I. INTRODUCTION#
Do the events of days, years, and centuries, when contemplated through the eyes of faith, reveal not utter randomness but designs following a divine master plan?
Europeans assumed God was at work in their world accomplishing his purposes. Not only is the earth God’s creation, but what happens in this ephemeral experience called life is somehow bound to the world of the spirit, that is, reality. This life with its toils and tears is but an antechamber for the next.
Medieval Europeans faced the serious problem of explaining the origin of evil within their world without making God its ultimate author. They worried about how to protect themselves from disasters caused by the seemingly whimsical forces of nature. The clergy sometimes fretted and complained about the “ungodly” practices the laity relied on in attempting to fend off evil, whether sickness or death, bad weather, or accidents. Complicating matters still further, the life cycle of millions of Europeans was dramatically interrupted by deadly perturbations.
The distinguished medievalist Robert Lerner has labeled the fourteenth century the “Age of Adversity.”
The period 1300–1500 began ominously for the Western church with the so-called “Babylonian Captivity of the Church” (1309–77) that directly challenged its long-standing traditions and institutional identity because the papacy moved from Rome to Avignon (at the time on the French border).
The period concluded on the eve of the “Protestant Reformation”, which represented another momentous challenge to the Western church as an international institution. In the intervening years, the unity of the Western church was painstakingly pieced back together again, despite the “Great Schism”, only to be shattered afresh by the Protestant Reformation.
The late Middle Ages (c.1300–1500) was a perilous period for the Western church’s unity and for the survival of papal pretentions to dominate European political, social, and religious life. Moreover, during this same time frame the Eastern Byzantine Church suffered a devastating blow with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.
II. A PIVOTAL TIME OF STRUGGLE WITHIN AND OUTSIDE OF THE CHURCH#
A. The Epochal Tragedies of Massive Deaths#
This period also witnessed epochal demographic dislocations for millions of Europeans. Sudden and unexpected death became even more prevalent as a fearsome specter, indiscriminately stalking kings and queens, popes and peasants.
The ravages of the Hundred Years War (1337 – 1453) and other bloody conflicts devastated entire towns and regions.
The introduction of gunpowder around 1400 changed longstanding patterns of warfare.
Perhaps even more sinister and unpredictable, waves of famines (1315–17; 1340–50; 1374–75) and plagues such as the Black Death (1347–50) swept like apocalyptic scourges through Europe, turning entire cities and countrysides into silent death zones.
European demographic statistics for this period coldly reveal one of the greatest disasters humanity has ever experienced. Toward 1347 the population of Europe was approximately 75 million. By 1400, however, the population had fallen by 33 – 40 percent — more than 25 million people. Some historians grimly suggest that in 1450 the population of Europe may have actually been only one-third to one-half of what it was in 1300.
Seeking to explain these catastrophes, more than a few Europeans speculated that the calamities were related to God’s judgment for their own sins and for the papacy’s departure from Rome and the scandal of the Great Schism. These catastrophes were proof positive of God’s anger for the church’s sins.
After the Black Death a number of individuals practiced rigorous forms of hermit life, seclusion, asceticism, and mysticism in which they sometimes sought their own salvation. Women mystics like Birgitta of Sweden (1303 – 73) and Catherine of Siena (1347 – 80) boldly admonished and warned popes directly about the papacy’s “sins.”
Devotions directed toward the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, became even more prominent. The faithful hoped that Mary might intercede with her Son in their behalf. The number of saints to whom the faithful could appeal for help and blessing increased.
This same period (1300 – 1500), with its demographic and ecclesiastical tragedies, is simultaneously noteworthy for its innovative achievements in architecture, sculpture, and painting, its reforms in educational curricula, and its fascination with and recovery of Greek and Roman manuscripts — traits we often associate with the “Renaissance”, or cultural “rebirth.”
The Renaissance in turn stimulated a number of the concerns dear to reforming Catholics as well as those who broke with the church and became Protestants.
European explorers ventured forth and discovered “new” lands, Constantinople fell to the Turks (1453), and Moscow emerged as a “Third Rome,” the center of Russian Orthodoxy.
Western “schoolmen” engaged in sturdy theological reflection, often battling each other in hard-hitting controversies and disputations.
Lay movements also assumed a larger role in the life of the church. Confraternities became especially widespread in Italy after the Black Death, and some 150 parish fraternities formed in London, a number of which were also created in response to the plague.
In the last decades of the fifteenth century, the number of priests grew significantly after a steep decline during the period of the Great Schism.
B. The Papacy: Plunged into a State of Crisis#
In the first decade of the fourteenth century, the Catholic Church encountered especially turbulent political seas. Individual popes and prelates found navigating these troubled waters all the more treacherous due to swirling crosscurrents set in motion by a number of monarchs.
An international Respublica Christiana, or “Christian republic”, ostensibly bound together by Europeans’ loyalty to the empire or to the papacy, did not appear capable of withstanding burgeoning aspirations of kings and princes for political independence.
A unified Christendom seemed destined to founder and to yield to a more nebulous “commonwealth” of independent Chris tian nation-states.
Indeed, in some regions primary loyalties to kings in nation-states or to princes in citystates had already superseded older loyalties of the laity to emperors or to Christ’s Vicar on earth, the pope.
This development became painfully obvious to a number of observers when Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303) came into conflict with Edward I of England (1272–1307) and Philip IV the Fair of France (1285–1314) because of their seeking to extract money from clerics to support their wars.
Peace was initially restored between Boniface and Philip, the pope actually canonizing Louis XI, Philip’s grandfather (1297).
Four years later, the conflict between pope and king renewed when Philip imprisoned a French bishop on accusations of treason.
In April 1302, the Estates-General of France — consisting of representatives from the clergy, nobility, and the “Third Estate” (the people) — met and sided with their monarch against the pope.
In November, Boniface issued the papal bull Unam Sanctam, which reiterated very strong but certainly not new claims for the papacy’s power over temporal rule at a time when the papacy’s actual political influence was dramatically diminishing.
Philip spurned the pope’s arguments and directives. He called for a council to depose Boniface for allegedly engaging in heresy, sodomy, and simony among other grievous charges.
The embattled pope replied by crafting the bull Super Petri solio, in which he excommunicated the king.
On September 7, 1303, one day before this bull was scheduled to be published, Philip’s supporters broke into the fortified papal summer palace in Anagni, thirty-seven miles from Rome, and for three days they incarcerated and physically brutalized Boniface. Towns people rescued the pope, but he died a month later, on October 11, 1303.
C. The Political Order in Europe#
In 1300, three years before Boniface’s death, it was still not clear for some Europeans — at least at a superficial societal level — that the papacy’s power and the unity of “Christendom” were tottering on the brink of disaster.
The city of Rome itself was teeming with the crush of thousands of pilgrims, many of whom were very anxious to buy a jubilee plenary indulgence, garnished as it was with a full absolution from the penalties of sin. With sizable amounts of new monies brimming in the coffers of the pope and the cardinals, with enthused pilgrims pushing their way through the streets, and with the papacy’s victory over the empire as represented by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1194 – 1250) of the Hohenstaufen family some fifty years earlier, Rome once again appeared poised to serve as the political and spiritual center of Europe.
How might we explain this dramatic loss of papal prestige and power as represented by Boniface VIII’s humiliation at Anagni in 1303?
The contexts for his predicament were both long-term and short-term in the making.
In March 1075, Pope Gregory VII (1073–85) had boldly claimed in Dictatus papae that popes had the right to depose emperors. By implication this meant that papal powers were superior to the temporal power of kings.
