JOHN XXIII. AND THE GREAT SCHISM
The next important stage in the devolution of the Papacy is the Great
Schism, the spectacle of which moved the increasing body of cultivated
laymen and the better clergy to examine critically the bases of the
Papal claims and seek an authority which should control the wanton
conduct of the Popes. The essential mischief of the long stay of the
Papal Court at Avignon is obscured when it is called a Babylonian
Captivity. Few of the Popes were servile to France, and it was not
France that detained them on the banks of the Rhone. The gravest
consequences of their voluntary exile were, that the isolation from
their Italian estates led them to pursue a corrupt and intolerable
fiscal policy: that the College of Cardinals degenerated and became
less scrupulous in the choice of a Pope: and, especially, that the
rival ambition of French and Italian cardinals to control the Papacy
led to an appalling schism. This phase will be best illustrated by an
account of the antecedents and the remarkable Pontificate of John XXIII.
The return of the Papal Court to Rome was mainly due to political
causes. Clement VI. (1342-1352), whose voluptuous indolence ignobly
crowned the fiscal system of John XXII., was followed by three Popes
who at least desired reform. The third of these, Gregory XI., was too
weak or resourceless to curb the ruthless action of his Legates in
Italy, and the sight of wild Breton mercenaries and hardly less wild
English adventurers (of Hawkwood's infamous company) spreading rape and
rapine under the Papal banner, disgusted the cities and states of the
Peninsula. Under the lead of Florence, they proceeded to affirm and
establish the independence of Italy. It was this threat, rather than
the romantic rebukes of a young nun (Catherine of Siena), which drew
Gregory XI., in 1376, from the safe and luxurious palace-fortress at
Avignon. A month after his arrival at Rome the Breton hirelings under
Cardinal Robert of Geneva committed a frightful massacre at Cesena, and
Gregory was almost driven back to Avignon by the storm which ensued.
But he died on March 27, 1378, and the cardinals met nervously at Rome
to choose a successor.
The din of the bloody encounter of Gascon, Breton, and Roman troops
in the streets reached the cardinals in the privacy of the Conclave.
One day, indeed, the armed Romans burst into the sacred chamber, and
brandished their weapons before the eyes of the terrified French
cardinals. Yet it is generally agreed that there was not such
compulsion as to invalidate the election, and Urban VI. became the
legitimate head of the Church. In the circumstances a delicate and
tactful policy was required, and the austere Neapolitan, of humble
birth, who secured the tiara was in this respect the least fitted of
the cardinals. He violently and vituperatively denounced the wealth
and luxury of his colleagues, and he alienated Italians no less than
French by the grossness of his manners. Within a few months the French
cardinals retired to Fondi, discovered that the election was invalid
on account of intimidation, and set up Robert of Geneva, a ruthless
soldier and entirely worldly-minded priest, as Anti-Pope, with the
title of Clement VII. So the schism began, and Christendom split into
two bitterly hostile "obediences." Clement retired to Avignon, and
preyed on France more avariciously than John XXII. had done: Urban's
impetuous rudeness wrapped Italy in a flame of war once more. In 1389
another Neapolitan, Boniface IX., succeeded Urban, and it is during
his Pontificate that there came upon the scene Baldassare Cossa, the
unscrupulous adventurer who became John XXIII.
Cossa was a Neapolitan, and is said by his hostile contemporary
Dietrich von Nieheim to have been a pirate in his youth.[265] Many
recent historians reject this statement, but as it is certain and
admitted that Cossa's two brothers were condemned to death for piracy
by Ladislaus of Naples, and it is clear that in his youth Cossa took
some part in the Angevin-Neapolitan war, it is not improbable that
Baldassare was himself engaged in raiding the Neapolitan commerce. He
was born about 1368, of a noble but impoverished Neapolitan house,
and he seems to have been known to the Neapolitan Pope. In his early
twenties he forsook the army or the sea, for which alone he was
qualified, and went to study law at Bologna. In 1392 Boniface made him
Archdeacon at Bologna: in 1396 he was summoned to the office of Private
Chamberlain at Rome, and his career began.
