
history. But the verdict was acquittal, or at least a partial aquittal;
and the old system was allowed, under modified conditions, a lease of
life for another century. It must not be forgotten that there were
great secular as well as ecclestiasical interests involved in the
council. Princes and nobles were present as well as cardinals and
prelates. The council may be regarded not only as a great assembly of
the Church, but also as a great diet of the mediæval empire.
The man who had done more than anyone to procure the summons of the
council, and whose interests were most closely bound up in its success,
was Sigismund, King of the Romans and potential Emperor. He was eager to
terminate the schism, and to bring about such a reform in the Church as
would prevent the recurrence of similar scandals. But his motive in this
was not merely disinterested devotion to the interests of the Church. He
wished to revive the prestige of the Holy Roman Empire, and to gratify
his own personal vanity by posing as the secular head of Christendom and
the arbiter of its disputes. More especially he wished to restore the
authority of the monarchy in Germany, and to put an end to that anarchic
independence of the princes of which the recent schism was both the
illustration and the result.
In pursuing this aim he was confronted by the champions of "liberty" and
princely interests, who were represented at Constance by the Archbishop
of Mainz and Frederick of Hapsburg, Count of Tyrol. The Archbishop, John
of Nassau, had been prominent in effecting and prolonging the schism in
the Empire. He was a firm supporter of John XXIII, and had no interest
in attending the council except to thwart the designs of the King, whom
he had been the last to accept. Frederick of Tyrol was the youngest son
of that duke Leopold who had fallen at Sempach in the war with the
Swiss. Of his father's possessions Frederick had inherited Tyrol and the
Swabian lands, and the propinquity of his territories made him a
powerful personage at Constance. His family was the chief rival of the
house of Luxemburg for ascendency in Eastern Germany, and he himself
seems to have cherished a personal grudge against Sigismund. To these
enemies Sigismund could oppose two loyal allies, the elector palatine
Lewis, who had completely abandoned the anti-Luxemburg policy pursued by
his father, Rupert, and Frederick of Hohenzollern, the most prominent
representative of national sentiment in Germany, who had already given
in Brandenburg an example of that restoration of order which he wished
Sigismund to effect throughout his dominions.
Of the clerical members of the council the most prominent at the
commencement was the pope John XXIII. He had been forced by his
difficulties in Italy to issue the summons, but as the time for the
meeting approached he felt more and more misgiving. His object was to
maintain himself in office; but he was conscious that neither Sigismund
nor the cardinals would hesitate to throw him over if he stood in the
way of the restoration of unity. He therefore allied himself with
Sigismund's opponents, the Elector of Mainz and Frederick of Tyrol, and
spared no pains to bring about dissension between Sigismund and the
council.
The assembled clergy may be divided roughly into two parties, the
reformers, and the conservative or ultramontane party. The reformers
were not in favor of any radical change in the Church. They were, if
anything, more vehemently opposed than their antagonists to the
doctrines of Wycliffe and Huss. Such reform as they desired was
aristocratic rather than democratic. They had no intention of weakening
the authority of the Church; but within the Church they desired to
remove gross abuses, and to strengthen the hierarchy as against the
papacy. Their chief contention was that a general council has supreme
authority, even over the pope, and they wished such councils to meet at
regular intervals. By this means papal absolutism would be limited by a
sort of oligarchical parliament within the Church. The conservatives, on
the other hand, consisting chiefly of the cardinals and Italian
prelates, had no wish to alter a system under which they enjoyed
material advantages. Their object, as it had been at Pisa, was to
restore the union of the Church, but to defeat, or at any rate postpone,
any schemes of reform.
The council was opened on November 5th, but the meeting was only formal,
and no real business was transacted for a month. Meanwhile Huss had been
followed to Constance by the representatives of the orthodox party in
Bohemia, who brought a formidable list of charges against the reformer.
John XXIII at once saw in this an opportunity for embroiling the council
with Sigismund. Adroitly keeping himself in the background, he allowed
the cardinals to take the lead in the matter. They summoned Huss to
appear before them, and in spite of his protest that he was only
answerable to the whole council, they committed him to prison. The news
that his safe-conduct had been so insultingly disregarded reached
Sigismund as he was starting for Constance after the coronation ceremony
at Aachen.
