Decline of German Monarchy—Dangers to Germany—Policy of Charles IV.—Return of the Papacy to Rome and election of Urban VI.—Election of Clement VII. and beginning of the Schism—The German towns and their hostility to the nobles—Weakness of Wenzel—The town-war—Peace of Eger—The Succession to Hungary and Poland—The Jagellon House is established in Poland, and Sigismund in Hungary—Opposition to Wenzel in Germany—Troubles in Bohemia—France and the Schism—Meeting of Wenzel and Charles VI.—A Schism is created in the Empire—The idea of a General Council—Negotiations between the rival Popes—Europe and the Schism—The Council of Pisa—The Triple Schism—Alexander V. and his successor John XXIII.—Death of Rupert of the Pale—Election of Sigismund—Jobst—Death of Jobst—Second election of Sigismund—Sigismund and Pope John XXIII.—Summons of the Council of Constance.

With the year 1378 begins a period of anarchy and confusion characteristic of the decay of an old organisation, and the inevitable precursor of a new system. In that year died Gregory XI. and Charles IV., the representatives of secular and ecclesiastical authority as conceived in the Middle Ages. Of the two claimants to universal rule, the Papacy and the Empire, the former was immeasurably the stronger. It possessed a large revenue and an admirable administrative system. The Empire had neither. Its claims to rule over Christendom were no longer acknowledged. Even in Italy its suzerainty was recognised as a legal form, but in actual politics little regard was paid to it. And the German monarchy had fallen with the grandiose and unreal dignity to which it was attached. The imperial domains had been seized or squandered. The central administration and jurisdiction were hardly existent. Such authority as the king |Decline of German monarchy.| possessed rested upon the territorial powers which he held independently of his kingship. His nominal vassals—ecclesiastics, lay princes, knights and cities—enjoyed practical independence. If they quarrelled with each other, they fought the quarrel out as if they had been independent states. If the Emperor intervened, it was as a partisan rather than as an arbiter. There was no parliamentary organisation, as in England, where the interests of the various estates could find effective expression. There was no overwhelming national sentiment, such as was created by the Hundred Years’ War in France, to enable the monarchy to gain ascendency and to crush rival pretensions.

The dangers of this growing disunion were sufficiently obvious in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It seemed |Dangers to Germany.| almost inevitable that Germany would lose all semblance of a state, and that as it fell to pieces foreign powers would seize upon the fragments. In the south-east the Turks were gradually establishing themselves on the ruins of the Byzantine Empire, and threatened to advance up the valley of the Danube into the heart of southern Germany. Further north a powerful Slav kingdom was erected in Poland under the House of Jagellon, whose mission seemed to be to annihilate the progress which German influences had effected by means of the Teutonic knights. The Slav kingdom of Bohemia, which under the House of Luxemburg had become almost the capital of Germany, revolted against the rule and the religion of its kings, and the Hussite victories revealed more clearly than any other single event the rottenness and impotence of the existing system in Germany. In the north, the Union of Kalmar brought the three Scandinavian states under a single ruler, and threatened to deprive the German Hansa of the ascendency in northern waters which Lübeck and its associates had gained by their victory over Waldemar III. of Denmark. In the south, the Swiss Confederation was tending to free itself from even nominal dependence on the Empire, and there were other leagues in Swabia and on the Rhine which were not unlikely to follow its example. In the west, German weakness had already allowed France to swallow a great part of the old kingdom of Arles, and though France was for a time crippled by the war with England and by internal dissensions, a new and more pressing danger was created by the rapid growth of the Valois dukes of Burgundy, who absorbed one imperial fief after another, and at one time almost succeeded in building up a middle kingdom along the Rhine, which would have excluded Germany from all real influence on the development of western Europe.

Charles IV., the greatest ruler of the fourteenth century, had clearly grasped both the dangers of the situation and |Policy of Charles IV.| the only remedies which could be applied. Either Germany must be organised as a federation which should combine some measure of local independence with joint action for common interests, or a single family must collect such an aggregate of territories in its hands as might become the nucleus of a new territorial monarchy. Charles had kept both expedients before him. He had laid the foundations of a federal organisation by conferring corporate powers and privileges upon the electors. At the same time he had made the Luxemburg family the strongest in Germany, and had placed it in a position to do for Germany what the Capets had done for France. It is a common error to maintain that Charles IV.’s policy was a complete failure; that what he meant to be a temporary expedient proved permanent, while his ultimate aims were never achieved. It is true that a territorial monarchy was not established, and that such unity as Germany has since possessed has been federal rather than monarchical. But what really held Germany together from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century was not the federal system, but the territorial power of the house of Hapsburg. And that territorial power was, in the main, founded by Charles IV. It is as the heirs of the Luxemburg family that the Hapsburgs assumed their unique position in Germany. Charles IV. achieved more lasting results than he has been credited with, but the fruits of his policy were gathered by others than his own descendants.

