It was at Constance that matters were finally settled. John XXIII and Benedict XIII—both now eighty-seven—were deposed; Gregory XII was prevailed upon to abdicate with honor, with the promise that he would rank second in the hierarchy, immediately after the future pope—a privilege that was the more readily accorded in view of the fact that, since he was now approaching ninety and looked a good deal older, it was not thought likely that he would enjoy it for long. Indeed, two years later he was dead, and with the election of Cardinal Oddone Colonna as Pope Martin V in 1417, the schism was effectively at an end.
AS THE SCHISM ended, the Renaissance Papacy began, with Martin as its first representative. Although a member of one of the oldest and most distinguished Roman families, he could not immediately establish himself in Rome. The city was, as so often in the past, a battleground—this time being fought over by two warring soldiers of fortune—and it was not until three years after his election that he was finally able to enter it for the first time as pope. He was shocked by what he saw. Rome was in ruins, its total population having shrunk to some 25,000, hopelessly demoralized, and in many cases half starving. Foxes, even wolves, roamed the streets. The once-magnificent buildings stood roofless and untenanted. The restoration of the Vatican, set in train half a century before, had long since been suspended, and the pope even had difficulty in finding somewhere decent to live. Fortunately, one of his own family’s palaces was still up to a point habitable; there he was obliged to stay while the work was resumed and until it was eventually completed.
Meanwhile he got down to business. He took in hand the chaotic papal finances and initiated a hugely ambitious program of restoration and reconstruction of the whole city: the walls and fortifications, the bridges, the ruined basilicas and churches. He summoned three great painters from the North—Pisanello, Masaccio, and Gentile da Fabriano—for the redecoration of the Lateran alone. In the diplomatic field he succeeded, at least to a considerable degree, in bringing under his control the Church in France, which during the Avignon years had become quite impossibly arrogant and overbearing. He took the first significant steps in internationalizing the College of Cardinals, weakening the Italian and French elements and introducing numbers of Englishmen, Germans, and Spaniards. He got rid of the countless bands of brigands which were terrorizing the city and the surrounding countryside. Finally, he reestablished order in the Papal States.
His purpose behind all these achievements was to reassert the power and prestige of the Papacy after the chaos into which it had fallen during the schism. The two recent assemblies, at Pisa and at Constance, had asserted several worrying new principles. The pope, it appeared, was no longer supreme: he was now at the mercy of a General Council, which stood above him and could depose him at will. Now, according to the conciliarists, it was the Council, rather than the pope, which constituted the ultimate authority in the Church; the pope was its servant, bound to give it his obedience and to respect its decisions. Councils, it had been agreed, were to be held regularly. In short, the Papacy was now undergoing the process already familiar to most nations of western Europe: that of slow democratization, the gradual substitution of absolute monarchy by parliamentary government.
To these ideas Martin V was not entirely unsympathetic. The Council of Constance had, after all, rescued the Church from forty years of schism and, quite possibly, from ultimate disintegration; to it, indeed, he very largely owed his own crown. On the other hand, Councils were unwieldy things which met infrequently, spoke with many different voices, and took an eternity to reach any major decision. They were no substitute for a single strong hand at the helm, and that Pope Martin was determined—and well able—to supply. He made his own decisions, keeping both cardinals and Curia under his own strict personal control. When, for example, in September 1423 the time came for the next Council, to be held at Pavia, he announced that he would not be attending. In consequence of this and of a sudden outbreak of plague which necessitated the Council’s last-minute transfer to Siena, there were relatively few delegates present, and when their discussions turned to the question of further restrictions on papal power, he made the poor attendance a pretext for closing down the whole assembly. The Church would have to wait until the next Council, which was to meet in July 1431 in Basel.
