The Last Years of the Teutonic Knights by William Urban;

Author:William Urban;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Ancient
Publisher: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, LLC
Published: 2018-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

The Council of Constance

The Schism in the Church

The Council of Constance was the supreme effort of medieval intellectuals to turn the unhappy maelstrom of recent church history back into its traditional, trusted, tranquil bed (as they fondly but inaccurately remembered the past), so that both the Papacy and the Empire might enjoy a long-needed period of rest.

Above all, the intellectuals, together with most prelates, clerics and laity cried out for a resolution of the Great Schism. Since 1378 the Church had been divided: one pope in Rome and another in Avignon. But while their followers quarrelled over who was the proper head of the Church, there was more unity over the need to check clerical corruption that fed on inadequate incomes and less than adequate supervision. More than a few important posts were dual appointments, one from Rome (Boniface IX, 1389–1404; Innocent VII, 1404–6; Gregory XII, 1406–14), the other from Avignon (Benedict XIII, 1394–1417). The choice for physical occupation of a see or abbey was determined by politics, not the quality of the candidate.

Monarchs were using the schism to strengthen their shaky control of their own kingdoms. Intellectuals bemoaned unsavoury but necessary political compromises; they were frustrated by the repeated failures to find a place even to discuss the crisis. Many, in fact, were persuaded that no soul had entered heaven since the onset of the schism. The existence of multiple popes was more than a scandal; it was a crisis that threatened every churchman and Christian, and the Teutonic Order too. The grandmasters had tried to avoid the evil consequences of the controversy by ignoring it, but in the early 1400s Archbishop Johannes of Wallenrode of Riga, having quarrelled with the Livonian master and knowing that the Teutonic Order would be supported by the Roman popes, had brought his complaints before Benedict XIII. This had involved the order in the complexities of Church intrigue.

The procurator-general of the Teutonic Knights, the lobbyist/ diplomat responsible for representing the order to the Roman popes, had carefully observed the efforts of churchmen over a period of years to reunite the Church, but under orders from Marienburg he had abstained from taking part in the discussions personally. The Teutonic Order had remained steadfastly loyal to the Roman popes, but made few statements which might anger the Avignon curia. Because the order had cast its lot with the Roman pope, the grandmaster and his officers had difficult decisions to make when rebellious cardinals from both parties joined together to call for a general council. If they withdrew their allegiance from the Roman pope, and the council failed to unseat him, they risked his displeasure; and the odds were good that the pope was stronger than the churchmen. If they remained loyal to Rome and the council succeeded in deposing him, the order would be vulnerable to a review of all papal decisions made in its favour over the recent decades.

When the procurator-general, Peter of Wormditt (c. 1360–1419), was summoned to Pisa in 1408 to

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.