One very obvious source of weakness to Charles IV. had been his failure to control the ecclesiastical system, owing to the residence of the Popes at Avignon. |Return of the Papacy to Rome.| Charles himself had gained the German monarchy to some extent as the papal nominee; but he had found it necessary to resist papal intervention in Germany as long as that intervention was dictated by a foreign power. It was obviously Charles’s duty and interest to restore the Papacy to Rome, where alone it could exercise impartial authority. He had induced Urban V. to transfer his residence to Rome, but his hopes had been disappointed by the Pope’s speedy return to the banks of the Rhône. Once again his influence had been successful, and in 1377 Gregory XI. had left Avignon for the Eternal City. But both Pope and cardinals found Rome too turbulent to be an agreeable abode, and they were preparing for another flitting when the death of Gregory compelled the conclave to meet for a new election within the Vatican. The mob surrounded the palace and demanded the choice of a Roman Pope. The majority of the cardinals were Frenchmen, but they were divided among themselves, and they were afraid of the violence of the citizens. As a compromise, they chose a Neapolitan, the archbishop of Bari, |Election of Urban VI., 1378.| who took the name of Urban VI. So little confidence had the cardinals that their decision would please the people, that they escaped in disguise and left the news of the election to become known gradually. This fact is sufficient to prove that the election was not altogether compulsory, and as soon as the mob had shown itself acquiescent, the cardinals were unanimous in acknowledging Urban.

But this unanimity was very short-lived. Urban VI. had never been a cardinal, and was personally unknown to most of his electors. He proved to be a man of violent temper and rough manners, eager to exercise his unexpected authority, and reckless of opposition or advice. The cardinals, who had hoped for a pliant and grateful tool, found themselves confronted with a master who announced that he would begin the reform of the Church with its chief dignitaries. He silenced remonstrances by the rudest sarcasms, and declared that he would never return to Avignon. Disappointed and indignant, many of the cardinals quitted Rome for Anagni. Encouraged by the support of France and Naples, they declared that Urban’s election was invalid on account of the intimidation of the mob, and on September 20, 1378, proceeded to elect Robert of Geneva, a militant ecclesiastic who had succeeded Cardinal Albornoz as commander |Election of Clement VII.| of the papal troops in Italy. The Antipope assumed the name of Clement VII., and his election commenced a schism in the Church which lasted for forty years.

Charles IV. had watched these events in Italy with the greatest chagrin. He gave unhesitating support to Urban VI., and urged the European princes to resist the revival of French dictation in the Church. But his death on November 29 removed the one statesman who might possibly have checked the progress of the schism. His son and successor, Wenzel, pursued his father’s policy, but he was too young, and, as it proved, too incapable, to exercise the same influence. He threatened Joanna I. of Naples with the imperial ban if she did not give up the cause of Clement; and this threat was the more formidable because the Neapolitans themselves favoured their fellow-countryman Urban. But the only result was to aggravate the schism. Finding that residence on Neapolitan soil was no longer safe, Clement VII. and his |The schism in the Church, 1378-1417.| cardinals left Italy for Avignon. There Clement was secure of French support, and before long he was also recognised by the Spanish kingdoms, Castile, Aragon, and Navarre. Germany, England, and most of the northern kingdoms gave their allegiance to Urban VI., and after his death to his successors, Boniface IX. (1389-1404), Innocent VII. (1404-5), and Gregory XII., elected in 1405. Clement VII. lived till 1394, when he was succeeded by a Spaniard, Peter de Luna, who took the name of Benedict XIII.

The schism in the Church was by no means the only difficulty which Wenzel had to face. In Germany, as in |The German towns.| other countries, the feudal system, in which social and political relations depended upon the tenure of land, had been modified by the growth of towns, whose interests lay in industry rather than in agriculture, while their desire to maintain peace conflicted with the military habits and traditions of the noble landholders. In England and in France the monarchy had advanced its own interests by taking the rising towns under its patronage and by aiding the growth of municipal self-government. At one time, under Lewis the Bavarian, a similar policy had seemed possible in Germany. At the diet of Frankfort in 1344 the speaker of the town deputies had used the memorable words: civitates non possunt stare nisi cum imperio: imperii lesio earum est destructio. But Charles IV., guided by his experiences in Italy, had distrusted the towns: he had suspected them of aiming at independence rather than the strengthening of the monarchy: and in the Golden Bull he had deliberately opposed the development of the towns while he had conceded great powers to the electors. But his policy in this respect had not been altogether successful even during his own lifetime. The Hanse towns in the north had risen to the zenith of their power in 1370, and Charles had found it politic to conciliate them by a personal visit to Lübeck. In the south the Swabian League had been formed under the leadership of Ulm, had defeated the warlike Count of Würtemburg, and had compelled the old emperor to allow them the right of union, of which they had been deprived by the Golden Bull.