Popes Innocent III (1161–1216) and Innocent IV (1243–54) had believed themselves fortified with this theory when they confronted recalcitrant rulers, namely, John of England (1199–1216) and Emperor Frederick II.
Throughout Europe churches and even monasteries often belonged to nobles, bishops, and kings who viewed them as their personal property to sell or to inherit or to do with whatever they wanted.
This helps explain why Edward I of England and Philip IV of France believed it legitimate to take monies from their clergies, whereas Boniface VIII, armed with Gregory VII’s dictum and a belief that kings and clergy owed him obedience, found the kings’ acts indefensible and threatened them with strong sanctions.
After Emperor Frederick II’s death in 1250, the power of the Hohenstaufen, his family, did diminish substantially in Italy, only to be replaced by that of the Angevin family at Naples (the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies), whose members were cadet relatives of French royalty.
The elderly Celestine V (July – December 1294), who had been a spiritually minded recluse before his election, proved incapable of running the papacy and resigned the office, leaving its administration in shambles.
Attempting to restore some kind of order, Boniface VIII felt obliged to take strong measures, which alienated disenfranchised cardinals from the Colonna family at Rome. Moreover, local clergies discontented by perceived encroachments of Rome in their own affairs and by the pope’s own deeds and demands for money were on occasion willing to side with their monarchs rather than with the pope.
For diverse reasons, then, certain lay and clerical factions were quite prepared to join forces with Philip IV or other monarchs and princes to oppose Boniface VIII.
Nonetheless, the atrocities leading to Boniface’s death in 1303 did provoke a sense of outrage even for several of the pope’s strongest critics in life, including Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321). This masterful poet, who blamed the pope for many of his own misfortunes, was aghast at Boniface’s fate.
D. The “Babylonian Captivity of the Church”#
Boniface VIII was succeeded by Benedict XI (1303–4), whose dismay over events at Anagni — that is, Boniface’s ill treatment — was likewise deeply felt. After pardoning many of Boniface’s opponents in an effort to appease the French king, Benedict more boldly condemned the assault at Anagni, reaffirming the excommunication of Philip IV’s adviser and his Italian conspirators. But by July 7 the pope was dead, and one prevalent rumor was explicit: he had been poisoned.
What Pope Benedict XI bravely refused to do — that is, comply fully with dictates of the French King Philip IV — his successor, Clement V (1305 – 14), the Cardinal of Bordeaux, did not shun.
Elected pope with the help of French money, and himself a Gascon born at Villandrau, Gironde (France), not only did Clement exonerate Philip for his involvement in the events associated with the death of Boniface, but in the bull Rex gloriae (April 27, 1311) he asserted that Philip’s actions had been motivated only by his love and respect for that church and her doctrines.
Earlier, after wandering for several years in southern France, Clement had decided to establish the papacy in Avignon (March 1309), a town separated from France only by the width of the Rhone River and located in Angevin territory belonging to the kings of Naples and yet especially subject to French influence.
Whereas Boniface VIII had been unwillingly humiliated by Philip IV, Clement V seemed quite ready to prostrate the papacy before the same monarch.
The humanist poet Petrarch, along with English and German critics, adjudged the papacy’s apparent dependence on the wishes of the French monarchy as nothing less than a form of servile bondage. Indeed, Petrarch labeled it “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church”, an allusion to what became the seventy years during which the Israelites lived subjected to their Babylonian masters. This description has endured and now refers to the time frame dating from the establishment of the papacy in Avignon in 1309 to the year 1377, when Pope Gregory XI made his way back to Rome.
Seven popes lived in Avignon during the “captivity,” with Pope Benedict XII (1334 – 42) being the first to believe that the stay there might in fact be permanent and thus being the first to begin building a splendid papal palace in 1336.
Some historians have sought to offset contemporaries’ somewhat negative laments about the transfer of the seat of the papacy from Rome to Avignon.
Were not some of the popes undeniably orthodox and persons of upstanding moral character?
Is it not true that a number of the Avignonese popes came from southern France (the province of Languedoc in particular), and thus their political interests were focused more on local issues than those of bolstering the political fortunes of Philip IV and his successors?
Is it not the case that the popes on occasion attempted to return to Rome, but political unrest there prevented them from doing so?
During their stay in Avignon, did not the popes create administrative machinery admirably suited to extend the church’s influence?
Contemporary critics, such as Dante, of the popes’ residency in Avignon were much less forgiving. These critics saw in the popes at Avignon puppets of the French monarchy who not only enjoyed sumptuous lifestyles, but with a flair for nepotism arranged to staff key church administrative posts with their own relatives and other Frenchmen. Petrarch called Avignon “the sewer of the world.”
In fact, 112 out of the 114 cardinals the seven popes created were French. Most of the curialists (members of the Curia or papal government) were not only French but from Languedoc.
Other Europeans such as the Dominican John of Paris (c. 1255–1306) and Marsilius of Padua (1275–1342), a theologian and a physician, attacked in differing ways the claim of the papacy to exercise authority over secular governments.
Another fact engendering a spirit of independence from the papacy was the prototypic, intensely “nationalistic” aspirations of a number of European writers. The use of regional languages rather than Latin prose and poetry often gave expression to these longings.
St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscans, had written the first poem in Italian, one devoted to the sun.
In the early years of the fourteenth century, Dante Alighieri, who described himself as “a Florentine by birth but not in character,” had penned The Divine Comedy in his native Tuscan rather than in Latin.
Petrarch, a master of Latin, wrote extensively in Italian and claimed that “old Roman valor is not dead, Nor in the Italians’ breast extinguished.”
Martin Luther, evoked alleged German superiorities in his criticism of the “Roman” church that had “sucked Italy dry” of its revenues and was now turning to Germany.
A spirit of loyalty to a “people” or a kingdom or city-states had entered into the prose and poetry of a number of writers and nurtured an attitude of independence toward the policies and decrees of the papacy.
E. The Social and Economic Order#
The unity of a Christian Europe — loosely tiered in three divisions of the clergy, nobles, and the people, with the pope acting as universal spiritual and temporal shepherd — was increasingly put at risk by the conflicts of monarchs such as those between Philip IV and Edward I and the Hundred Years War.
Historians have attempted to explain the reasons the fourteenth century was susceptible to these demographic catastrophes. One interpretation suggests that by midcentury the levels of food production could no longer keep pace with the growth in Europe’s population. A general scarcity of food in certain regions rendered various populations physically weakened and thereby more susceptible to the ravages of disease and the plague.
Whatever medical or economic explanations may account for the famines and plagues, scores of contemporaries saw behind them a divine cause: God’s righ teous anger at the sins of Europeans. They especially bemoaned the tragedy of the Avignonese papacy.
With repeated appeals from Petrarch and other anguished hearts such as the nuns Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, several popes at Avignon sensed they must eventually move back to Rome. French cardinals and local officials in Avignon, worried about the loss of prestige and monies this would entail, attempted to countermand these rumored plans. But one Avignonese pope, Urban V (1362 – 70), brushing opposition aside, returned to Rome and actually resided there from 1367 to 1370 before concluding that he preferred to return to Avignon.
Birgitta of Sweden, a mystic and sometimes hailed as Sweden’s “Joan of Arc”, warned him that if he took this course of action, he would die prematurely. On September 27, 1370, he arrived in Avignon, only to fall ill. Urban died in December, a few months after allegedly violating Birgitta’s prophecy.
Another Avignonese pope, Gregory XI (1370 – 78), finally ended the papal displacement from Rome. Heavily engaged in Italian politics (the War of the Eight Saints with Florence), this pope yielded to the counsel of the mystic Catherine of Siena, author of The Dialogue.