He was a typical Neapolitan--dark-eyed, keen-witted, of very robust
frame and very frail moral instincts--and the Pope needed such men.
During the first seven years of his Pontificate Boniface was kept in
check by the older cardinals, but, as they died, he sought money by
fair or foul means for the recovery of Italy. France and Spain sent
their gifts to Avignon, and England and Germany were not generous.
Benefices, from the highest to the lowest, were sold daily, and the
"first fruits" were demanded in advance. As the system developed,
spies were employed over Italy and Germany to report on the health of
aged beneficiaries, and there was a sordid traffic in "expectations."
Baldassare Cossa, the chief instrument of this gross simony, had
various scales of payment, and the purchaser of the "expectation"
of a benefice might find it sold over him to a higher bidder for a
"preference." A Jubilee had been announced for the year 1390, and
Boniface got the fruits of it, but this did not deter him from reaping
another golden harvest from a Jubilee in 1400. As, moreover, many
pilgrims, especially in Germany and Scandinavia, were deterred from
coming to Rome by the bands of robbers and ravishers who infested the
Papal estates, Boniface generously enacted that Germans might obtain
the same pardon by visiting certain shrines nearer home and paying to
Papal agents the cost of a journey to Rome.
These simoniacal practices are established and admitted, quite apart
from the testimony of Dietrich. We must, indeed, admit the evidence
of Dietrich when he tells us that he saw these Papal agents spread
their silk curtains and unfold their Papal banners in the churches of
Germany, and heard them declare to the ignorant people that St. Peter
himself had not greater power than they. We may also easily believe
his assurance that many of the German clergy denounced this traffic in
indulgences[266] and that it brought enormous sums to the Papacy. But
the precise sums, and the romantic stories, which Dietrich gives on
hearsay, especially in regard to Cossa, must be regarded with reserve.
He says that Cossa, when Legate at Bologna, arrested one of these
monk-agents returning to Rome with his bags of gold and relieved him;
and that the monk hanged himself in despair. These are fragments of
foolish rumour. We cannot deal so summarily with his statement that
the Chamberlain had his percentage of the profits and let it grow in
the hands of the usurers; and that he extorted money from prelates
by mendaciously representing that Boniface was angry with them and
offering to mediate. All that we can say with confidence is that Cossa
was the chief instrument of the Pope's nefarious system, and that,
although he had no private means, he amassed an enormous fortune. The
Council of Constance established this charge against him, as we shall
see.
In 1402, Cossa became Cardinal-deacon of St. Eustace--the Council of
Constance found that he bought that dignity--and in the following year
he was made Legate at Bologna. We cannot control Dietrich's statement
that the Pope wished to put an end to a scandalous _liaison_ of
Cossa's at Rome. It is not improbable, and would not be very unusual
at Rome, but the fact is that he knew Bologna and was a soldier, and
Boniface needed a soldier-legate in the north. In a very short time
Cossa won Bologna from the Milanese troops and made it a prosperous
and profitable Papal possession. He fortified it and restored its
institutions, even establishing a university of a very liberal
character. But he ruled it with an iron hand and ground it with taxes.
Even its gamblers and prostitutes had to pay the tithe of their
earnings, and the grumblers who constantly revolted or attempted to
assassinate Cossa were mercilessly punished. Dietrich boldly accuses
him of violating two hundred maids and matrons of the city, but we
can do no more than suspect that there must have been some foundation
for so large a repute. Again the Council of Constance sustains the
substance of the charge.
Boniface died on September 29, 1404, and Cossa was not present at the
Conclave. He had constantly to lead his troops against external as well
as internal enemies. The new Pope, Innocent VII., spent two futile
years in dreams of peace, and in November, 1406, the See again fell
vacant. Christendom now clamoured for an end of the scandalous schism,
and, when Gregory XII., an ascetic and worn old cardinal, assumed the
tiara, he was greeted as "an angel of light." He thanked God, with
tears in his eyes, that he was chosen to end the schism; if he could
not get mules or galleys, he would go on foot to meet Benedict XIII.