He arrived on Christmas Day, and at once demanded that Huss should be
released. The Pope excused himself, and threw the blame on the
cardinals. To the King's right to protect his subject the cardinals
opposed their duty to suppress heresy. In high dudgeon, Sigismund
declared that he would leave the council to its fate, and actually set
out on his return journey. The Pope was jubilant at the success of his
wiles. But Sigismund's friends, and especially Frederick of
Hohenzollern, urged him not to sacrifice the interests of Germany and of
Christendom for the sake of a heretic. This advice, and the feeling that
his personal reputation was staked on the success of the council,
triumphed. Sigismund returned to Constance, and Huss remained a
prisoner. From this moment John XXIII began to despair.
The Pope's position became worse when the council, copying the procedure
of the universities, began to discuss matters, not in a general
assembly, but each nation separately. This deprived John of the
advantage which he hoped to gain from the numerical majority of Italian
prelates attending the council. Four nations organized themselves:
Italians, French, Germans, and English. Over the last three John XXIII
had no hold whatever. To his disgust they treated him, not as the
legitimate pope, whose authority was to be vindicated against his
rivals, but as one of three schismatic popes, whose retirement was a
necessary condition of the restoration of unity. When he tried to evade
their demand, they brought unanswerable charges against his personal
character and threatened to depose him.
He tried to disarm hostility by declaring his readiness to resign if the
other popes would do the same. His promise was welcomed with enthusiasm,
but neither Sigismund nor his supporters were softened by it. In spite
of the vehement protests of the Elector of Mainz that he would obey no
pope but John XXIII, the proposal was made to proceed to a new
election. John had to fall back upon his last expedient. If he departed
from Constance he might throw the council into fatal confusion; at the
worst he could maintain himself as an antipope, as Gregory and Benedict
had done against the Council of Pisa. His ally Frederick of Tyrol was
prepared to assist him. Frederick arranged a tournament outside the
walls; and while this absorbed public interest, the Pope escaped from
Constance in the disguise of a groom, and made his way to Schaffhausen,
a strong castle of the Hapsburg Count.
For the moment John XXIII seemed not unlikely to gain his end. Constance
was thrown into confusion by the news of his flight. The mob rushed to
pillage the papal residence. The Italian and Austrian prelates prepared
to leave the city, and the council was on the verge of dissolution. But
Sigismund's zeal and energy succeeded in averting such a disaster. He
restored order in the city, persuaded the prelates to remain, and took
prompt measures to punish his rebellious vassal. An armed force under
Frederick of Hohenzollern succeeded in capturing not only John XXIII,
but also Frederick of Tyrol. The latter was compelled to undergo public
humiliation, and to hand over his territories to his suzerain on
condition that his life should be spared. No such exercise of imperial
power had been witnessed in Germany since the days of the Hohenstaufen,
and Sigismund chose this auspicious moment to secure a powerful
supporter within the electoral college by handing over the electorate of
Brandenburg to Frederick of Nuremberg, April 30, 1415. He thus
established a dynasty which was destined to play a great part in German
history, and ultimately to create a new German empire.
The unsuccessful flight of John XXIII not only enabled Sigismund to
assume a more authoritative position in the council and in Germany; it
also sealed his own fate. The council had no longer any hesitation in
proceeding to the formal deposition of the Pope May 29, 1415. As the two
popes who had been deposed at Pisa had never been recognized at
Constance, the Church was now without a head. But instead of hastening
to fill the vacancy, the council turned aside to the suppression of
heresy and the trial of Huss. On three occasions, the 5th, 7th, and 8th
of June, Huss was heard before a general session. No point in his
teaching excited greater animadversion than his contention that a
priest, whether pope or prelate, forfeited his office by the commission
of mortal sin. With great cunning his accusers drew him on to extend
this doctrine to temporal princes. This was enough to complete the
alienation of Sigismund, and after the third day's trial he was the
first to pronounce in favor of condemnation. The last obstacle in the
way of the prosecution was thus removed, and Huss was burned in a meadow
outside the city walls on July 6, 1415.