In 1376 she had arrived in Avignon, representing the cause of Florentines who wanted the pope to lift an interdict on their city. Gregory was much impressed by the spiritual bearing of this remarkable woman and her complaints about the “sins” of Avignon.Catherine appealed to Gregory to return to Rome, optimistically claiming that Italy awaited him as a son awaits a father.
On September 13, 1376, to the great consternation of many clerics in Avignon as well as his own father, Gregory XI set off for Rome. He entered the city on January 17, 1377, after an arduous journey.
On March 27, 1378, however, Gregory died. In his last days he had been disconcerted by the political and religious turmoil within the city of Rome and suspected it did not bode well for the papacy’s own future. The French pope had also begun to second-guess himself and wished he had stayed in Avignon.
THE GREAT SCHISM (1378-1417)#
Seldom have cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church faced a more perilous situation than the sixteen who entered the conclave at Rome to elect the successor to Gregory XI. The Roman populace was restive and gravely worried that the conclave might elect another Frenchman. Armed citizenry broke into the conclave and threatened to kill the cardinals.
The crowds were pacified and dispersed when they learned that Bartholomew, the archbishop of Bari, had been elected. If not a Roman, he was at least an Italian. Foiling the cardinals’ stratagem, Bartholomew did not decline the election’s results as it was assumed he would. On April 8, 1378, Bartholomew Prignano became the new pope as Urban VI, reigning until 1389.
Within a brief time Urban VI alienated many of the cardinals by his pride, impetuous speech, and harsh programs. Offended by the new pope’s policies and believing he was actually quite deranged, French cardinals withdrew from Rome and moved to Anagni.
They met together and concluded that the pope’s election had been achieved under duress and therefore was void, “as having been made, not freely, but under fear.”
They angrily demanded that Urban abdicate, and they verbally accosted him as an “apostate, anathema, Antichrist, and the mocker and destroyer of Christianity.”
In turn, on September 20, 1378, they elected Robert of Geneva to be pope. He took the name Clement VII.
The “Great Schism” had been born. After a series of mutual excommunications and military campaigns in which Urban’s mercenaries gained the upper hand, Clement retreated via Naples and returned to Avignon. Urban remained in Rome.
Christian Europe was deeply troubled and embittered by these unsettling and unseemly developments. By what criteria could the faithful determine which of the two contenders, Clement VII or Urban VI, was the authentic Vicar of Christ on earth? The sorting-out process was made all the more bewildering for some because both popes could cite notable Christian leaders who accepted the legitimacy of their own respective claims.
To complicate matters further, a third pope was elected at the Council of Pisa in 1409, thereby making the schism a three-chair affair.
A. The Conciliar Movement#
University professors, theologians, canon lawyers, and others devoted unstinting energies in proposing ways for Christendom to heal the schism.
In 1381 Henry of Langenstein, a theologian and mathematician, suggested that after due penance by those involved in the schism, and after fasting, weeping, and prayer by other Chris tians, a general council should be held.
In 1393 the University of Paris, which had served as one of the driving forces in the movement to end the schism, reiterated its earlier appeal (1381) for a general council, and it set forth three “ways” to end the schism:
Both sides should desist from claiming the papal office
if these sides are unwilling to resign, then arbitration should determine who is the rightful pope or the arbiters could elect a pope
if the two sides will not yield to either the first or second ways, then, a third “excellent” way could be pursued: a general council should be called of prelates and university doctors to remedy the schism.
The first two ways did actually fail, for neither pope would resign of his own accord or submit to the authority of arbitrators to adjudicate the rightfulness of his papal claims.
The “third way” — which as a proposal grew in popularity among European church leaders such as Pierre d’Ailly (1350 – 1420) and Jean Gerson (1363 – 1429) — had been prepared in part by canon lawyers of earlier generations.
Its rationale was forged by claiming that the plentitude of power had resided in the congregation fidelium, the congregation of the faithful, since the days of the “primitive church.” Ultimate authority did not belong exclusively to the office of the pope. Rather, it belonged to all the faithful in lesser or greater degrees, depending on their status within the church.
These claims suggested the possibility that a general council of the church, encompassing cardinals and bishops and other clerics, had the right to determine who should be the pope. Even the laity could play a delimited role at a council.
During the first decade of the fifteenth century, the conciliar solution to the Great Schism triumphed over other proposals. In 1409 the Council of Pisa opened with the expressed goal of participants to end the scandal of the schism. A number of theologians met and proposed to the council that the two popes of the day, Benedict XIII and Gregory XII, “were, according to divine law, found to be pertinacious schismatics and fomenters of the ancient schism and also heretics, in the strict sense of the word. And, as such pertinacious schismatics and heretics, ought to be declared by the sacred general council to be de jure ejected from office.”
The council did in fact depose both popes and, in 1409, elected a new pope, Alexander V. It appeared that the schism had been finally healed.
Neither Benedict XIII nor Gregory XII acquiesced before the negative judgments of the Council of Pisa on their respective claims to be pope. Ironically enough, the council’s actions in electing a new pope had only expanded the scope of the schism. Now there were three popes in Christendom. Moreover, each had loyal followers in certain corners of Europe.
Troubled by the enormity of this travesty, European politicians and churchmen alike called for a new council to attempt to end the schism.
B. The Council of Constance: Healing the Schism#
In 1414 a colorful throng of Christendom’s mighty and not so mighty descended on the German town of Constance, located on the Rhine River, bordering eastern Switzerland. According to the contemporary records of Ulrich von Richental, 38 cardinals and patriarchs (with 3,174 attendants), 285 bishops and archbishops (with 11,600 supporters), 1,978 doctors of theology and law, 530 “simple priests and scholars,” and a king, two queens, and other members of the nobility attended the council. Richental claimed 72,460 persons visited the town during the council.
On November 5, 1414, the Council of Constance opened its proceedings. The participants faced a daunting agenda:
to find a way to heal the schism
to douse the flames of the Bohemian revolt led by John Hus
to establish a means to reform the church of abuses
In Sacrosancta (April 6, 1415), a benchmark decree for the conciliar movement, the council set forth the warrant for its right to sit in judgment of a pope and to reform the church:
This sacred synod of Constance declares, in the first place, that it forms a general council, legitimately assembled in the Holy Spirit and representing the Catholic Church Militant, that it has its power immediately from Christ, and that all men, of every rank and position including even the pope himself, are bound to obey it in those matters that pertain to the faith, the extirpation of the said schism, and the reformation of the said Church in head and members.
This affirmation of conciliar authority countermanded the monarchical papal claim that the pope alone received his authority directly from Christ and that the bishops in turn received their authority from the pope. Because members of the council believed they represented the Catholic Church and received their authority directly from Christ, they concluded that even a pope must yield to their judgments.
Pope John XXIII#
Pope John XXIII (an antipope) began to understand he could not get the council to do his bidding. Following the lead of the English, the council decided to vote by “nations.” In consequence, the cardinals representing the English, the Germans, the French, the Spanish, and the Italians would cast only one vote per national party.
His enemies drew up a frightful list of charges related to his alleged moral and theological failures. Disguised as a groom, John opted to flee Constance the evening of March 20 – 21, 1415. In exile in the neighboring town of Freiburg, he urged his cardinals to join him. The council was thrown into a state of turmoil by John’s sudden exit.
At this juncture, Sigismund — as King of the Romans, as Holy Roman Emperor, as King of Bohemia (Germany and Hungary) — stepped in to rally council participants discouraged by the recent turn of events.