(who had succeeded Clement at Avignon) and resign together with him.
And within a few months Christendom witnessed the still more odious
spectacle of the two Popes, both men of advanced years and great piety,
straining every nerve to avoid each other and evade resignation. They
were to meet at Savona, but, as Leonardo quaintly says, "whenever there
was question of their meeting, one would, as if he were a land animal,
not approach the coast, and the other, as if he were an aquatic animal,
would not leave the sea." Benedict reached Savona; Gregory could not
be driven beyond Lucca. The best that can be said for him is that he
was ruled by greedy relatives. At last, on a pretext provided by his
supporter Ladislaus of Naples, Gregory fled back to Rome and refused to
listen to any further counsel of resignation.
Christendom, in disgust, now called for a General Council. France
disowned Benedict and, when he excommunicated the King, tore his Bull
in halves and ordered his arrest. He fled to Perpignan and Gregory to
Venice, and the cardinals began to negotiate with the princes for the
holding of the Council of Pisa. Cardinal Cossa, who had disdainfully
taken down the arms of Gregory XII. at Bologna, and who was in league
with Florence against Naples, took the lead in the new movement. When
Gregory excommunicated him, he burned the Bull in the market-place.
When Ladislaus of Naples advanced against Pisa, he united his troops
to those of Florence and scattered the southerners. When Benedict's
representatives asked for a safe-conduct through Italy, he said:
"If you come to Bologna, with or without a safe-conduct, I'll burn
you." So the Council met at Pisa, deposed Benedict and Gregory, and,
in effect, set up a third Pope, Alexander V. The situation being
without precedent, there was no canonical basis for such a Council,
and no executive to enforce the Council's decisions. Benedict and
Gregory--the one under the protection of Spain and the other with the
support of Naples, Rimini, and part of Germany--continued to fulminate
against each other, and a third discharge of anathemas only distracted
Christendom the more.
Cardinal Cossa set out once more at the head of his troops, and, with
the aid of Louis of Anjou and the Florentines, swept the Neapolitan
troops southward and opened Rome for Alexander. But that feeble and
aged Anti-Pope never reached the Lateran. He died at Bologna on May 4,
1410, and Louis of Anjou (representing the French influence) and the
Florentines urged on the cardinals the election of Cossa himself. At
midnight on May 17th, the expectant crowd at Bologna was informed that
the cardinals had come to an agreement, and an hour later Baldassare
Cossa, or John XXIII., stepped forth in the scarlet mitre and spotless
robes of a Vicar of Christ. There are chroniclers who say that he had
bribed the electors, and chroniclers who say that he had bullied them.
The first charge is not unlikely, as bribery was now becoming common
enough on the eve of or during a Conclave, but we cannot check these
rumours. Dietrich von Nieheim admits that Cossa nominated another
cardinal for the tiara, and the Council of Constance did not impeach
the regularity of his election. He was chosen because of his vigour and
military ability. Such was the condition of the Papacy that none seemed
to care that he was "a complete failure and worthless in spiritual
matters."
He must have been at that time about forty-three years old: a tall,
spare, soldierly-looking man, with large nose and piercing dark grey
eyes under bushy eyebrows. After devoting a few days to the customary
festivities, he set about the work of enabling Louis of Anjou to
displace Ladislaus on the throne of Naples and thus destroy Gregory's
main support. It may have been in deference to the feeling of some of
the cardinals that he first summoned Benedict and Gregory to resign
and asked his bitter enemy Ladislaus--the man who had condemned his
brothers--to pay the arrears of sixty thousand ducats which he owed
to the Roman See. All three contemptuously refused to recognize him,
and, as Ladislaus presently destroyed the fleet of Louis of Anjou and
advanced against the Papal troops, the prospect was uncertain. John
feverishly sought allies and funds. He conciliated England, where
the call for a real Ecumenical Council to depose the three Popes was
already heard, by suppressing an obnoxious Bull of Boniface IX. and
by other graces, and he contrived--after the blunders of his legates
had roused fierce opposition--to get a good deal of money from France.
