GREAT WESTERN SCHISM (The Great Papal Schism), The, Sylvester Hassell In 1378, at Rome, Urban VI. was chosen Pope—the French Cardinals afterwards declaring that they were forced to this choice by the violent threats of the Roman populace demanding, under penalty of their lives, a Roman Pope; and Urban was so insolent and cruel after his accession to the papacy that these Cardinals retired to Anagni, declared that Urban was an apostate, an accursed Antichrist, and the elected Clement VII Pope, who removed his seat to Avignon. The different nations of Europe acknowledged that one of these two rivals whose circumstances best suited their individual temporal interests.
Thus, says Wycliffe, was the head of Antichrist cloven in twain, and each part fought against the other; and the friends of truth lifted up their heads and rejoiced. Each pope excommunicated cursed and warred upon the other; and this “Great Western Schism” lasted from 1378 to 1417. There being two costly papal courts, and the field of revenue being divided, the papal exactions upon the Catholic world became intolerable; and many, not knowing which so-called “Head of the church” to look to, looked away from both to Christ, who is the only Head and King of his spiritual people.
Among the innumerable and abominable devices to fill the papal exchequer were the sales of income-yielding “church” offices, even before they were vacated by death, to all who applied for them, the pope selling the same office to as many as a hundred persons if he could, and some paying for it two or three times, and then seeking to compass the death of the incumbent so that they might take his place, and, after obtaining the office, never visiting the place, but sending their agents to collect the revenues; also, the multiplication of Jubilees in Rome, reducing the period from a hundred to fifty, and thirty-three, and twenty-five years, in order for the popes to reap more frequently the golden harvests of the sales of indulgences to sin; and the establishment of pardon-marts in numerous cities in Europe, spreading tables with rich cloths, like bankers, near the altars in the church buildings, setting a price upon each sin, and trading pardons for gold.
At this time “the whole (Catholic) organization,” says Trench, “seemed little better than a vast and elaborate machinery for the wringing, under every conceivable plea, of the greatest possible amount of money from the faithful.” (Hassell’s History ppg 453, 454)
Sylvester Hassell “The Great Papal Schism,” says Trench, “forever dissipated the nimbus of glory with which the early Middle Ages had encircled the papacy.” The Roman and the Avignonese popes, Gregory XII. And Benedict XIII., perfectly hated, mistrusted, and sought to destroy each other; neither would resign; and the cardinals of both finally united in calling a General Council to meet in Pisa in Italy to terminate the Schism, and to reform the church in its head and members.” At this Council, which sat from March 25th to August 7th, 1409, twenty-six Cardinals, some two hundred Bishops and some five hundred Doctors of Theology and of the Civil and Canon Law, with representatives of numerous Universities and temporal potentates, were present.
Both the popes were declared by the Council to be notorious schismatics, heretics and perjurers, and they were both deposed; and Alexander V. was chosen in their stead. He dismissed the Council as soon as he could, and promised to call another in three years to “reform the church;” and thus matters were left worse than before—instead of two popes there were three, as Gregory and Benedict would not recognize or obey the Council, and no reformation was yet effected. People called the Catholic Church a Cerberus, a three-headed monster.
Alexander dying in less than a year, poisoned, as it was supposed, by his successor, Balthazar Cossa (John XXIII.), was, by fear or bribery, or both, chosen pope by the cardinals; he was said to be the ablest and worst man in Christendom. He had been a pirate; and, while papal lord of Bologna, had been guilty of the most outrageous tyranny, avarice and simony, had murdered multitudes of men and women, and had victimized two hundred maids, wives, widows and nuns.
Of the seventy charges preferred against him by the Council of Constance, he is said to have confessed the truth of forty; he was generally known, says that Council, as “the incarnate Devil.” Compelled by the German Emperor Sigismund, he summoned the Council just mentioned. Constance, where it met, now in Baden, was then a free city of the German Empire; it is situated on the southern side of the Rhine, at its exit from the Lake of Constance. Its population of 40,000 has now been reduced to 10,000.
The most famous thing that ever occurred in it was this Council and its immortal infamy in not only the condemnation but the burning of John Huss and Jerome of Prague. The session of the Council lasted from 1414 to 1418. Its object was threefold—to end the papal schism; to prevent the spread of the teachings of Wycliffe, Huss and Jerome; and “to reform the church in its head and members.”
It surpassed in the number and dignity of its attendants all the Councils that succeeded it. There were present, it is said, twenty-six princes, one hundred and forty counts, twenty-nine cardinals, thirty-three archbishops, one hundred and fifty Bishops, six hundred prelates and doctors, and four thousand priests— amounting, with their attendants, to eighteen thousand. Ordinarily fifty thousand, and sometimes one hundred thousand visitors, with thirty thousand horses, were in the city during the session of the Council.
John XXIII. was deposed, having made the name (John) so infamous that no succeeding pope has assumed it; but he was afterwards made by his successor Dean (or Chief) of the College of Cardinals.
Martin V. was chosen by the Council of Constance to succeed him; and, by making concordats with the delegates of each nation separately, he thwarted all the reformatory plans of the Council, showed them that he was their master, declared that the pope was above a General Council, and dictatorially assumed to himself the infallibility of God. He soon revived the worst evils of the papacy, and dissolved the Council, and left the city, with the emperor holding his bridle on one side, and the Elector of Brandenberg on the other, and with a train of forty thousand persons on horseback accompanying him on the first stage of his journey home. What a triumph for the religion of Satan! The apparently deadly wounds of the Babylonish captivity and the Great Schism now seemed to be completely healed.
In compliance with a rule laid down by the Council of Constance, and because of the continued clamors for reform, and in order to attempt to reunite the Greek and Roman Churches, Pope Eugenius IV., the successor of Martin V., confirmed the act of his predecessor in summoning the Council of Basel (in Switzerland), which sat from 1431 to 1443. This Council is said to have been much more democratic than the other two, the “inferior clergy” carrying most of their measures.
The pope became alarmed at their entering into conciliatory negotiations with the Hussites, and tried to dissolve the Council, but that body obstinately refused to be dissolved, and the pope had to yield to them for a while. When they proceeded, however, to reform some of the papal abuses, and thus dry up some of the papal income, the pope became furious, declared that they were a collection of all the devils in the world, called upon the faithful to kill them, and, on the plea that negotiations with the envoys of the Greek Church could be more conveniently conducted in an Italian city, tried to remove the seat of the Council to Ferrara, and afterwards to Florence. He had Councils at both of these cities; but the Council of Pisa refused to stir; they deposed Pope Eugenius IV., and in 1439 elected Felix V., the last anti-pope, in his stead, who resigned his office in 1449.
This new schism so offended the Catholics generally, and so weakened the Council, that it finally died of inanition. Thus closed the last “Reforming Council” of the Roman Catholic Church, having failed in all its undertakings as completely and ingloriously as its two predecessors. The absolute necessity of reformation in that communion, or rather of regeneration, was, by these Councils, however, publicly acknowledged to the world; their failure was due, says Mr. Trence, to their “refusing to see that abuses in practice were rooted in errors of doctrine, drawing all their poisonous life from them, and that blows stricken at the roots were the only blows which would profit.” (Hassell’s History ppg 462-464)