As 1430 drew to its close, the sixty-two-year-old pope showed himself, if anything, still less enthusiastic about the Basel meeting than he had been about its predecessor. Once again he made it clear that there would be no question of his being there himself; in his stead he appointed Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini as its president, giving him authority to dissolve it at any moment if it threatened to tread on dangerous ground. In the event, he could not have attended even had he wished to do so; on February 20, 1431, he died of an apoplectic stroke. He had been, if not a great pope, at least an outstandingly good one; and he had restored peace and good government to his city. Once again Michelozzo and Donatello worked together on a papal tomb, but this time it stood in Rome rather than Florence, and its inscription, TEMPORUM SUORUM FELICITAS, was a testimonial of which, surely, any pope would have been proud.
THAT EPITAPH, HOWEVER, is unlikely to have been suggested by the College of Cardinals. The cardinals had never liked Martin. They had resented his arrogance, his unwillingness to listen, his reluctance even to consult them, let alone take their advice. The conciliar spirit was in the air and to a greater or lesser extent had infected all of them. He had paid it lip service, up to a point; but as time went on he had become increasingly impatient with the whole idea. Now that the Basel Council was about to open, it was essential that the next pope, whoever he might be, should show himself to be in sympathy with the reforms that were to be proposed. Thus it was that the cardinals all undertook that whoever should be elected would give the Council his wholehearted support, working with the Sacred College, rather than in opposition to it, in the government of the Church.
Unfortunately, things did not turn out quite as they had planned. Their choice fell on Gabriele Condulmer, a Venetian—though not, like his uncle Gregory XII, an aristocrat—who had spent much of his early life as an Augustinian hermit on an island in the lagoon. His rise to power, first as Bishop of Siena and from 1408 as cardinal, had been unashamedly nepotistic; and whatever promises he may have made before the conclave, once reigning as Pope Eugenius IV, he showed little more goodwill toward the coming Council than Pope Martin had before him. Indeed, when the Council eventually opened on July 23, 1431, the attendance was so sparse—among the absentees was Cardinal Cesarini, appointed by Martin to preside—that after six months Eugenius attempted to dissolve it. This, however, proved a serious mistake. The delegates may have been comparatively few, but they were conciliarists to a man, and they absolutely refused to be dissolved. The pope, they claimed, had no authority to dismiss them. It was they, not he, who were supreme in the Church; and unless he presented himself before them and withdrew his Bull of Dissolution, it was he, not they, who would be dismissed.
But Eugenius refused to budge, and the ensuing deadlock was broken by King Sigismund. As King of Germany and emperor-to-be, he needed the support of the pope to strengthen his position in North Italy and that of the Council in his struggle against the Hussites. In May 1433 he made his way to Rome, where he was duly crowned by Eugenius, and for the next six months he worked hard on both parties, persuading them to moderate their respective attitudes until, at the end of the year, the two reached an uneasy agreement. It was, in fact, rather more like a papal surrender. Eugenius was obliged to withdraw his Bull of Dissolution and to recognize—with all too few reservations—the primacy of the Council.
Seeing his humiliation, other enemies took full advantage. First were the Colonna. In the spring of 1434, furious at being ordered to return the Church treasures that they had acquired under their kinsman Martin V, they engineered a rising in the streets of Rome, and at much the same time the proconciliar Duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan sent two condottieri to invade the Papal S
tates. Then, when Eugenius found himself blockaded in the city, the Romans rose again and proclaimed a republic. For the luckless pope, it was all too much. Disguised as a monk but soon identified, and defending himself as best he could under a hail of missiles, he made his escape in a small boat down the Tiber to Ostia and thence transferred to a galley which took him to Pisa. June found him in Florence, where he was soon to be joined by the Sacred College and the Curia.
In Florence, as a guest of Cosimo de’ Medici, he remained for the next nine years, fighting a constant battle against the conciliarists in Basel, who—their numbers now greatly increased by legists and theologians from the universities—were becoming daily more radical and antipapal. For the moment there was little that he could do to resist them, though in the summer of 1436 he circulated a formal denunciation of their pretensions to all the princes of Christendom. On the other hand, he had considerable success in reestablishing his political position. In the Curia was an ex-soldier of long experience named Giovanni Vitelleschi; Eugenius singled him out, promoted him to bishop, and sent him off with a small force to Rome. Energetic and utterly ruthless, Vitelleschi showed no mercy on the rebels and quickly restored order in both Rome and the Papal States.