The death of Charles IV. and the accession of the feeble and self-indulgent Wenzel enabled the towns to take bolder measures. In 1381 an alliance was concluded at |Hostility of towns and nobles.| Speier between the Swabian League and the towns on the Rhine; and its object was not merely mutual defence, but ‘to scourge and punish their mutual enemies.’ The league thus formed contained seventy-two towns, and could supply a military force of ten thousand men-at-arms. And this force was by no means their only or their most effective weapon. By granting a modified form of citizenship (Pfahlbürgerthum), they annexed whole villages in their neighbourhood, thus depriving the lords at once of subjects, revenue, and territory. If the landholder tried to recover his loss, he only devastated his own property, while the offending citizens were safe within walls that until the general use of gunpowder were almost impregnable. It was no wonder that the princes resented the growth of a power which seemed likely to rival their own. But the class which was most immediately threatened by the towns was that of the knights or lesser tenants-in-chief. Their chief occupations were warfare and pillage, and the towns were resolute in putting a stop to practices which ruined their trade. Single-handed the knights were powerless against the civic forces, and they were driven to form leagues, such as the famous League of the Lion, for their own defence. There was little love lost between the knights and the princes, but class prejudices and associations tended to draw them together against a foe whom they both detested and contemned. The materials were prepared for a great war of classes in Germany.

Wenzel had neither the ability nor the experience to enable him to deal successfully with such a problem, and his attention was also occupied by family affairs in the east and by the quarrel in the Church. His only expedient was to form associations for the maintenance of the peace in which both princes and cities should be included. By this means he succeeded in postponing but not in preventing a war. The quarrel of Leopold of Hapsburg with the Swiss precipitated matters. The Swiss confederation differed from the Swabian and Rhenish leagues in that it included village communities of peasants as well as towns. When in 1385 an alliance with the Swabian League was proposed, the original forest cantons refused to take any part in the matter, and only the towns, Bern, Zürich, Zug and Luzern were parties to the compact. The battle of Sempach was won mainly by the peasants, and the Swabian towns sent no assistance. But the fall of Leopold of Hapsburg, the champion of princely interests, was hailed as a triumph by the towns, and had the natural effect of increasing their pride and pretensions. In 1387 the war which had been on the verge of outbreak since 1379 at last began. There was little that was notable in the actual hostilities, except their extent. The |The town war, 1387-9.| war was merely a simultaneous explosion of the numerous feuds which had often been waged before between a noble and a too powerful town. As long as the citizens stood on the defensive, they were successful, and the armies of the princes and knights were repulsed from their walls. Emboldened by these successes, they determined to leave their walls and to invade the territories of their old enemy, Eberhard of Würtemburg. But the German towns had no such soldiers as the peasants of the Alps, and no such geographical advantages as the Swiss had. In the open field their forces were cut to pieces by the feudal cavalry. On August 24, 1388, the united troops of the Swabian League suffered a severe defeat at Döffingen. The weakness of their position was now apparent. They could resist aggression, but they could not themselves take the offensive. The Rhenish towns were defeated with great loss at Worms, and Nürnberg, the latest and the most important recruit of the Swabian League, was reduced to submission by the Burggraf.

But the triumph of the nobles was incomplete. Though they had been victorious in the field, they were as unable as before to carry on siege operations. Their defensive strength enabled the towns to negotiate the peace of Eger (1389) |Peace of Eger, 1389.| on fairly equal terms. By this treaty all leagues and unions were to be abrogated on both sides. All future disputes between the towns and the nobles were to be settled by arbitration. For this purpose four commissioners were appointed in Swabia, Franconia, Bavaria, and the Rhenish provinces. Each commission was to consist of four nobles, four citizens, and a president to be appointed by the Emperor. It is obvious that the towns, though defeated, had not been wholly unsuccessful, and had secured a position of equality with their opponents. But the real importance of the war is the discredit which it cast upon the monarchy. Wenzel had been unable either to prevent the war or to influence its course. And the organisation created for the maintenance of the peace was a local and representative organisation, in which the central authority had little more than a nominal share.

While Germany was convulsed with the town war, the House of Luxemburg had made an important territorial acquisition in the east. Lewis the Great, king of Hungary and Poland, the head of the original House of Anjou in Naples, had died in 1380. He left a widow, Elizabeth, and two daughters, Maria and Hedwig. In spite |Succession in Hungary and Poland.| of the natural prejudices against female rule, he had induced his subjects to recognise his daughters’ claim to the succession. If they were passed over, the nearest male heir was Charles of Durazzo,^[10] who was engaged in a struggle for the crown of Naples with Louis of Anjou, brother of Charles V. of France. Maria, the elder of the two daughters, was betrothed to Sigismund, the second son of Charles IV. She was accepted by the Hungarians, and Sigismund was eager that his future wife should also gain the crown of Poland. But the Poles, influenced by the growing Slav sentiment, were unwilling to continue the connection with Hungary or to accept a German ruler. They insisted upon electing the younger sister Hedwig, and upon choosing a husband for her. Hedwig was sent to Poland in 1385, and in the next year was married to Jagello, prince of Lithuania, who was baptized as a Christian under the name of Ladislas. The union of Poland and Lithuania under the Jagellon house founded a powerful Slav state to the north-east of Germany, and led to the downfall of the Teutonic Knights, who could no longer claim to conduct a crusade when their foes had accepted Christianity (see p. 459).