Spain still supported Benedict.
The uncertain element was Germany, where, at the time, the outstanding
figure was Sigismund of Hungary. Sigismund had stood aloof from the
Council of Pisa. For some years he had diverted all money from the
Papal agents to his own pockets, because Boniface had recognized
Ladislaus, and he detested the French, who had had much to do with the
Council at Pisa. His support was of material importance to John, as
owing to the death of Rupert the day after John's election, he became
the chief candidate for the Empire. To John's delight, Sigismund now
sent ambassadors to do homage, and an agreement was reached. The Pope
was to validate the appropriation by Sigismund of church-moneys and
influence the Electors in his favour, and Sigismund would support John
against Ladislaus.[267] But there was still an element of danger and
uncertainty. Sigismund had sworn to end the Papal schism, and he was
known to be favourable to the summoning of another and more weighty
council. Moreover, John, who was a poor diplomatist, made a serious
blunder. The elected monarch became, by law of the Empire, King of
the Romans without any Papal confirmation; the _imperial_ crown and
title alone were given by the Pope. Yet John, seeking to magnify his
authority, persisted in addressing Sigismund until the anxious days of
the Council of Constance, as "Elected to be King."
I may tell very briefly the sequence of events in Italy. After a year
at Bologna, John proceeded to Rome and flung his troops upon the
Neapolitans. They won the important battle of Rocca Secca, but, owing
to the incompetence of the Papal legate who held supreme command, they
failed to follow up the success and Ladislaus recovered. In the next
few months John heard with increasing alarm that Louis of Anjou had
returned in despair to France: that the ablest Papal commander, Sforza,
had transferred his services to Naples: that Malatesta of Rimini, the
only other supporter of Gregory, was winning success in the north:
and that the Neapolitans were marching against Rome. He levied taxes
on the churches and citizens of Rome until they became restless. He
petulantly had an effigy of Sforza hanged on a gallows at Rome. He
pressed the sale of indulgences so flagrantly, and by such repellent
agents, that the reformers of Bohemia burned his Bull in the streets.
He excommunicated Ladislaus and proclaimed a crusade against him; and
not a prince in Europe stirred.
Now seriously concerned, John offered to recognize Ladislaus as King
of Naples if he would abandon Gregory, and that monarch at once basely
deserted his Pope. He ordered the stubborn old man to quit Gaeta, and
it is said that the people of Gaeta, who had grown fond of him, had to
pay his passage to his last refuge, the lands of the Lord of Rimini.
Ladislaus was made Gonfaloniere of the Church, and the Pope promised
him 120,000 ducats. But so onerous a peace could not endure. After some
mutual charges in the spring of 1413 the Neapolitan troops approached
Rome. The Romans assured John that they would eat their children rather
than surrender, but, when they saw the Pope and cardinals secure their
own position by crossing the river, they opened the gates and admitted
the Neapolitans. Their warrior-Pope, surrounded by cardinals who wept
for the treasures they had abandoned in Rome, fled to the north, and at
length reached Florence. Even here the citizens were afraid to admit
him. They assigned him the bishop's palace outside the walls, and from
this lowly centre John continued his sale of benefices and indulgences.
One other event will complete the record of John's Pontificate, before
we begin the story of his undoing. The abuses of the Roman Curia
had excited, or encouraged, various hostile movements. There were
Lollards in England, and followers of Hus and Jerome of Prague in
Bohemia. These vague and unimportant movements--from the Papal point
of view--were left to local prelates, but the growing Christian demand
for another General Council was disquieting. The Council of Pisa had
put itself above the Popes, and grave doctors at many universities
argued that a council must effect that reform of the Church which
Popes refused to effect. Probably John XXIII. did not appreciate the
full significance of this Conciliar movement, but he did see that
there was grave danger that a Council would depose him, as well as
Benedict and Gregory, unless he controlled it. He, therefore, in 1412,
announced that a General Council would be held at Rome, and he reminded
prelates that the Council of Pisa had enjoined this. But only a few
French and Italian prelates responded to his summons, and a strange
accident increased his uneasiness. One day, when all were assembled
in St. Peter's, a screech owl issued from a dark corner and perched
opposite the Pope. John reddened and perspired, as he gazed into the
uncanny eyes of the bird, and at last he left his seat and broke up the
sitting. It was there again at the next sitting, and was killed only
after a great commotion. A strange form for the Holy Ghost, the mockers
said; a dreadful omen for the Pope, said others. Reforms were promised,
and the works of Wyclif were condemned, but the Council was too small
to have effect and it was prorogued until December 1, 1413.