A few weeks later, John XXIII was captured. The council put him on trial and found him guilty of perjury, simony, and other gross misconduct. The council deposed John on May 29, 1415, due to his scandalous behavior. He later received a position as a cardinal.
The other popes#
By June the other two aspiring popes knew what their respective fates would be.
On July 4 the council accepted Gregory XII’s resignation.
Benedict XIII continued to assume a more recalcitrant posture. Sigismund persuaded the kings of Castile, Navarre, and Aragon to refrain from giving Benedict their full support. The council then deposed him on July 26, 1417, because he had allegedly engaged in acts of “perjury, heresy, and schism.”
Benedict and a number of his loyal Spanish followers refused to accept this verdict. In 1423 Benedict XIII died as an exile in Spain. To the very end, he apparently considered himself to be the true pope.
On November 11, 1417, the Council of Constance elected Cardinal Oddo de Colonna, a member of the powerful Colonna family, as the new pope. He took the name Martin V. With this pope’s election the Great Schism had finally been healed.
Aftermath#
The church Martin V began to rule had suffered enormous spiritual and material losses during the schism and during the Babylonian Captivity before that.
Owing to Rome’s occupation by different sets of foreign troops, Martin as a Roman pope did not return to the city until 1420. The absence of a papal presence in Rome for long periods of time during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries meant that numerous church buildings in the city had fallen into a state of disrepair.
In various ways Martin attempted to unloose conciliar restraints. Only with reluctance did he call the Council of Pavia (1423 – 24) and the Council of Basel (1431 – 37), thereby honoring the stipulation of the decree Frequens that councils should be held “frequently.”
Martin died in 1431.
C. The Trial and Execution of John Hus#
The second issue on the Council of Constance’s agenda was to find the means to bring to obedience Bohemians caught up in a spirit of full revolt against the council’s authority.
Many Bohemians had become the followers of Master John Hus (c. 1369 – 1415), the popular chancellor at the University of Prague. A brilliant theologian endowed with an attractive sense of humor, Hus preached reforming sermons in Czech and German at the Bethlehem Chapel (built in 1391).
Hus had been influenced by earlier Czech reform-minded preachers such as Milic Kormeriz (c. 1325 – 75), sometimes hailed as the “father of Czech Reform,” and Matthew of Janov (c. 1355 – 94). Hus had also read John Wycliffe’s writings that entered Bohemia in the wake of the marriage in 1382 between Richard II of England and Anne of Bohemia.
In a generous gesture, in 1414 Sigismund, wanting to foster peace in his vast Chris tian kingdoms encompassing 20 million people, gave Hus a free-conduct pass to come to Constance to answer the Czechs’ many critics in a public forum. Hus had already been excommunicated a couple years earlier (August 1412).
Upon his arrival at Constance, Hus apparently believed he might successfully defend his own orthodoxy against charges of heresy.
He was also concerned to salvage the reputation for Christian orthodoxy of his followers in the Kingdom of Bohemia.
Among a host of serious accusations, Hus faced the especially grievous charge that he was an overt disciple of John Wycliffe (1324 – 84).
John Wycliffe#
In Wycliffe’s day the English government had attempted to curtail papal influence in the kingdom.
The Statute of Provisors (1351) disallowed the pope from bestowing benefices in England.
The Statute of Praemunire (1353) rendered appeals to Rome illegal.
Wycliffe had been master of Balliol at Oxford University.
In The Truth of Holy Scripture (1372) he argued that Scripture is free from error and is the sole rule of faith.
He urged that the Bible be translated into the vernacular for the benefit of the laity. Inspired by Wycliffe, five of his followers penned the “Lollard Bible.”
In The Power of the Papacy (1379), Wycliffe indicated that a pope could be deposed for both heretical beliefs and immoral behavior. He also criticized sharply the doctrine of transubstantiation.
In 1382 William Courtney, the archbishop of Canterbury, condemned twentyfour of Wycliffe’s views and ordered that he no longer teach. After his death in 1382, Wycliffe’s followers, known as Lollards — or “mumblers” — continued to spread his teachings, but due to persecution were forced to do so as an underground movement.
The Trial#
Hus declared that it was a calumny to say he had embraced all of Wycliffe’s teachings; he approved only those that were supported by Holy Scripture.
On many doctrines Hus was as orthodox a Catholic as his contemporary accusers. But his accusers rebuffed his arguments. The council concluded that Hus was in reality a purveyor of the pestilent poison of heresy. Its members ordered Hus to accept their judgments, that is, “to stand by the decision of the Council” and to repent of his “heretical teachings.” Hus professed a willingness to do so if these teachings were in fact heretical.
Here Hus took his stand, claiming the backing of the authority of Holy Scripture.
On July 5, 1415, the council ruled that John Hus was not a disciple of Christ, but was actually a disciple of the arch-heretic Wycliffe. Hus was adjudged a “veritable and manifest heretic and that his errors and heresies have long ago been condemned by the Church of God”. Because Hus remained “obstinate and incorrigible” and unwilling “to return into the bosom of the holy mother Church,” he would be deposed from his priestly office and turned over to civil authorities.
De Ecclesia#
What teachings in particular had provoked the council’s indignation? Hus’s doctrine of the church as presented in his book De Ecclesia (1413) had stoked the council’s anger. In fact, thirty charges against Hus were based on the council’s disputed understanding of this book.
He repeatedly appealed to the authority of Christ and to Holy Scripture as final arbiters of right doctrine. He rejected the council’s own assessment that what it stipulated as orthodoxy reflects true Catholic teachings based in Holy Scripture and the church fathers. Besides Scripture, Hus claimed that his position found warrant in the writings of St. Augustine and other church fathers.
Much like Wycliffe, Hus affirmed that Christ is the head of the church, not the pope. While by no means deprecating the institutional manifestations of Christ’s church on earth, Hus also emphasized its spiritual dimensions. The church consists of a spiritual union of Christ’s sheep, predestined from all times and joined in a spiritual union.
By contrast, the council identified Christ’s church in more earthly institutional terms. The council viewed itself as the prime ecclesiastical authority representing Christ’s church militant on earth. It could decide the fate equally well of the likes of both a John XXIII and a John Hus.
The Execution#
On July 6, 1415, executioners led John Hus outside Constance and through a meadow to his place of execution. The Czech was stripped of his clothes. An eighteen-inch-high crown adorned with three devils and the words, “This is a heresiarch,” was pushed onto his head.
He was heard to say, “You are now roasting a goose [the meaning of the Czech/Bohemian word Hus], but God will awaken a swan whom you will not burn or roast” — a statement cited years later by the minister officiating at Martin Luther’s funeral.
A witness described the last moment of Hus’s life:
When the executioners at once lit [the fire], the Master immediately began to sing in a loud voice, at first, “Christ, Thou son of the living God, have mercy upon us,” and secondly, “Christ, Thou son of the living God, have mercy upon me,” and in the third place, “Thou Who art born of Mary the Virgin.” And when he began to sing the third time, the wind blew the flame into his face.
Hus died soon after.
Aftermath#
Hus’s executioners treated his remains in an inhumane fashion. Then they incinerated what was left of his body, clothing, and shoes, throwing the residue of ashes into the Rhine River. Authorities did not apparently want to risk giving Hus’s followers any opportunity to acquire “relics” of their departed prisoner.
The council’s actions against John Hus produced unintended results.
On September 2, fifty-eight Hussite barons declared in a manifesto that Hus was by no means a heretic. Rather, any person who had the temerity to charge the Bohemians with heresy was really “a son of the Devil and the father of lies.”