Meanwhile Sigismund, disappointed in Poland, came near to losing Hungary as well. Elizabeth, the late king’s widow, |Sigismund’s accession in Hungary, 1387.| unwilling to surrender authority to an ambitious son-in-law, tried to break off Maria’s engagement, and to bring about a marriage with a French prince. But her schemes were suddenly checkmated by a revolt of the Hungarian nobles, who offered the crown to Charles of Durazzo, now established on the throne of Naples. Charles accepted the offer, and landed in Dalmatia in 1385. This unexpected danger forced Elizabeth to appeal for assistance to Sigismund, whose long-delayed marriage was hastily solemnised in October 1385. The bridegroom hurried off to raise troops for the defence of his wife’s crown, and among his expedients for gaining money he pawned a great part of Brandenburg to his cousin Jobst of Moravia. Meanwhile events in Hungary moved with kaleidoscopic rapidity. Charles of Naples, after having apparently secured his kingdom, was assassinated by the emissaries of Elizabeth in February 1386. Elizabeth recovered authority in her daughter’s name, and at once quarrelled with her son-in-law, whose assistance seemed to be no longer needed. But the nobles of Croatia determined to avenge the death of Charles. They seized Elizabeth and Maria, and carried them off to the fortress of Novigrad. When the fortress was besieged, the former was put to death, and Maria was threatened with the same fate. In the general anarchy, the Hungarian nobles determined to offer the crown to Sigismund, who was crowned in 1387, and soon afterwards succeeded in effecting his wife’s release. His accession added a new province to the Luxemburg possessions, and at the same time founded the dynastic connection between Hungary and Bohemia which still exists.

The acquisition of Hungary did nothing to strengthen the position of the House of Luxemburg in Germany, while it increased the jealousy with which its overgrown territories were regarded. The western princes, representing the original German duchies of Bavaria, Franconia, and Swabia, resented the transference of power to a dynasty whose possessions lay mostly in the east, and some of them outside Germany altogether. The House of Wittelsbach, from whose hands Charles IV. had snatched the imperial dignity, were the foremost in raising this outcry of the west against the east. And the malcontents were not |Opposition to Wenzel in Germany.| without more serious grounds of complaint. Wenzel had done nothing to terminate the ecclesiastical schism. His feeble and vacillating conduct during the town war had disgusted the princes; and after the peace of Eger he had practically withdrawn from German politics, and had left the kingdom in a state of anarchy. Even in the east he incurred difficulties and humiliations which brought discredit upon his person and his office.

Charles IV. had had two sources of strength which his successor entirely lacked. He could rely upon the enthusiastic loyalty of the Bohemians, and he was the undisputed head of the Luxemburg family. Neither of his brothers had ever ventured to oppose his will. But under Wenzel Bohemia enjoyed neither the prestige nor |Troubles in Bohemia.| the good government which had endeared Charles to his subjects, while there was a growing feeling that it was degrading to a Slav people to be ruled by a German prince and by German methods. The sentiment of race which had led Poland to unite with Lithuania under Jagello was beginning to be powerful in Bohemia, in spite of its long and intimate association with Germany. Wenzel himself was not personally unpopular. The very coarseness of his character and manners, which degenerated in time into brutish gluttony and drunkenness, seems to have evoked a rude sympathy, at any rate among the lower classes. But his reckless passion led him into gross political blunders, his unconcealed contempt alienated the clergy, while his patronage of unworthy favourites exasperated the nobles. A series of disorderly revolts began in 1387, and followed each other in rapid succession. And Wenzel’s kinsmen, instead of assisting the head of their house, rather added to his embarrassments. The evil genius of the family was his cousin, Jobst of Moravia, a man who anticipated the Italians of the next century in his selfish cunning and his complete disregard of moral rules. Jobst had already gained Brandenburg by trading on the pecuniary difficulties of Sigismund, and he hoped by discrediting Wenzel to obtain for himself the Bohemian and the imperial crowns. In 1394 he was at the head of a baronial revolt, in which Wenzel was seized and imprisoned by the rebels. The most loyal member of the family, John of Görlitz, who succeeded in releasing his brother, was treated by Wenzel with gross ingratitude, and died in 1396, not without grave suspicions of poison. Sigismund, though absorbed in the pursuit of his own ends, was less cynically selfish than Jobst, and showed some regard for the dignity and interests of his house. But he was prevented from giving Wenzel any real assistance or guidance by the necessity of defending his own kingdom of Hungary against the Turks. In 1396 he led a large crusading army to be cut to pieces by the forces of Bajazet I. on the field of Nicopolis. But for the advance of the Tartars under Timour, eastern Europe would have been at the mercy of the victorious sultan.