Meantime John was driven to the north, and from Florence he appealed
to Sigismund. Many eyes were turned to Sigismund from various parts
of Europe, and that singular monarch took quite seriously the high
function which was thrust upon him of saving and reforming Christendom.
He was a man of considerable ability, though it was apt to take the
form of cunning rather than statesmanship, but his narrow cupidity,
his notorious license in morals, and his general indifference to
principle made him an incongruous instrument for the reform of the
Church. He at once informed John that the state of the Church was to
be submitted to a General Council, and a struggle ensued between the
two as to whether it should be held south or north of the Alps. We have
the reliable assurance of Leonardo, John's secretary at the time, that
the Pope proposed to send two cardinals with full powers to treat,
which they were to show to Sigismund, and with secret instructions
restricting them. John told this design, with great complacency, to
his secretary,[268] though he did not carry it out. The Papal legates
met Sigismund at Como in the autumn and were pleased to think that
they made an impression on him, but John was dismayed to learn that,
on October 30th, the King of the Romans issued a proclamation to the
effect that a General Council would be held, under his presidency, at
Constance, on All Saints' Day, 1414.
John is described as stricken with fear and grief at the prospect of
a council outside Italy, but Sigismund was inflexible. They spent two
months together at Piacenza and Lodi, and the Pope must have penetrated
the King's design. He already leaned to the plan of deposing the three
Popes and electing another. John was compelled, on December 9th, to
issue a Bull convoking the Council, and he then went to Bologna to
await the attack of the Neapolitans. There, about the middle of August,
he received the welcome news that Ladislaus had been poisoned by
the father of one of his mistresses. He proposed to break faith with
Sigismund and disavow the Council, but the cardinals restrained him
from taking this wild step, and on October 1st he set out for the
north, sadly, with a troop of six hundred horse. He had for some time
wavered between gloomy apprehensions of a mysterious fate which pursued
him and buoyant confidence in his wealth and power.
The last words of his friends at Bologna must have recurred to him
again and again as he passed up the autumnal valley of the Adige and
entered the snows of the Tirol. He would not return a Pope, they said.
In the Arlberg Pass his carriage was overturned, and he exclaimed, as
he lay in the snow: "Here I lie, in the name of the devil, and I would
have done much better to stop at Bologna." He remained for some days at
Meran with Duke Friedrich, whom he made captain-general of the Papal
troops, with a salary of six thousand ducats a year. It was well to
make a friend of this powerful and discontented vassal of Sigismund.
At last, on October 27th, his troops turned the crest of the last low
hills before Constance, and he gazed down on the hollow between the
guardian mountains. "A trap for foxes," he is said to have muttered. On
the following day he rode into Constance, on his richly harnessed white
horse, under a canopy of cloth of gold, and occupied the episcopal
palace.
For three weeks the snowy roads down the mountain-sides from all
directions discharged gay streams of princes and prelates, bishops
and abbots, theologians and lawyers, thieves and prostitutes, bankers
and acrobats, upon the sleepy old town, until it seemed to burst with
a ravening multitude. Something between fifty and a hundred thousand
visitors had to be housed and entertained, and it is reported by grave
observers that more than a thousand prostitutes flocked to Constance
in the days of the Council.[269] There were, in the course of time,
twenty-nine cardinals, thirty-three archbishops, a hundred and fifty
bishops, a hundred and thirty-four abbots, and a hundred doctors
of law and divinity: among the latter a certain pale and thin man,
Master John Hus, who did not suspect that he had come to be tried on
a capital charge. But the Emperor was late--he was crowned at Aachen
on November 8th--so the first sitting of the Council, on November 5th,
was adjourned to the 16th, and then until the new year. Meantime the
thousands of entertainers did their duty, and the city rang day and
night with revelry, and a crowd speaking thirty different languages
filled the streets and overflowed on to the roofs and into the sheds
and even the empty tubs of Constance.