With the death of Huss ends the first and most eventful period of the
Council of Constance. Within these seven or eight months Sigismund and
the reforming party, thanks to the division of the council into nations,
seemed to have gained a signal success. Sigismund had purchased his
triumph by breaking his pledge to Huss, and for this he was to pay a
heavy penalty in the subsequent disturbances in Bohemia. But for the
moment these were not foreseen, and Sigismund was jubilantly eager to
prosecute his scheme. Warned by the experience of its predecessor at
Pisa, the Council of Constance was careful not to put too much trust in
paper decrees. John XXIII was not only deposed, but a prisoner. Gregory
XII had given a conditional promise of resignation, and had so few
supporters as to be of slight importance. But Benedict XIII was still
strong in the allegiance of the Spanish kingdoms, and unless they could
be detached from his cause there was little prospect of ending the
schism.
This task Sigismund volunteered to undertake, and he also proposed to
avert the impending war between England and France, to reconcile the
Burgundian and Armagnac parties in the latter country, and to negotiate
peace between the King of Poland and the Teutonic Knights. It would,
indeed, be a revival of the imperial idea if its representative could
thus act as a general mediator in European quarrels. The council
welcomed the offer with enthusiasm, and showed their loyalty to
Sigismund by deciding to postpone all important questions till his
return. And this decision was actually adhered to. During the sixteen
months of Sigismund's absence--July 15, 1415, to January 27, 1417--only
two prominent subjects were considered by the council. One was the trial
of Jerome of Prague, which was a mere corollary of that of Huss, and
ended in a similar sentence. The other was the thorny question raised by
the proposed condemnation of the writings of Jean Petit, a Burgundian
partisan who had defended the murder of the Duke of Orleans. The leader
of the attack upon Jean Petit was Gerson, the learned and eloquent
chancellor of the University of Paris. But so completely had the matter
become a party question, and so great was the influence of the Duke of
Burgundy, that the council could not be induced to go further than a
general condemnation of the doctrine of lawful tyrannicide; and Gerson's
activity in the matter provoked such ill-will that after the close of
the council he could not venture to return to France, which was then
completely under Burgundian and English domination.
It is impossible to narrate here the story of Sigismund's journey,
though it abounds with illustrations of his impulsive character and of
the attitude of the western states toward the imperial pretensions. It
furnished conclusive proofs, if any were needed, that however the
council, for its own ends, might welcome the authority of a secular
head, national sentiment was far too strongly developed to give any
chance of success to a projected revival of the mediæval empire. As
regards his immediate object, Sigismund was able to achieve some
results. He failed to induce Benedict XIII to abdicate, but the quibbles
of the veteran intriguer exhausted the patience of his supporters, and
at a conference at Narbonne the Spanish kings agreed to desert him and
to adhere to the Council of Constance, December, 1415. But Sigismund's
more ambitious schemes came to nothing. So far from preventing a war
between England and France, he only forwarded an alliance between Henry
V and the Duke of Burgundy; and though he may have done this in the hope
of forcing peace upon France, the result was to make the war more
disastrous and prolonged.
When Sigismund reappeared in Constance, January 27, 1417, he found that
the state of affairs both in Germany and in the council had altered for
the worse. Frederick of Tyrol had returned to his dominions and had been
welcomed by his subjects.
The Archbishop of Mainz had renewed his intrigues, and an attempt had
even been made to release John XXIII. With the Elector Palatine,
formerly his loyal supporter, Sigismund had quarrelled on money matters,
and it seemed possible that the four Rhenish electors would form a
league against Sigismund as they had done against Wenceslaus in 1400.
Still more galling was his loss of influence in the council. The
adhesion of the Spanish kingdoms had been followed by the arrival of
Spanish prelates, who formed a fifth nation and strengthened the party
opposed to reform. The war between England and France had created a
quarrel between the two nations at Constance, and the French deserted
the cause they had once championed rather than vote with their enemies.
