Thus began the Great Schism, which lasted for some forty years. France, of course, recognized the Avignon Pope, and the enemies of France recognized the Roman Pope. Scotland was the enemy of England, and England of France therefore Scotland recognized the Avignon Pope. Each pope chose cardinals from among his own partisans, and when either died his cardinals quickly elected another. Thus there was no way of healing the schism except by bringing to bear some power superior to both popes. It was clear that one of them
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must be legitimate, therefore a power superior to a legitimate pope had to be found. The only solution lay in a General Council. The University of Paris, led by Gerson, developed a new theory, giving powers of initiative to a council. The lay sovereigns, to whom the schism was inconvenient, lent their support. At last, in 1409, a council was summoned, and met at Pisa. It failed, however, in a ridiculous manner. It declared both popes deposed for heresy and schism, and elected a third, who promptly died; but his cardinals elected as his successor an ex-pirate named Baldassare Cossa, who took the name of John XXIII. Thus the net result was that there were three popes instead of two, the conciliar pope being a notorious ruffian. At this stage, the situation seemed more hopeless than ever.
But the supporters of the conciliar movement did not give in. In 1414, a new council was summoned at Constance, and proceeded to vigorous action. It first decreed that popes cannot dissolve councils, and must submit to them in certain respects; it also decided that future popes must summon a General Council every seven years. It deposed John XXIII, and induced the Roman Pope to resign. The Avignon Pope refused to resign, and after his death the King of Aragon caused a successor to be elected. But France, at this time at the mercy of England, refused to recognize him, and his party dwindled into insignificance and finally ceased to exist. Thus at last there was no opposition to the Pope chosen by the council, who was elected in 1417, and took the name of Martin V.
These proceedings were creditable, but the treatment of Huss, the Bohemian disciple of Wycliffe, was not. He was brought to Constance with the promise of a safe conduct, but when he got there he was condemned and suffered death at the stake. Wycliffe was safely dead, but the council ordered his bones dug up and burnt. The supporters of the conciliar movement were anxious to free themselves from all suspicion of unorthodoxy.
The Council of Constance had healed the schism, but it had hoped to do much more, and to substitute a constitutional monarchy for the papal absolutism. Martin V had made many promises before his election; some he kept, some he broke. He had assented to the decree that a council should be summoned every seven years, and to this decree he remained obedient. The Council of Constance having been dissolved in 1417, a new council, which proved of no importance,
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was summoned in 1424; then, in 1431, another was convoked to meet at Basel. Martin V died just at this moment, and his successor Eugenius IV was, throughout his pontificate, in bitter conflict with the reformers who controlled the council. He dissolved the council, but it refused to consider itself dissolved; in 1433 he gave way for a time, but in 1437 he dissolved it again. Nevertheless it remained in session till 1448, by which time it was obvious to all that the Pope had won a complete triumph. In 1439 the council had alienated sympathy by declaring the Pope deposed and electing an antipope (the last in history), who, however, resigned almost immediately. In the same year Eugenius IV won prestige by holding a council of his own at Ferrara, where the Greek Church, in desperate fear of the Turks, made a nominal submission to Rome. The papacy thus emerged politically triumphant, but with very greatly diminished power of inspiring moral reverence.
Wycliffe (ca. 1320-84) illustrates, by his life and doctrine, the diminished authority of the papacy in the fourteenth century. Unlike the earlier schoolmen, he was a secular priest, not a monk or friar. He had a great reputation in Oxford, where he became a doctor of theology in 1372. For a short time he was Master of Balliol. He was the last of the important Oxford scholastics. As a philosopher, he was not progressive; he was a realist, and a Platonist rather than an Aristotelian. He held that God’s decrees are not arbitrary, as some maintained; the actual world is not one among possible worlds, but is the only possible world, since God is bound to choose what is best. All this is not what makes him interesting, nor does it seem to have been what most interested him, for he retired from Oxford to the life of a country clergyman. During the last ten years of his life he was the parish priest of Lutterworth, by crown appointment. He continued, however, to lecture at Oxford.
Wycliffe is remarkable for the extreme slowness of his development. In 1372, when his age was fifty or more, he was still orthodox; it was only after this date, apparently, that he became heretical. He seems to have been driven into heresy entirely by the strength of his moral feelings–his sympathy with the poor, and his horror of rich worldly ecclesiastics. At first his attack on the papacy was only political and moral, not doctrinal; it was only gradually that he was driven into wider revolt.
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Wycliffe’s departure from orthodoxy began in 1376 with a course of lectures at Oxford “On Civil Dominion.” He advanced the theory that righteousness alone gives the title to dominion and property; that unrighteous clergy have no such title; and that the decision as to whether an ecclesiastic should retain his property or not ought to be taken by the civil power. He taught, further, that property is the result of sin; Christ and the Apostles had no property, and the clergy ought to have none. These doctrines offended all clerics except the friars. The English government, however, favoured them, for the Pope drew a huge tribute from England, and the doctrine that money should not be sent out of England to the Pope was a convenient one. This was especially the case while the Pope was subservient to France, and England was at war with France. John of Gaunt, who held power during the minority of Richard II, befriended Wycliffe as long as possible. Gregory XI, on the other hand, condemned eighteen theses in Wycliffe’s lectures, saying that they were derived from Marsiglio of Padua. Wycliffe was summoned to appear for trial before a tribunal of bishops, but the queen and the mob protected him, while the University of Oxford refused to admit the Pope’s jurisdiction over its teachers. (Even in those days, English universities believed in academic freedom.)
Meanwhile Wycliffe continued, during 1378 and 1379, to write learned treatises, maintaining that the king is God’s vicar, and that bishops are subject to him. When the great schism came, he went further than before, branding the Pope as Antichrist, and saying that acceptance of the Donation of Constantine had made all subsequent popes apostates. He translated the Vulgate into English, and established “poor priests,” who were secular. (By this action he at last annoyed the friars.) He employed the “poor priests” as itinerant preachers, whose mission was especially to the poor. At last, in attacking sacerdotal power, he was led to deny transubstantiation, which he called a deceit and a blasphemous folly. At this point, John of Gaunt ordered him to be silent.
The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler, made matters more difficult for Wycliffe. There is no evidence that he actively encouraged it, but, unlike Luther in similar circumstances, he refrained from condemning it. John Ball, the Socialist unfrocked priest who was one of the leaders, admired Wycliffe, which was embarrassing.
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But as he had been excommunicated in 1366, when Wycliffe was still orthodox, he must have arrived independently at his opinions. Wycliffe’s communistic opinions, though no doubt the “poor priests” disseminated them, were, by him, only stated in Latin, so that at first hand they were inaccessible to peasants.
It is surprising that Wycliffe did not suffer more than he did for his opinions and his democratic activities. The University of Oxford defended him against the bishops as long as possible. When the House of Lords condemned his itinerant preachers, the House of Commons refused to concur. No doubt trouble would have accumulated if he had lived longer, but when he died in 1384 he had not yet been formally condemned. He was buried at Lutterworth, where he died, and his bones were left in peace until the Council of Constance