On Christmas morning, two hours after midnight, Emperor Sigismund made
a stately entrance from the Lake and a vast crowd attended John's
midnight mass. Then the struggle began. John's money circulated freely,
yet the view that he must be deposed with the other two was gaining
ground. He was gouty and his vigour was prematurely undermined, but he
fought for his tiara. Envoys came to represent Benedict and Gregory,
and he objected to their being received with honour; he was overruled.
He held that none less in rank than a bishop or abbot should vote,
and that the voting should be by heads, not nations; and again he
was overruled, and his Italian prelates would be outvoted. Then some
anonymous Italian put into circulation a memoir on his crimes and
vices, and he was greatly alarmed. To avoid scandal, however,--for
John admitted some of the accusations,--it was suppressed, but it was
decided that he must abdicate. After some evasive correspondence, he
promised to abdicate "if and when Peter de Luna and Angelo Corario" did
the same, and on March 7th he was compelled to embody the formula in a
Bull. He became ill and desperate, and there were rumours that he was
about to fly. Sigismund put guards at all the gates, but refused to
imprison him as the English, headed by the fiery Bishop of Salisbury,
demanded.
On March 20th, Duke Friedrich of Tirol drew all Constance to a grand
tournament outside the city, and in the midst of it he was noticed
to receive a message and leave the ground. Presently it was learned
that the Pope, disguised as a groom, had slipped out of the gate on
a poor horse, with two companions, and Friedrich had joined them at
Schaffhausen. Sigismund sternly forbade the dissolution of the Council,
laid a heavy punishment on his vassal, and sent some of the cardinals
to see John. The Pope declared that he had left solely on account of
his illness; he would abdicate and not interfere with the Council, but
the cardinals must join him at once or be excommunicated. The Council,
now led by the great Gerson and other strong French doctors, ignored
the Pope, and declared that it had, direct from Christ, a power to
which Popes must bow. As Sigismund's troops were after them, John and
Friedrich fled farther, and at last John quarrelled with his supporter
and fled in disguise across the Black Forest to Freiburg. He arrived
within reach of Burgundy, whose Duke was friendly, and he demanded
better terms. He would resign on condition that he was appointed
Perpetual Legate for the whole of Italy, with a pension of 30,000
florins; the alternative in his mind seems to have been a court at
Avignon under the protection of the Duke of Burgundy.
The end of his adventures is well known. The burghers of Freiburg
refused to protect him and he fled to Breisar, where the envoys of
the Council came to press for his resignation. He put on his rough
disguise once more, and made off with a troop of Austrian cavalry, but
Friedrich, to obtain a mitigation of his own sentence, betrayed him.
For several days he miserably resisted the pressure of the envoys,
weeping and wailing piteously, and on May 2d the Council summoned him
to appear before it within nine days to answer charges of heresy,
schism, simony, and immorality. On the seventh day a troop of horse
came for him, but he was ill and irresolute. On May 14th the patience
of the Council was exhausted; it suspended him from office and ordered
the public trial of the charges which had already been examined and
on which a mass of evidence had been taken. Two days later the great
assembly of prelates and doctors drew up the appalling indictment, in
seventy-two articles, of Baldassare Cossa. In the main the charges
referred to those acts of simony, bribery, corruption, and tyranny
which I have recounted, but it should be added that he was described as
"addicted to the flesh, the dregs of vice, a mirror of infamy" (art.
6), and "guilty of poisoning, murder, and persistent addiction to vices
of the flesh" (art 29). The worst charges of Dietrich were solemnly
endorsed by the gravest lawyers and priests of Europe.