Basel, however, remained to be dealt with, and the deadlock might have dragged on indefinitely but for a single, immensely significant development: the arrival in the West of John VIII Palaeologus, Emperor of Byzantium.
FACED WITH THE remorseless advance of the Ottoman Turks, the Byzantine Empire was at its last gasp. Massive military assistance from Western Europe represented its only chance of survival, but all attempts to obtain it foundered on the same rock: the Eastern and Western churches were in schism. Only if that schism was ended could a united Christendom take up arms in the longed-for Crusade.
To John Palaeologus, the Council of Basel seemed to offer a ray of hope. Once again, representatives of all the Christian nations of the West were present; and although the ambassadors of his predecessor, Manuel II, had returned from Constance disappointed, much had happened in the past fifteen years, including a reluctant acceptance by the pope of what the Byzantines had never ceased to maintain: that true union could be achieved only by means of a Council of the whole Church, to be attended by representatives of both East and West. This time, perhaps, a Byzantine appeal might fall on more receptive ears.
But all this would mean a fresh start, and it was obvious that Basel was not the place. The past years had seen too much ill feeling and bitterness; if the new Council was to have any chance of success, a change of venue was essential. The more hidebound of the conciliarists naturally objected—in 1439 going so far as to declare the pope deposed and to elect an antipope in his stead—but this arbitrary renewal of the papal schism cost them what little prestige they had left, and one by one the Christian nations submitted to the authority of Pope Eugenius.
Ideally, John VIII would have liked the new Council to be held in Constantinople, but he was obliged to admit that in present conditions this was not practicable. He therefore willingly accepted the pope’s choice of Ferrara, confirming that he personally, together with his patriarch, would head the imperial delegation. Eugenius, hearing this welcome news, lost no time. By September 1437 his legates were already in Constantinople to work out the details, while others were negotiating with the Venetians for the hiring of a fleet to bring the Byzantine delegation to Ferrara in proper state. Thus it was that John Palaeologus left his brother Constantine as regent and on Wednesday, November 27, embarked on his historic journey, taking with him a party some seven hundred strong, among them the most distinguished group of Eastern churchmen ever to visit the West. There was the patriarch himself, Joseph II, nearly eighty years old, crippled by heart disease but beloved of all who met him; eighteen metropolitans, some of them representing his fellow patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem and also including the brilliant young Metropolitan Bessarion of Nicaea; and a dozen other bishops, including Isidore, Abbot of the Monastery of St. Demetrius in Constantinople, who had been promoted the previous year to Bishop of Kiev and All Russia.
On February 8, 1438, the party reached Venice, where the emperor was greeted by Doge Francesco Foscari and conducted with immense pomp and ceremony up the Grand Canal to the great palace of the Marquis of Ferrara.4 There he remained for the next three weeks, writing letters to all the European princes, urging them to attend the Council or at least to send representatives. Only at the end of the month did he leave on the last stage of his journey. Compared to his Venetian reception, his arrival in Ferrara was a lackluster affair, not improved by pouring rain. Pope Eugenius gave him a warm welcome, but even that was somewhat clouded when the emperor was informed that his patriarch, on his arrival a few days later, would be expected to prostrate himself and kiss the pontiff’s foot. Of this, he politely pointed out, there could be no question; and at last the pope was obliged to yield. Had he not done so, it is doubtful whether the Council of Ferrara would ever have taken place.