When a bishop from the Council of Constance put Prague under an interdict, Bohemians became further enraged.
“Utraquists” — Hussites who believed that lay people should have access to both the bread and the wine — promptly countermanded the interdict by entering Prague churches and providing mass for the laity.
In 1416 the alienation of the Hussites intensified further when the incendiary news arrived that Jerome of Prague, a disciple of Hus, had been put to death at Constance.
In 1419 civil disturbances and mob rule broke out. Bohemia was aflame with a spirit of revolt.
Armed conflicts erupted between various parties: Roman Catholic, Utraquists, and Taborites (extreme Hussites named after Mount Tabor, their haven south of Prague).
IV. THE REFORM OF THE CHURCH#
The third principal issue on the agenda of the Council of Constance was the reform of the church.
For hundreds of years poignant voices could be heard urging reform. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church coupled with the Great Schism furnished ample illustrations why some Chris tians believed a thorough reform of the church was necessary.
By the first decade of the fifteenth century, many churchmen agreed that the conciliar movement itself, besides helping to end the schism, might provide the best vehicle to bring about the needed reform for which so many longed.
Their hopes seemed to be rewarded when the Council of Constance set forth the decree Frequens (October 5, 1417), proposing that the “frequent” holding of councils was one of the most effective means of rooting out the briars and thistles of heresy and corruption from the church.
The decree stipulated that councils should be held regularly (every five years, or even more frequently) to help reform the church in its “head and members.” The popes were specifically admonished not to avoid holding councils.
A. The Papal Struggle against the Conciliar Movement#
After the Council of Constance concluded in 1418, a number of fifteenth-century popes made a considered effort to regain what they believed had been taken from them: their rightful prerogatives as papal monarchs. In a certain measure, their century-long struggle (1417–1517) against the conciliar movement was a success.
By Luther’s day the popes had essentially reestablished their authority as papal monarchs. They initiated a few councils. They determined not to give conciliarists access to authority such as that which the Council of Constance claimed for itself.
The reforms envisioned by the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17) reflected a curial top-down approach in which the papacy imposed its views of reform. Indeed, Pope Leo X had the council’s appeals for reform wrapped in the authority of his own papal bulls: Pastoralis officii divina providencia (1513) and Supernae dispositionis arbitrio (1514)
More generally, the popes invested their energies in a campaign for the restoration of papal authority in exchange for the benefits of serious church reform that the councils apparently could have afforded them. The popes could not have foreseen that the essential subjection of the conciliar movement made Luther’s appeal for reform all the more acute and understandable to many Europeans in the first half of the sixteenth century.
The Council of Ferrara-Florence#
Martin V, whom the Council of Constance made pope, was a gifted reorganizer of the papacy’s administrative and financial institutions.
He also engaged in minor reforms of the church hierarchy.
He launched building projects to refurbish church properties in Rome.
He urged Chris tians to treat Jews with more moderation and to eschew forced baptisms of their children under the age of twelve.
He made concordats with various kings that extended his influence throughout Europe.
Because of the decree Frequens, Martin V grudgingly called the Council of Pavia (1423–24) and the Council of Basel (1431–38, 1449). Members of this latter council still hoped to reform the church and to pacify the Bohemians caught up in revolt.
When the Council of Basel opened in July 23, 1431, the authority of the conciliar movement appeared to possess substantial strength. However, a number of months before the council was due to open, Martin V died. His successor, Eugenius IV (1431 – 47), attempted to crush the council’s authority by ordering it dissolved in December 1431, only a few months after it had opened. Under tremendous public pressure, Eugenius abjectly yielded to their counterattacks and recognized the Council of Basel’s claims to legitimacy.
In 1434 a revolt broke out against him at Rome, led by members of the Colonna family. Eugenius was forced to flee to Florence, where he lived until his return to Rome in 1443. From Florence, Eugenius attempted to reassert his papal prerogatives. This was no paltry task.
In 1438 the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges afforded the French king the authority to rule in temporal affairs and to propose candidates for vacant benefices.
In an attempt to end warfare in Bohemia, the council negotiated accords with more moderate Bohemians, according to which “Communion in both kinds” was permitted and the gospel could be preached without restriction. The council disallowed monies to be sent to the pope, and the papacy’s income tumbled. The conciliar movement looked robust, the papacy’s authority muzzled, and its political policies in disarray.
In 1437–38, however, negotiations between Eugenius IV and the Byzantine Emperor John VIII (1392 – 1448) played a major role in redirecting the flow of political power within the Western church.
In 1437 Eugenius once again ordered that the Council of Basel be dissolved. He called for the council to meet in Ferrara, Italy, in 1437–38. A number of the prelates at Basel obeyed Eugenius’s command and attended the council, especially intrigued by the pope’s efforts to bring about a union of churches with the Greeks.
B. A Union of the Western and Eastern Churches#
Given the obvious weakness of Eugenius IV’s political situation in the years immediately preceding the Council of Ferrara/Florence, the Byzantines’ decision to submit to the pope’s authority appears to have been a decisive factor in elevating his stature over that of the Baselites.
On July 6, 1439, the Greeks and Byzantines acquiesced to the decree Laetentur coeli et exulta terra (“Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad”) and thereby accepted a union of churches with the Western church represented by Eugenius. The Byzantines acknowledged papal authority and endorsed the doctrine of purgatory and other disputed doctrines. Christendom had reason to rejoice. Unity among Chris tians East and West appeared to be restored.
Isidore, the Greek Metropolitan of the Russian Church, who had been appointed by the Patriarch of Constantinople, likewise attended the Council of Florence and heartily approved its decrees. Upon his return to Moscow (1441), he encountered opposition from Moscovites who opposed the Florentine accord. Isidore was imprisoned, but he escaped and fled Moscow. In 1448, Russian bishops began to choose their own metropolitan.
The accreditation from Eastern clergymen for Eugenius IV’s authority bolstered the campaign to restore fully papal monarchy at the expense of conciliar authority. The Baselites found themselves immured in a deteriorating political situation. Those who remained in Basel formed a “rump” council of prelates who would not accede to Eugenius’s demands. They deposed him on June 25, 1439, and on November 5 elected Duke Amadeus of Savoy as Pope Felix V (1439–49).
These actions, though understandable from the Baselites’ perspective, ultimately badly compromised their conciliar enterprise. Had not their conciliar theory been marshaled as a means to end the Great Schism? Now the Baselites, the purest of conciliar advocates, had created a new schism by their election of a second pope to compete with Eugenius IV. Their actions appeared to run at cross-purposes with the thrust of the earlier conciliar movement. During the next decade, whatever slight support had existed for Felix V’s papal claims slipped away.
When Eugenius IV died, Nicholas V (1447 – 55) was elected the new pope. King Charles VII of France helped negotiate an arrangement that facilitated Felix V’s abdication of his papal claims in 1449. Pope Nicholas made Felix a cardinal and gave him other benefices and honors. Felix, a pious man, died in 1455. With his death, the conciliar movement — already wounded — seemed to lapse into a state of irreality.
C. Pope Pius II and Blunting the Conciliar Movement#
The irreality was such that within a decade Pope Pius II (1458–64) could claim in the bull Execrabilis (1460) that any appeal to a future council as an authority above that of a pope constituted an appeal to the nonexistent. The bull’s stipulations flatly countermanded the premises of the decrees Sacrosancta and Frequens, set forth by the Council of Constance.
Ironically enough, earlier in his career Pius had been a defender of conciliar rights, had attended the Council of Basel, and had even worked as a secretary for the Baselite Pope Felix V. Pius then forsook his conciliarist perspectives and made his peace with Eugenius IV.