John lay, prostrate and in tears, in an inn at Rudolphzell. He wished
to submit a defence, but a few friendly cardinals advised him to
submit, and when, on May 26th, he heard that the Council had endorsed
the indictment, he made no further resistance. He was deposed on the
29th and accepted the sentence with words of humility and repentance.
A few days later the wretched man was consigned to the castle of
Gottlieben, and then to a castle at Mannheim. There was, in the
following year, a futile attempt to rescue him, and he was confined in
the castle of Heidelberg, where he remained three years, with a cook
and two chaplains of his once magnificent establishment, composing
verses on the vanity of earthly things. The hollow words of his
consecration-ceremony, _Sic transit gloria mundi_, had for him assumed
a terrible reality.
How Gregory resigned, and Benedict retired with his tawdry court to a
rocky fortress of his, and the Council burned John Hus and appointed a
new Pope, may be read in history.[270] Martin left Cossa in Heidelberg,
but in the spring of 1419 his keeper was heavily bribed and he was
allowed to escape to Italy. It must have moved many when, as Martin
officiated at the altar in Florence cathedral, the familiar figure of
Baldassare Cossa broke from the throng and knelt humbly at his feet.
He was restored to the rank of cardinal, and, apart from a foolish
attempt, a few months later, to form a Lombard league against the
Emperor, he lived peacefully in the house of Cosmo de' Medici until his
death in December (1419). He was buried with pomp by the Republic, and
the fine monument which Cosmo raised in the Baptistery shows that some
appreciable qualities must have been united with his undisputed vices.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 265: _Historia de Vita Papæ Joannis XXIII._, which must be
cited with reserve, as the author had a bitter quarrel with John and
is often inaccurate. See C. Hunger, _Zur Geschichte Papst Johanns
XXIII._ (1876). More reliable are the references in the _Commentarii
rerum suo tempore in Italia gestarum_ (in Muratori, _Rerum Italicarum
scriptores_, xix.), of Leonardo of Arezzo, at one time John's
secretary. Leonardo's temperate verdict, that John was "a great man
in temporal things, but a complete failure and unworthy in spiritual
things," is endorsed by all. Exhaustive bibliographies will be found in
E.J. Kitto's excellent works, _In the Days of the Councils_ (1908), and
_Pope John the Twenty-third and Master John Hus of Bohemia_ (1910).]
[Footnote 266: As in modern Spain, the word "traffic" or "sale" would
be resented. The theory is that you give an alms to the Church and
the Church grants the indulgence. The amount of the alms is fixed
according to the grace required: there are four different _bulas_ in
Spain today. It is hardly necessary to add that the agents did not
officially sell the pardon of sins, but the remission of the punishment
due in Purgatory for such sins as were confessed. Nevertheless we have
the official assurance of the Council of Constance (art. 20) that John
XXIII. "sold absolution both from punishment and guilt," and there are
other indications of this grave abuse.]
[Footnote 267: We learn from later letters of the Pope that he worked
for Sigismund in Germany, especially when a rival "King of the Romans"
was elected. See the evidence in Dr. J. Schwerdfeger's _Papst Johann
XXIII. und die Wahl Sigismunds zum römischen König_ (1895).]
[Footnote 268: _Commentarii_, p. 928.]
[Footnote 269: The clergy had, of course, large troops of lay
followers, and numbers of lay doctors attended the Council, but we
have seen often enough the moral state of the clergy themselves in
the Middle Ages. A picturesque summary of the chroniclers is given by
Kitto, _Pope John the Twenty-third and Master John Hus of Bohemia_. See
also H. Blumenthal's _Die Vorgeschichte des Constanzer Concils_ (1897)
and, for the proceedings, H. Finke's _Acta Concilii Constantiensis_
(1896), and H. von der Hardt's _Magnum OEcumenicum Constantiense
Concilium_ (1696, etc.).]
[Footnote 270: I have not dwelt on Hus, as the Pope had little to do
with him. For some time, thinking to please the Emperor, John protected
Hus from his rabid opponents. The shameful ensnarement of Hus seems to
have been done without John's approval, and he was deposed before the
trial of Hus began.]