The scandals in Bohemia and the quarrels among the Luxemburg princes seem to have convinced the western princes that Wenzel was as little to be feared as respected. He had given them a new grievance in 1395 by granting the title of Duke of Milan and thus raising to princely rank the aggressive Ghibelline leader in northern Italy, Gian Galeazzo Visconti. And three years later he gave them a pretext for throwing off their allegiance by his action with regard to the |France and the schism.| schism in the Church. From the first the University of Paris, then by far the most influential university in Europe, had set itself against a schism which the French government had done much to bring about. At first the king had silenced the university, but gradually he had come to share its views. France found it extremely expensive to support a schismatic Pope who had little but French contributions to look to for the maintenance of himself and his court. Popular sympathy was cooled when a Spaniard, Peter de Luna, was chosen to succeed the French Pope Clement VII. Under the guidance of the university leaders, Pierre d’Ailly and Jean Gerson, Charles VI. and his ministers determined to end the schism by ‘the way of neutrality,’ i.e. by withdrawing allegiance from the two rival Popes, and thus forcing them to abdicate, when a new election could restore unity to Christendom. To give effect to this scheme, it was necessary to secure simultaneous action on the part of the supporters of the Roman Pope Boniface IX., and of these the most exalted was the King of the Romans. Wenzel seems to have inherited some of the traditional attachment to France of the Luxemburg |Meeting of Wenzel and Charles VI.| dynasty, and he had quarrelled with Boniface about the appointment of an Archbishop of Mainz. The two kings, the one a confirmed drunkard and the other subject to fits of insanity, met at Rheims in 1398 to discuss the most pressing problem of the age. Their personal intercourse cannot have been very edifying. On one occasion Wenzel was invited to a banquet with the French king, and when the Dukes of Burgundy and Berri came to escort the guest, they found that he had already dined, and was lying under the table in a drunken sleep. But the interview resulted in a more or less formal agreement that France should extort the resignation of Benedict, while Wenzel was to do the same by Boniface.

The Elector Palatine had already warned Wenzel that if he withdrew his allegiance from the Pope who had confirmed his title, his subjects would no longer be bound |Schism in the Empire, 1400.| to him. The interview at Rheims had the effect of hurrying the execution of a plan which had been for some time in contemplation. Boniface IX., though careful to avoid committing himself to the conspiring princes, was not unwilling to checkmate Wenzel by encouraging his opponents in Germany. Of the seven electors, two, representing Bohemia and Brandenburg, belonged to the Luxemburg house, while the Duke of Saxony held aloof. The other four, whose territories bordered on the Rhine, met in 1400 at Lahnstein, decreed the deposition of Wenzel, and elected one of their own number, the Count Palatine, Rupert III. But the Rhenish electors, like the recalcitrant cardinals in 1378, had no power to enforce their decree of deposition, and the only result of their action was to create a schism in the Empire side by side with the schism in the Church.

Rupert was a far wiser ruler and a far better man than his rival, and if to his other virtues he had added the slightest military capacity, he might have gained a complete triumph. Wenzel continued to quarrel with |The rival Kings of the Romans.| his brother and his cousins, and during a revolt in Hungary Sigismund was for five months a prisoner in the hands of his barons. If Ladislas of Naples had not been occupied in his contest with Louis II. of Anjou, he might have enforced the claims of the House of Durazzo to the Hungarian crown, as his father had done in 1385. But the difficulties of the Luxemburg princes were not enough to enable Rupert to profit by them. He invaded Bohemia, and actually reached Prague, where Jobst and the malcontent nobles offered him their support. But at the first slight reverse he withdrew, and his opportunity was lost when Sigismund escaped from captivity and came to govern Bohemia for his incompetent brother. Then Rupert tried to obtain an indirect triumph by crushing Wenzel’s protégé, Gian Galeazzo Visconti. He hoped thus to restore German influence in Italy, which the two last Luxemburg rulers had allowed to decay, and also to receive the imperial crown from the gratitude of Boniface IX. Florence and all the opponents of the Milanese despot promised to aid him with men and money. But his Italian expedition was even more unsuccessful than his invasion of Bohemia. His army was utterly routed by the mercenary forces of Gian Galeazzo under the walls of Brescia (October 21, 1401), and he returned to Germany the laughing-stock of Europe. His failure encouraged Wenzel to plan a journey to Italy to obtain his long-delayed coronation, and Sigismund undertook to escort him. Boniface IX., who was now committed to the cause of Rupert, sought to foil the scheme by urging Ladislas of Naples to an invasion of Hungary, which proved unsuccessful. But the project was perforce abandoned on the news of the death of Gian Galeazzo (September 3, 1402). From this time the rival Kings of the Romans abstained from direct attacks on each other, and contented themselves with their respective obedience, the one in the west and the other in the east. Germany was so accustomed to dispense with any active exercise of the royal authority that the schism created little excitement and less inconvenience.