Even then, it got off to a bad start. John had stipulated that four months should pass before the formal discussions on doctrine were begun; one of his principal reasons for attending was to seek help from the other European princes, and he was determined that no important decisions should be taken before their arrival. But spring turned to summer, and no princes appeared. The Latins grew more and more impatient and the pope, who was responsible for the board and lodging of the entire Greek delegation, more and more concerned as his financial reserves fell ever lower.
With August came the plague. Strangely enough, the Greeks appeared immune—the emperor was in any case away from Ferrara most of the time, indulging in his favorite sport of hunting—but there was heavy mortality both among the Latin delegates and in the city as a whole. Meanwhile, the Latins grew even more irritated with their guests. The Greeks, too, were losing patience. They had been away from home for the best part of a year and had so far achieved nothing. Many of them were short of money, for the papal subsidies were becoming increasingly irregular. Finally it became plain that none of the European princes had any intention of showing up, so there was no point in waiting for them any longer. It was to everyone’s relief when deliberations began in earnest on October 8. For the first three months they were concerned almost exclusively with the filioque clause—a tricky enough point, having played a major part in the schism four centuries before,5 but now further complicated by linguistic problems. Few of the delegates spoke any language other than their own, and there were no qualified interpreters. The sessions ended on December 13 with agreement as far away as ever.
At that point the pope managed to persuade the delegates to move to Florence. He gave as his reason the continued presence of the plague in Ferrara, but his true motives were almost certainly financial: the Council had been sitting for eight months, it showed every sign of going on indefinitely, and it had already made alarming inroads on the papal treasury. In Florence, on the other hand, the Medici could be trusted to help out. But the move also proved beneficial in other ways. When the sessions were resumed toward the end of February 1439 the Greeks—tired, anxious, homesick, and quite possibly hungry—seemed distinctly readier to compromise than they had been the previous year. By the end of March they had agreed that the Latin formula according to which the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son meant the same as a recently accepted Greek formula, whereby it proceeded from the Father through the Son. It was soon after this breakthrough that Patriarch Joseph finally expired; but then, as one observer rather unkindly remarked, after muddling his prepositions what else could he decently do?
With the filioque at last out of the way, the other outstanding questions were quickly settled. The Greeks disapproved of the Roman dogma on Purgatory and the use of unleavened bread at the Sacrament. They also deplored the Latin practice of giving Communion in both kinds to the laity and of forbidding the marriage of nonmonastic priests. But on all these issues they put up only a token opposition. T
he question of papal supremacy might at other times have caused difficulties, but since the Council of Basel this had been a delicate subject and was consequently glossed over as far as possible. Thanks largely to the emperor himself, who employed persuasion and threats in equal measure to ensure the amenability of his subjects, agreement had been reached by midsummer on every major issue, and on Sunday, July 5, 1439, the official Decree of Union—little more than a statement of the Latin position, apart from one or two concessions permitting Greek usages—was signed by all the Orthodox bishops and abbots except the Metropolitan of Ephesus, who had given in on absolutely nothing but was forbidden by John to exercise a veto. The Latins then added their own signatures, and on the following day the decree was publicly proclaimed in Florence Cathedral, being recited first in Latin by Cardinal Cesarini and then in Greek by Metropolitan Bessarion of Nicaea. The Latin version began with the words “Laetentur Coeli”—“Let the heavens rejoice”—but the heavens, as it soon became clear, had precious little reason to do so.
POPE EUGENIUS HAD won a major victory. On paper, at least, he had brought the Orthodox Church back into the Roman fold.6 In doing so he had established his personal supremacy. The radical conciliarists at Basel were speechless with rage. First they suspended him, then they deposed him, and finally, on November 5, 1439, they elected an antipope—in the surprising shape of Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy. Amadeus was a deeply pious layman, the founder—and himself a member—of an order of knightly hermits on the Lake of Geneva. He accepted with great reluctance, calling himself Felix V, but he soon had reason to regret his decision, for no one took him seriously. The Council, too, had succeeded only in making itself look ridiculous. From that moment on it gradually dissolved, though it was to limp on until 1449.
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