The Council of Constance Ends the Western Schism
The Council of Constance ended a schism of three rival popes, burned Jan Hus, and asserted that a council outranks a pope. The Western Schism had begun in 1378 with two claimants, Roman and Avignonese, and an attempt to fix it at Pisa in 1409 had produced a third rather than replacing the other two. Europe's kingdoms were divided by allegiance, and the situation had run for a generation with no mechanism to end it, since only a pope could summon a council and no one agreed who the pope was. The emperor-elect Sigismund summoned it instead, which is the constitutional oddity at its centre. It sat for nearly four years in a small imperial city on a lake, and voted by nation rather than by head to stop the Italian bishops outnumbering everyone. The decree Haec sancta of 1415 declared that a general council holds authority directly from Christ and that everyone, including the pope, must obey it in matters of faith and schism. One claimant abdicated, one was deposed and fled in disguise, and one was deposed and lived out his life in a Spanish castle insisting he was pope. Martin V was elected in 1417 and accepted everywhere. Jan Hus came under an imperial safe conduct to argue his case, was tried for heresy instead, and was burned on 6 July 1415. Wycliffe was condemned posthumously and his bones dug up and burned. The Hussite wars followed for fifteen years, and conciliarism was defeated by the papacy within thirty.
- Year: 1414 CE
- Category: Political