The schism in the Church was far more important to Europe, though the chief actors were hardly more imposing than the rival emperors. The position of the Papacy was necessarily shaken by the contentions of two old men, each claiming to exercise divine authority, and each cursing the other with human petulance. The religious were shocked by such a spectacle: the irreligious laughed and mocked. A contemporary remarks that for a long time Christians had had an earthly god who forgave their sins, but now they have two such gods, and if one will not forgive their sins, they go to the other. The prolonged scandal forced men to change their conception of papal power, and to contend that such power does not exist for its own ends, but for the sake of the whole Church. If therefore that power is grossly abused, it is the right and even the duty of the Church to interfere on behalf of its suffering |The idea of a General Council.| members. Hence arose the conciliar idea, which dominates all other ecclesiastical conceptions in the first half of the fifteenth century. The Church, as represented by a General Council, is superior to the head, as the whole body is superior to any member. This idea found its main support in the Universities, especially in Paris, Oxford, and Prague. The schism in the Empire and the prominence of the University of Paris enabled France to take the foremost place in urging the summons of a Council to put an end to ecclesiastical anarchy. France had already adopted a policy of neutrality in 1398, and had gone so far as to besiege Avignon and to make Benedict XIII. a prisoner. But a reaction had set in when no other power followed the example of France, and the Orleanist party, in opposition to the Duke of Burgundy, had espoused the cause of Benedict. In 1402, to the great chagrin of the University of Paris, France returned to its allegiance, and Benedict, released from his captivity, journeyed to the coast of Provence and opened negotiations with his rival in Rome. The last two Roman Popes, Innocent VII. and Gregory XII., had only been elected on the express condition that they would resign as soon as their opponent did the same. Gregory XII. went so far as to make an agreement |Negotiations between the two Popes.| with Benedict, by which the two Popes pledged themselves to create no new cardinals, and to meet together at Savona in 1407. The agreement was probably insincere on Gregory’s part, and at any rate there were powerful influences at work to prevent its execution. Gregory XII. might be old and unambitious, but his relatives were eager to profit by his elevation, and he was too feeble to disregard their wishes. And Ladislas of Naples, who had become almost supreme at Rome under Innocent VII., had his own interest in prolonging the schism. A Roman Pope with a rival at Avignon was bound to support him against the Angevin claimant to Naples: but a new Pope, chosen at Savona under French influence, would be sure to espouse the cause of Louis of Anjou. None of the princes of Europe wished France to recover the ascendency in Church matters which it had enjoyed from 1305 to 1378, yet this would probably be the result if France were allowed to take the lead in terminating the schism. So the negotiations between the two Popes remained ludicrously futile. Gregory came as far north as Lucca, and Benedict as far south as Spezzia, yet they could not agree to meet. ‘The one,’ said Leonardo Bruni, ‘like a land animal, refused to approach the sea; the other, like a water-beast, refused to leave the shore.’

But Europe was not prepared to allow its interests to be any longer sacrificed by the selfish procrastination of two aged priests. In France Benedict’s chief supporter, the Duke of Orleans, had been removed by assassination in 1407, and Charles VI. was induced by the University to withdraw his allegiance once more. Benedict replied by a bull of excommunication against the French bishops, but the bull was burned, on the proposal of the University. This boldness convinced Benedict that he could no longer trust in France, and he fled to Perpignan, in his native state of Roussillon. But meanwhile an important event had taken place in Italy. |The Cardinals desert the Popes.| The cardinals who had supported the respective Popes shared the general disgust at the obstinate refusal of their masters to fulfil their oft-repeated pledges. Though the Popes had never met, they had come near enough to allow their cardinals to confer together. The result was that most of them abandoned the Popes, put themselves under Florentine protection, and summoned a General Council to meet at Pisa.

The European states were invited to approve the action of the cardinals by sending delegates to Pisa. The support of |The attitude of Europe.| France was assured, and England readily agreed to acknowledge the Council. The Spanish kingdoms, on the other hand, remained passively loyal to Benedict XIII., and Germany was divided. Wenzel, who had never done anything to carry out the policy of neutrality which he had promised France to adopt in 1398, agreed to support the Council on condition that his title as King of the Romans was formally recognised. But Rupert, although many of his chief supporters were inclined to favour the cause of the cardinals, remained obstinate in his allegiance to the Roman Pope. Within Italy, Ladislas of Naples showed his determination to enforce his own interests by occupying Rome with his troops. The two Popes, threatened with general desertion, made a tardy effort to conciliate public opinion by each summoning a council of his own. But very few prelates could be induced to attend, and the Council of Pisa only gained in importance by comparison with these conciliabula.