However, an awareness that councils could still serve as a means for the reform of the church lingered in certain quarters of the church’s ranks during the period preceding Luther’s posting of the Ninety-five Theses and beyond.
In the seventeenth century the conciliarist theory found a new party of advocates in the Jansenist movement. Jansenists — that is, Augustinian Catholics — looked back with favor on the Council of Constance’s conciliarism as faithfully representing the teaching of the primitive church before papal monarchs assumed authority within the Western church.
Since the days of the Council of Constance, various forms of conciliarism have resurfaced periodically above ground, contesting an ecclesiology of papal monarchy often in the name of collegial episcopacy, that is, the premise that all the bishops of the church in aggregate constitute an authority higher than that of the bishop of Rome, the pope.
V. THE RENAISSANCE POPES#
In the decades following the Council of Constance, the papacy not only was preoccupied with blunting the conciliar movement, quenching the flames of the Bohemian revolt, and beseeching Christian rulers to launch crusades to beat back the Turks’ advances, but also wanted to restore Rome’s place as the center of Christendom. To accomplish the latter, the papacy attempted to establish a strong presence in the turbulent world of Italian city-state politics and culture.
Often dubbed the “Renaissance popes,” a number of bishops of Rome were noteworthy for their patronage of the arts, support of humanistic studies, and efforts to return Rome to its former architectural glory. Some of them, however, pursued lives of remarkable sexual and materialistic indulgence, thereby tarnishing their own reputations and throwing disrepute on the papacy.
On the eve of the first French invasion of 1494, the most important Italian entities included:
The Venetian Grand Council and Doge (principal magistrate)
The King of Naples
The Duke of Milan
The Florentine Republic
The papacy
Although Italian city-states like Venice sometimes made treaties with the French or Spanish, none wanted foreign governments to control all of Italy; nor did they want any other competing Italian state to gain dominance.
The invasion by the French in 1494 turned Italy into an even more contested region in which several great powers of Europe battled for control of city-states and principalities.
In 1494 Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, invited Charles VIII (1470–98), the young and impetuous French king, to make good a claim on the feudal Kingdom of Naples.
The French launched an invasion and returned a second time in 1499.
In 1500 the Spanish marched armies into Italy and eventually gained control of Naples (1503). Unruly mercenaries poured into Italy to be hired by the papacy, city-states like Florence, or foreign powers.
It was no easy task to reassert the papacy’s spiritual and temporal claims in an Italy seething with political intrigue and trampled by foreign mercenaries and warring, powerful city-state armies. Bloody assassinations, bribery, and ripped-up treaties were not uncommon. Into this political fray, the papacy plunged, attempting to secure its place among Italian powers.
Owing to military exploits of Alexander (1492–1503) and Julius II (1503–13), the papal estates were expanded. By the advent of Pope Leo X’s reign in 1513—21, the papacy had emerged as a state with which to reckon on the peninsula. One sign of Leo X’s strength was the size of his papal familia. Whereas Pope Eugenius IV had 130 persons belonging to his papal familia — that is, those who worked for him directly and depended on him for support — Leo X had about 700.
In 1527, only fourteen years after Leo X had become pope, the troops of Charles V (1500–1558), the Holy Roman Emperor, entered the Rome of Pope Clement VII.
As an undisciplined army including Lutheran mercenaries, they pillaged, murdered, and raped during their infamous “Sack of Rome”. The horror the soldiers unleashed lasted more than a year and brought with it famine and plague. The Sack of Rome provided ample evidence that papal alliances and armies did not always provide the papacy with an effective buffer against its foes. Clement had to flee to the Castel Angelo for safety and pay a huge ransom to gain his release.
A. Refurbishing Rome#
Many of the popes calculated that as the fortunes of the city of Rome went, so went the fortunes of the papacy. For that matter, the papacy dominated the city government of Rome. These popes wanted to restore Rome’s splendors by launching building programs and repairing standing structures.
A number of popes believed that respect for the Holy See would be greatly enhanced among the non-reading popular masses if these people could visually contemplate representations of papal authority portrayed in stone and canvas. Architecture, sculpture, and painting could be employed for their didactic capacities.
The Rome to which Martin V returned in 1420 was a broken-down city. It had become encumbered by dilapidated buildings and gutted by streets in disrepair. The city was also overrun by large patches of wild forests. Even the best efforts of Martin V were not sufficient to return the city to its former architectural splendor.
Yet, in 1450 Pope Nicholas V summoned multitudes of the faithful to Rome for Jubilee celebrations. Moreover, he enlisted Leon Battista Alberti, an innovative genius, to give him architectural advice regarding a significant building program. Churches were restored and new edifices constructed.
Fra Angelico, the painter, refurbished the Vatican chapel.
Nicholas even contemplated razing old St. Peter’s with the goal of replacing it with a new, grander edifice. The pope’s successors ultimately followed through on this idea, with the first stone of the new building laid in April 1506.
Other popes such as Sixtus IV (1471–84), Alexander VI, and Julius II lavishly financed painters, sculptors, and architects who graced Rome with new bridges, churches, tombs, fountains, gardens, and residential palaces, not to mention statuary and paintings.
Michelangelo (1475–1564) sculpted the Pieta with Mary holding Jesus in her arms.
Despite stormy relations with Julius, Michelangelo worked on the plans and the creation of Julius II’s tomb with its Moses figure (1513–15) and painted the frescoes of Genesis stories on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508–12). Classical figures such as Sibyls also found their way into these frescoes.
Along with Baldassare Castiglione, the painter Raphael (1483–1520) urged Pope Leo X not to destroy pagan statuary but to treat classical ruins in general as “paragons of the ancients.”
Da Vinci, a mechanical and artistic genius, brushed the enigmatic Mona Lisa.
Raphael painted the fresco The School of Athens, which depicts Aristotle and Plato in deep conversation as they walk in St. Peters (modeled after a Donato Bramante drawing).
The patronage of the popes contributed to their reputation as significant supporters of the Italian Renaissance.
By the time of Julius II’s death in 1513, Rome’s splendors had become so noteworthy that a few reforming critics wondered whether the campaign to restore the city’s former glory had in fact been too successful.
Papal power was enhanced not only by an extensive rebuilding program at Rome, but also by the propagation of a form of Roman humanism that embellished the glory of the city and the papacy, especially between the years 1475 and 1520. As a pope could be compared to the Roman emperor, so the church could be compared to the empire and the cardinals to Roman senators. These grandiose comparisons served the papacy well as it attempted to reassert monarchical prerogatives and privileges.
B. A Problem of Reputation#
Pope Pius II#
Prior to Julius II, Pope Pius II (born Aeneas Sylvius) was well trained in the humanities. Early in his career Aeneas wrote erotic poetry and a novel. He also fathered several illegitimate children. In 1445–46 Aeneas turned his back on a profligate lifestyle and became a priest. He rose steadily in the church’s hierarchy, becoming the cardinal of Siena and finally, in 1458, the pope.
Aeneas’s own sincere concern for the sanctity of the papacy was revealed. He eventually received the twelve votes necessary to be elected pope. Rome, which had been on the brink of civil unrest, was pacified. Crowds poured into the city’s streets to celebrate Pius II’s election.
Aeneas as Pius II was an activist pope:
He promulgated the decree Execrabilis, which boosted the authority of the papal office at the expense of councils
He also tried to improve relations with the Florentines, who disliked the fact that a Siennese cardinal had become pope
Like other Christians, the pope was greatly affected by the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. He attempted to launch crusades (1461, 1463–64) against the Turks.