Sigismund could only rely upon the English and the Germans; and the
question which agitated the council was one of vital importance. Which
was to come first, the election of a new pope or the adoption of a
scheme of ecclesiastical reform? The conservatives contended that the
Church could hardly be said to exist without its head; that no reform
would be valid until the normal constitution of the Church was restored.
On the other hand, it was urged that no reform was possible unless the
supremacy of a general council was fully recognized; that certain
questions could be more easily discussed and settled during a vacancy;
that if the reforms were agreed upon, a new pope could be pledged to
accept them, whereas a pope elected at once could prevent all reform.
Party spirit ran extremely high, and it seemed almost impossible to
effect an agreement. Sigismund was openly denounced as a heretic, while
he in turn threatened to imprison the cardinals for contumacy.
But gradually the balance turned against the reformers. Some of the
leading German bishops were bribed to change their votes. The head of
the English representatives, Robert Hallam, Bishop of Salisbury, died at
the critical moment, and the influence of Henry Beaufort, the future
cardinal, induced the English nation to support an immediate election.
It was agreed that a new pope should be chosen at once, and that the
council should then proceed to the work of reform. But the only
preliminary concession that Sigismund and his party could obtain was the
issue of a decree in October, 1417, that another council should meet
within five years, a second within seven years, and that afterward a
council should be regularly held every ten years.
For the new election it was decided that the twenty-three cardinals
should be joined by thirty delegates of the council, six from each
nation. The conclave met on November 8th, and three days later their
choice fell upon Cardinal Oddo Colonna, who took the name of Martin V.
Even the defeated party could not refrain from sharing in the general
enthusiasm at the restoration of unity after forty years of schism. But
their fears as to the ultimate fate of the cause of reform were fully
justified. Soon after his election Martin declared that it was impious
to appeal to a council against a papal decision. Such a declaration, as
Gerson said, nullified the acts of the councils of Pisa and Constance,
including the election of the Pope himself. In their indignation the
members made a strong appeal to the Pope to fulfil the conditions agreed
upon before his election. But Martin had a weapon to hand which had been
furnished by the council itself.
It was the division into nations that had led to the fall of John XXIII,
and it was the same division into nations that had ruined the prospects
of reform. The Pope now drew up a few scanty articles of reform, which
he offered as separate concordats to the French, Germans, and English.
It was a dangerous expedient for a pope to adopt, because it seemed to
imply the separate existence of national churches; but it answered its
immediate purpose. Martin could contend that there was no longer any
work for the council to do, and he dissolved it in May, 1418.
He set out for Italy, where a difficult task awaited him. Papal
authority in Rome had ceased with the flight of John XXIII in 1414.
Sigismund offered the Pope a residence in some Germany city, but Martin
wisely refused. The support of his own family, the Colonnas, enabled him
to reënter Rome in 1421. By that time almost all traces of the schism
had disappeared. Gregory XII was dead; John XXIII had recently died in
Florence; Benedict XIII still held out in his fortress of Peniscola, but
was impotent in his isolation.
TRIAL AND BURNING OF JOHN HUSS
THE HUSSITE WARS
A.D. 1415
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH
Among the heralds of the Reformation, John Wycliffe, the
English Protestant who antedated Protestantism by a century
and a half, holds the first position in order of time. For
many years after the death of Wycliffe the movement which he
began continued to be, as it was at first, confined to
England; but at length it was to acquire a wider
significance and to enter upon its European extension.
Not long after his own day the spirit of Wycliffe--even
before knowledge of his work had crossed the Channel--had
come to a new birth on the Continent. And when some sparks
of Wycliffe's own fire were blown over the half of
Europe--even as far as Bohemia--the kindred fires which had
long burned in spite of all suppression were quickened into
a living and a spreading flame.
While then there was a direct and vital influence from the
work of the English reformer which gave to his teachings
partial identity with those of his Bohemian successors, the
movement led by these was still quite independent and
national.
The central figure of the Bohemian Reformation was John
Huss, or Hus, the son of a peasant. He was born in 1369 at
Husinetz--of which his own name is a contraction--in
Southern Bohemia. The principal events of his life, from the
time that he took his degree at the University of Prague
until his death at the stake, July 6, 1415, will be found in
Trench's sympathetic but discriminating narrative.