At Pisa the Council was opened on March 25, 1409. The |The Council of Pisa, 1409.| delegates present may be divided into two parties. The majority, including the cardinals who had summoned the assembly, desired merely to end the schism and to restore the old organisation in the Church. But some of the more enlightened ecclesiastics, such as d’Ailly and Gerson, wished to take advantage of an exceptional opportunity, and to effect such reforms in the Church as would render similar scandals impossible in the future. Thus the programme of the Council came to be divided into the causa unionis and the causa reformationis. It was agreed to take the more pressing question of unity first, but to conciliate the reformers it was given to be understood that the Council should not separate until it had considered the reformation of the Church, both in its head and its members. After this matters proceeded without any hurry, but without any conflict of opinion. Charges against the two Popes were drawn up and publicly read. Gregory and Benedict were cited to appear and answer before the Council. After the third summons they were declared contumacious, and deprived of their usurped office and dignity. It is noteworthy that the Popes were not deposed simply on the ground of public advantage, or because they were not canonically elected; but distinct charges were brought against them, and the Council claimed the right to impose the punishment of deposition. It was a novel spectacle for Europe to see the principles of constitutional government applied in the Church as they had been enforced in the English state in the cases of Edward II. and Richard II. With the ground cleared by the decree of deposition, the cardinals proceeded to a new election, and after eleven days’ deliberation, their choice fell upon the Archbishop of Milan, who took the name of Alexander V. (June 26, 1409). The question of reform was adroitly postponed for the consideration of a new council which was to meet in 1412, and the Council of Pisa was dissolved on August 7, 1409.

The Council broke up under the impression that it had accomplished at any rate the most important part of its programme. But it was soon evident that the schism was as far from an end as ever. Neither Gregory nor Benedict would acknowledge the legality of the Council and its proceedings: and indeed it was not hard to question |The triple schism.| the legality of proceedings that were undoubtedly revolutionary and without precedent. The Council had no coercive power to enforce its edicts, and as long as the Popes could find any princes interested in supporting them, so long they would cling to their titles. The only difference that the Council had made was that, whereas before there had been two rival Popes, there were now three. The pontificate of |Alexander V.| Alexander V. only lasted ten months. During that period he succeeded in recovering Rome from Ladislas, but only by reviving civil war by the recognition of Louis of Anjou’s claim to Naples. His only ecclesiastical measure was a bull which endeavoured to settle an old quarrel in favour of the mendicant orders. Alexander himself was a Franciscan, and he recognised the full rights of the friars to receive confession and to administer the sacraments. The bull provoked a storm of opposition from the parish clergy, whose rights were infringed by the intruding friars, and from the University of Paris, always at war with the Franciscans. The University, which had so recently welcomed the Pope’s election, now expelled all mendicants, and demanded that they should renounce the privileges conferred upon them by the bull. In the midst of this general disapproval, Alexander V. died (May 8, 1410), and the cardinals elected as his successor the clerical condottiere, Baldassare |Election of John XXIII.| Cossa, who took the name of John XXIII. The new Pope had rendered great services in the protection of the Council and the recovery of Rome, and he seemed to be the only man who could be trusted to resist the threatening power of Ladislas of Naples. But he had no pretensions to piety, or even to respectability, and the elevation of a licentious soldier to the highest ecclesiastical dignity was in itself a scandal to Christendom almost as great as the schism itself.

The apparent failure of the Council of Pisa seemed to bring discredit upon its supporters and to justify the action of those who had held aloof. But Rupert was not able to profit by any improvement this might |Death of Rupert.| have made in his position, as he died on May 18, 1410, a few days after Alexander V. His death forced upon the western electors the problem of a new election, and ten years’ experience had so fully convinced them of the difficulty of overthrowing the House of Luxemburg, that no candidate outside that house seems to have been considered. There were now three surviving Luxemburg princes: Wenzel, who still claimed to be King of the Romans; Sigismund, who had gained a considerable reputation by the success of his recent rule in Hungary; and the ambitious Jobst, who had added Brandenburg and Lausitz to his inheritance in Moravia, and was now the chief adviser of his cousin in Bohemia. On the great question of the Church these princes had taken opposite sides: Wenzel and Jobst had acknowledged the Council, while Sigismund had never withdrawn his allegiance from Gregory XII. The four Rhenish electors, who alone had voted in the election of Rupert, were equally divided on the same question. The Archbishop of Trier and the Elector Palatine were adherents of the Roman Pope, while the Archbishops of Mainz and Köln supported Alexander V. and his successor. As none of them were inclined to stultify their action in 1400 by recognising Wenzel, the ecclesiastical differences decided their votes. The electors of Mainz and Köln were in favour of Jobst, and the other two were inclined to support Sigismund.