Pius II serves as an example of various Renaissance popes prior to Julius II who became ardent defenders of the Catholic faith and maintained moral rectitude. Nonetheless, Julius also had predecessors whose reputations for questionable ethics and worldly ambition were even more notorious than his own.
Pope Alexander VI#
Julius’s near predecessor, Pope Alexander VI, engaged in personal, political, and military intrigues that won Machiavelli’s admiration but did extensive damage to the papacy’s reputation for Christian probity.
Alexander, a Spaniard whose name became Borgia in Italian, was asked by the cardinals who had elected him what he wanted to be called. He replied, “By the name of the invincible Alexander,” that is, Alexander the Great.
Alexander VI pursued a disreputable lifestyle, fathering a number of children on whom he doted. The most famous of these children was Cesare Borgia (1476–1507).The epitome of a pragmatic politician, Borgia with his father entered into alliances and armed warfare in almost unending attempts to enhance familial and papal power during his father’s pontificate. Between the years 1495–98 Alexander vigorously opposed Savonarola’s reforming activities and preaching in Florence. Moreover, Alexander presided over the impressive Jubilee of 1500 that brought many pilgrims to Rome.
From Machiavelli’s point of view, Alexander VI and Cesare Borgia were prime illustrations of politicians who did everything possible to guarantee their personal happiness and success. But both were overtaken by “fortune”—and fortune could be cruel. Rumor had it that when Alexander died in 1503, he may have been poisoned.
The lifestyles and actions of the likes of Alexander VI and Julius II did little to enhance the collective reputation of the Renaissance popes as faithful shepherds of Christ’s flocks.
C. The Practice of Roman Catholicism in Italy#
The portraits of the Renaissance popes by Erasmus, Luther, and Machiavelli may skew our perceptions of the religious life of Italian Roman Catholics on the eve of the Protestant Reformation.
In fifteenth-century Italy, the Catholic faithful fulfilled the duty of confessing their sins at least once a year and attending mass more regularly than that, if possible. They were often deprived of a sufficient number of priests to minister to their needs.
Italian priests were not especially well trained, some even quite ignorant of the meaning of the sign of the cross.
Their bishops often neglected to attend the ordinations of priests as required by church teaching.
Despite these glaring weaknesses in the promotion of church life, the Catholic faithful of the Italian peninsula remained quite impervious to the teachings of the Protestant Reformers who called for a reform of the church, let alone to the Waldensians within their midst.
VI. THE “AGE OF DISCOVERY”#
Several factors brought about the “Age of Discovery,” an era when many European and Asian nations expanded their knowledge of the world because explorers were traveling into places they had never seen before.
The scientific and technical advances of the Renaissance.
Ships became more seaworthy and capable of surviving in the oceans.
There was an increasing demand for unique goods, including spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.
There was political and religious motivation for discovery of new routes because of Muslim dominance of trade from the East.
A. The Rise of the Ottoman Empire#
From 1281 to 1923 the House of Osman dominated what became known as the Ottoman Empire. Following military victories at Bursa (1326) and Gallipoli (1353), the Ottomans subdued Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Serbia. Some Christians feared that the Ottoman advance was next to unstoppable.
The Turks kept their eyes focused on a particularly desirable prize — the capture of Constantinople. During the fourteenth century Byzantium fell into a weakened state, both economically and politically.
Enervating civil wars (1341–71) sapped its strength.
The Black Death of 1347–50 ruinously reduced Constantinople’s population to approximately 100,000.
For all practical purposes, the empire had no navy.
Nonetheless, in 1422 Constantinople survived a siege prosecuted by Sultan Murat II. But on November 10, 1444, the sultan defeated a Christian Crusader army at Varna on the Black Sea.
This Ottoman victory quashed any realistic hopes that Crusader armies might relieve Constantinople by land. Hopes did remain that the papacy and Italian city-states such as Venice and Genoa might send fleets to rescue Constantinople by sea.
In March 1452 Pope Nicholas V sent three Genoese merchant ships to bring supplies to the hard-pressed Christian forces defending Constantinople. However, the expedition failed to accomplish its mission.
In April 1452 a Venetian expedition likewise tried to relieve embattled Constantinople. The Ottoman navy basically destroyed the fleet. Some Italian sailors were publicly impaled by their Ottoman captors. The perilous plight of Constantinople’s citizens only worsened.
On May 29, 1453, the Ottoman forces of Mehmed II the Conqueror (1444–45, 1451–81), after a grueling siege, breeched the walls of Constantinople and penetrated the city. The fall of Constantinople constituted an event of enormous historical import. Not only did this Turkish victory deal a rude blow to the Eastern Orthodox Church, but it created consternation and deep fear among many Western Catholic Christians.
Mehmed II hoped to transform the Byzantine Empire into one of an Islamic orientation. He ordered that the chief Islamic leader, the Greek Orthodox patriarch, the Armenian patriarch, and the chief Jewish rabbi all reside in Constantinople.
Because the patriarch of Constantinople had escaped to Italy, in January 1454 Mehmed installed George Scholarios (1405? – 72?), otherwise known as Gennadius, as the new Greek patriarch. The sultan treated Gennadius, a prominent Greek theologian and an archcritic of the papacy, with great honor. Mehmed viewed Patriarch Gennadius as head of the Orthodox Church and as the leader of the dispersed “Greek nation.” The sultan also expected the patriarch to obey his orders.
Rule over the Eastern Orthodox#
Mehmed II indicated that Christians would be tolerated under his rule, but he did place serious restrictions on them. Christians were not permitted to evangelize Muslims or marry Muslim women. Moreover, they were forced to pay onerous taxes.
The Turks divided the peoples whom they conquered into what came to be known as millets, or ethnic-religious communities.
The “Rum” millet consisted of Greek Orthodox living in the Balkans and Asia Minor.
A second millet was composed of other Christians (non-Chalcedonians) who were not otherwise subject to the Orthodox patriarch at Constantinople.
A third millet was made up of Jews within the Ottoman Empire such as the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews.
The Turks engaged Phanariots, or Greek merchants and clergy from the Phanar area of Constantinople, to help govern the millets. A certain measure of religious freedom and self-governance could exist in the millets. At the same time, the Turks enslaved many Christians and non-Christians whom their soldiers captured.
The Turks created a system (devşirme) in which they collected talented Chris tian children and Muslims from the Balkans and trained the brightest to be state officials, military commanders, and viziers (civil officers). Christian boys were sometimes converted into fierce Muslim fighters called Janissaries; their duty was to serve the sultans.
As for the patriarchal throne of Constantinople, the sultans often sold it to those who offered the most money.
From the mid-fifteenth to twentieth centuries, 159 patriarchs sat on the chair.
Many (105) were forced out of their office by the sultans who profited from their departure by reselling the office to a new bidder.
Six patriarchs were apparently murdered.
Thus, the fate of the patriarchs of Constantinople was often determined by the capricious, self-serving wishes of the Turkish sultans.
B. The Russian Church#
The conversion of Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev (988) to the Byzantine Orthodox faith constituted an epochal event in Russian religious history. In time Orthodoxy became the religion of the Russians.
Between 1237 and about 1450, the Mongol Golden Horde, after initial invasions (1223), placed Russia under the “Tartar Yoke”. The armies of the Mongol Bau Khan devastated sections of Russia between the years 1237 and 1240.
Despite Mongol rule, the Grand Duchy of Muscovy (1283–1547) emerged as a significant commercial and religious center. In the Battle of Kulikovo (September 8, 1380), Grand Prince Dimitri II of Moscow won a heroic victory over a Mongolian army and helped establish Moscow’s role as a leading power.