Sigismund was the first to bring forward his claims, and he had much to recommend him. He had compelled Bosnia to submit to his rule: the Servians acknowledged the suzerainty of Hungary; and he had reduced |Election of Sigismund.| the greater part of Dalmatia, always inclined to set up a Neapolitan prince. Thus he could offer Germany the most efficient protection against the Turks, while as heir to Bohemia he seemed the only man who could mediate in the growing hostility of Germans and Slavs. As he could not come to Germany in person, he intrusted his cause to Frederick of Hohenzollern, Burggraf of Nürnberg, who had saved his life at the battle of Nicopolis, and had since become his most intimate adviser. But in spite of Sigismund’s distinguished reputation, his chances of election seemed small if he could only secure two votes, and if Jobst gave the Brandenburg vote in his own favour. To get rid of this difficulty Sigismund determined to repudiate the bargain by which Brandenburg had been pledged to his cousin, and to claim and exercise the vote himself. He appointed Frederick of Hohenzollern to act as his proxy: and on September 1, 1410, the latter appeared with the four Rhenish electors at Frankfort. This last move on Sigismund’s part found his opponents unprepared. Jobst had made up his mind to stand by the cause of Wenzel and to secure his own election on his cousin’s death. He and Rudolf of Saxony had declined to attend the meeting on the ground that there was no vacancy. The electors of Mainz and Köln did all they could to delay matters, but on September 20 the Elector Palatine and the Archbishop of Trier refused to wait any longer. Punctiliously fulfilling all the customary forms, they examined and approved the powers of the Burggraf of Nürnberg, and declared Sigismund to be unanimously elected. By the letter of the Golden Bull the election was incontestably valid, and even the doubtfulness of his claim to Brandenburg could hardly be urged against it.

But Sigismund’s opponents had numbers on their side, and were eager to atone for the blunder they had made in allowing a march to be stolen upon them. Jobst induced |Election of Jobst.| Wenzel to make an agreement by which the latter was to be recognised as Roman Emperor, and in return confirmed Jobst in the possession of Brandenburg and promised to give the Bohemian vote in favour of his election as King of the Romans. In October Frankfort witnessed a new election. Five electors, either in person or by proxy, gave their votes in favour of Jobst of Moravia. Thus for the second time events in the Empire copied the example of those in the Church. The first schism between two rival Popes had been followed by a schism between two rival Kings of the Romans. In 1409 a third Pope was added, and the next year witnessed the unique spectacle of three princes of the same family each claiming the highest temporal dignity on earth. There could be no clearer proof of the unsuitability of mediæval conceptions to the conditions of Europe in the fifteenth century.

The triple schism in the Empire was, however, of short duration. Sigismund was preparing to attack his rival, when |Death of Jobst.| Jobst suddenly died on January 12, 1411. His removal rendered possible an agreement between the two brothers. Sigismund recovered his inherited fief of Brandenburg, and intrusted its administration to Frederick of Nürnberg. Moravia was annexed to the Bohemian crown, and has never since been severed from it. As regards the imperial dignity, Wenzel agreed to give his own vote for Sigismund, as he had given it the previous year to Jobst, on condition that his own title should be recognised and that he should have a prior claim to be made emperor. The support of the Archbishops of Mainz and Köln Sigismund purchased by changing his attitude on the Church question and abandoning the cause of Gregory XII. On July 21, 1411, a third election took place at |Second election of Sigismund.| Frankfort, when the five votes which had been given for Jobst were unanimously registered in favour of Sigismund. The Elector Palatine and the Archbishop of Trier took no part in the matter, as they refused to cast a slur on the legality of their previous election.

Sigismund was now to all intents and purposes the only King of the Romans, as Wenzel made no attempt to busy |Sigismund and John XXIII.| himself with anything but Bohemian affairs. In his new capacity Sigismund displayed the bustling activity and the readiness to turn from one great scheme to another which had always characterised him. He began by making war on the Venetians, who had encroached upon Dalmatia. When this war was ended by a truce in 1413, he entered Italy to reconquer Lombardy from the Visconti. But he found the power of Filippo Maria too strongly established to be easily overthrown, and he was about to retire when fortune threw another and more distinguished enterprise in his way. John XXIII. had succeeded to his predecessor’s alliance with Louis II. of Anjou and to the war with Ladislas of Naples. The defeat of the Neapolitan king at Rocca-Secca (May 19, 1411) induced him to conclude a treaty by which he was to abandon Gregory XII. and John was to desert the Angevin cause. But Ladislas had more ambitious aims than merely to secure his position in Naples. He desired to build up a kingdom of Italy, and for this purpose to seize upon the States of the Church which lay between him and the northern principalities and republics. No sooner had John XXIII. disbanded his mercenary forces than Ladislas resumed hostilities, occupied Rome, and drove the Pope to find refuge in Florence. In this strait John looked eagerly round for support, and the most obvious ally was Sigismund, who had his own reasons for checking the aggrandisement of Ladislas. But Sigismund would only give his assistance on condition that the Pope should summon a new Council to some German city in order to put an end to the schism. John saw clearly the danger of such a proceeding to his own position, and strove to alter the place of meeting to some town south of the Alps. Sigismund, however, stood firm, the Pope’s difficulties were pressing, and at last a formal summons was issued for a Council |Summons of the Council of Constance.| to meet at Constance on November 1, 1414. Before the dreaded date arrived, the death of Ladislas (August 6) freed the Pope from his most immediate difficulties and caused him to repent of his too hasty acquiescence. Sigismund had apparently gained a signal triumph. He had ousted the French monarchy from the lead of the reforming movement in Europe, and if he could conduct the Council to a successful issue, he would have done much to restore the prestige both of the imperial dignity and of the German kingship. Men were reminded of the days when the early emperors, Otto the Great and Henry III., had dominated the Church as well as the State.