In 1381 Cyprian, who had been designated by Byzantium as Metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia, returned to Moscow. He was determined to make Moscow the center of Russian Orthodoxy and to promote the Hesychast ideals of the monasticism of Mount Athos: the cultivation of quietness of spirit and the repetition of prayers preparing a person for mystical “deification,” or union with God.
Until the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, the Russian Church had been a dependency of the patriarch of Constantinople and greatly benefitted from this relationship. But some Russian Orthodox believed the representatives of the Byzantine patriarchate and Isidore, the Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia, who sought Western aid at that council, inexcusably capitulated to the demands of the papacy.
A number of Russians began to think they should assume the role of protecting the Eastern Orthodox. In 1472 the marriage of Ivan III to the niece of a Byzantine emperor deepened this sense of responsibility. The Russians also appropriated the Byzantine title of “tsar” and applied it to their rulers.
It was not until 1589, however, that the patriarchate of Moscow (1589–1721) was established. That occurred when the patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremias II, designated Bishop Job as the city’s first patriarch. The patriarchate of Moscow thereby joined the much older patriarchates of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople.
C. Religious Persecution in the Age of Discovery#
For centuries — since the days of the Roman Empire — Europeans had relied on what became known as “the Silk Road” to travel to the Far East and northern Africa. It reached its peak during the Byzantine era. But with the spread of Muslim territory and the Turkish Empire, land travel became more difficult and dangerous. The traders therefore turned to the seas.
The Roman Catholic kingdom of Portugal, founded by King Afonso Henriques (1139–85), took the initial lead in the competition for new lands.
In 1415 the Portuguese defeated Muslim forces and seized Cueta near Gibraltar in North Africa.
Prince Henry “the Navigator” (1394–1460) encouraged Portuguese explorations. He established a school for navigators, advocated the use of low-drafting caravel ships, and sought to plant Portuguese colonies along the Atlantic African coast.
In 1487–88 Bartolomeu Dias, trying to find a water route to India, discovered the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa.
The explorer Vasco da Gama eventually reached India by sea in 1497–99.
In 1397 Christian authorities in Spain prosecuted frightful massacres against Jews, followed by “conversion” campaigns.
In 1492 King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ordered all Jews who had not converted to Christianity to be expelled from Spain. In 1497 Portugal did the same.
Perhaps as many as 200,000 Jews were baptized in the Iberian Peninsula between 1470 and 1500. Those Jews who practiced their Jewish faith in secret were called “Marranos” or conversos or “New Christians.” Some Marranos fled Spain and Portugal and sought refuge in the Papal States, England, Germany, Holland, and Latin America.
Also in 1492, Christian forces captured Muslim Granada, an event many contemporaries hailed as epochal. Muslims had been in Spain for eight hundred years and had created a sophisticated civilization. The seizure of Granada was much feted by Ferdinand and Isabella.
The ensuing Treaty of Grenada permitted religious toleration to Muslims. At the same time, Muslims also became choice targets for Christian conversion efforts. During 1499–1501 a Muslim revolt took place in Grenada and was harshly suppressed. In 1502 Muslims were ordered either to leave Castile or to convert to Christianity.
Those who converted to Christianity were called “Moriscos.” Still others attempted to remain in rural villages of Spain and hold on to their Muslim faith.
Another revolt took place during 1568–71. In the 1580s a Catholic churchman, Juan de Ribera in Valencia, unsuccessfully appealed to Philip II (1527–98) to drive Moriscos out of Spain. Finally, Philip III (1578–1621) stipulated that all Moriscos should leave Spain. By 1609 they were forced out of Castile; by 1614, out of the rest of Spain.
D. The Glory of the Age of Discovery#
European explorers often had mixed emotions for participating in the dangerous seafaring venture. Undoubtedly, some sought glory for their monarch and kingdom or city-state and for themselves. Others sought to make money off the slave trade.
The papacy from Popes Eugenius IV to Nicholas V approved the Portuguese and Spanish involvement in slavery, whether of Muslims or Africans. In Romanus Pontificus (1455), Pope Nicholas gave to the Christian powers the right “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed.”
The traders set sail into the Atlantic Ocean and sometimes looked west and south, even if they ultimately hoped to reach “the East”—India and beyond — with its oriental luxury items such as spices and perfumes. By heading west and south, they largely avoided interference from the Ottoman Turks. On their ventures to search out new trade routes, they sometimes discovered “remote” and “unknown” regions.
Christopher Columbus#
Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), from the commercially vibrant city of Genoa, Italy, gained the patronage of the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella to support an expedition to the East by counterintuitively going west. Upon his arrival in the Caribbean Islands in 1492, Columbus mistakenly thought he was in the Indies. He claimed an island for Spain and named it San Salvador (“Holy Savior”).
Columbus, whose first name means “Christ Bearer,” believed that God had ordained the explorer’s four voyages to the New World. On his third voyage he thought he had discovered the site of the garden of Eden. On his fourth voyage he believed he had discovered the lost gold mines of Ophir, from which Hiram took gold destined for Solomon.
Viewing the capture of Jerusalem as a precondition for Christ’s return, Columbus urged Ferdinand and Isabella to use gold or precious stones he brought back to Spain to help finance a crusade to reconquer Jerusalem from the Muslims.
On May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued a bull that divided portions of the “non-Christian” world between the Spanish and the Portuguese monarchs. It projected a “Line of Demarcation” running north and south through the Atlantic Ocean.
Spain received rights to most of the New World.
Portugal obtained the rights to Africa, India, and a portion of the New World (the area of Brazil).
In 1494 the Line of Demarcation was amended by the Treaty of Tordesillas. A new line was located 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands.
In 1507 the humanist Martin Waldseemüller drew up a map that included the outline of an unknown land across the Atlantic. He named the land America, thereby honoring the explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512).
In 1508 Pope Julius II gave the king of Spain authority over the Catholic Church in the New World.
During the years 1519–22, Ferdinand Magellan’s sailors completed a voyage around the world.
The native#
Sadly, the explorers who “discovered” and conquered new territories often treated the peoples of these lands with little dignity and respect, sometimes not viewing them even as fully human.
The natives were sometimes introduced to new diseases from Europe and to the horrors of ruthless exploitation.
In Sublimus Dei (1537), Pope Paul II affirmed that Indians of the West and South are not “dumb brutes,” but are truly people capable of understanding the Catholic faith. He also stipulated that Indians “may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property, nor should they be any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.”
VII. CONCLUSION#
The Roman Catholic Church regained much spiritual authority in Western Christendom during the tumultuous century from the election of Pope Martin V (1417) to the posting of the Ninety-five Theses (1517) by another Martin, the German Reformer Martin Luther. However, the papacy was not able to acquire anything matching the temporal power it had enjoyed when a pope like Innocent III could bend monarchs and nobles to do his will through the threat of interdicts and excommunications.
The kings of a greatly enlarged Spain and France would not tolerate such intervention in their affairs. They had for all practical purposes gained a position of supremacy over their respective churches.
The papacy (witness the reaction of Pius II) was genuinely shocked by the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks. Not only were the Ottoman Turks subjugating eastern Europe, but the sultans appeared to have designs on military incursions into central Europe.
Nonetheless, the popes could rejoice that they had largely beaten back the challenge of the conciliar movement. Papal “Renaissance” Rome was gloriously adorned with resplendent architecture, sculpture, and paintings. Luther, then, was to face an invigorated papal monarchy in Rome.