Roman Catholicism - Babylonian Captivity, Papal Authority, Schism (2024)

The severest difficulties faced by the medieval church involved the papacy. The most extreme and inflexible advocate of papal authority, Boniface VIII, initiated a struggle with the French king, Philip IV, over Philip’s attempts to tax and judge the clergy. After Boniface issued the bull Unam sanctam (“One Holy”), which asserted the unity of the church and the authority of the pope over kings, Philip rallied the people of France and accused Boniface of blasphemy, murder, sodomy, and other crimes. In 1303, mercenaries in French pay and under French leadership harassed and humiliated the pope with impunity, arresting Boniface at his family palace in Anagni. Although freed by the people of the town, Boniface never recovered from the shock and died shortly afterward. The aftermath of this “outrage of Anagni” was the desertion of Rome by the popes and their long residence (1309–77) at Avignon (now in France), a chapter in church history called the “Babylonian Captivity” after the 70 years of Jewish exile in Babylon in the 6th century bc.

The disputes among the Franciscans, which had crystallized finally upon the teaching of the Spirituals that their absolute poverty was that of Christ, were harshly settled (1322) by the irascible octogenarian Pope John XXII (reigned 1316–34), who persecuted the Spirituals and declared belief in the absolute poverty of Jesus and the Apostles heretical. Afterward a group of Franciscans led by Michael of Cesena, minister-general of the order, and William of Ockham became bitter and formidable critics of the papacy. With them for a time was the Italian political philosopher Marsilius of Padua, a Paris master who in his Defensor pacis (1324; “Defender of the Peace”) outlined a secular state in which the church was a government department, the papacy and episcopate were human institutions, and the spiritual sanctions of religion were relegated to a position of honourable nonentity. Between them, Ockham and Marsilius used almost all the arguments against the papacy that have ever been devised. Condemned more than once, Marsilius had little immediate effect or influence, but during the Great Schism (1378–1417) and later, in the 16th century, he and Ockham had their turn.

With the papacy “in captivity,” Europe and the church entered an epoch of disasters. As the 14th century proceeded, the so-called medieval synthesis of the Scholastic theologians was undone by the works of Ockham and John Duns Scotus, and nominalism captured the universities. In England, John Wycliffe challenged the papacy and the teachings of the church, prefiguring the attacks of the Protestant Reformers of the 16th century. Although condemned by the church, Wycliffe influenced the thought of Jan Hus and, especially, the Lollards of England. The church also suffered from the destruction of the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) between England and France and the devastation of the Black Death (1348–49), which decimated the population of Europe and inspired both orthodox and heterodox religious movements.

Despite this upheaval, the basic structures of Christian belief and practice changed little during the first half of the 1th century. Many of the largest parish churches of Europe date from this time, as do many popular devotions, prayers, hymns, pilgrimages, and carols; also, many hospitals and almshouses were founded. Although relations between the friars and the secular clergy had been canonically settled, friction between the two groups continued. The friars came under wider criticism for worldliness and immorality, but they remained popular. Although heresy and antisacerdotal (anticlerical) sentiment became almost endemic in the cities of Belgium and the Netherlands in the 14th century, the same period produced some of the greatest mystical writers of the church’s history: in the north, Johann Tauler and Jan van Ruysbroeck; in Italy, Catherine of Siena; and in England, Walter Hilton and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing. The Beguine Marguerite Porete, another influential mystic, was burned as a heretic in 1310.

Late medieval reform: the Great Schism and conciliarism

Reformation of the church and the papacy was what the advocates of a return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome had in mind. In the pope’s absence both the ecclesiastical power and the territorial integrity of the papacy had deteriorated within Italy, and the moral and spiritual authority of the office was in jeopardy throughout Christian Europe. This condition, so many believed, would continue and even worsen so long as the papacy remained in Avignon. Pope Urban V (reigned 1362–70) attempted to reestablish the papacy in Rome in 1367, but after a stay of only three years he returned to Avignon and soon died. It was finally Gregory XI (reigned 1370–78) who, in 1377, permanently moved the papal headquarters back to Rome, but he died only a few months later. The immediate result of the return to Rome was not the restoration of confidence and credibility that some had predicted but the very opposite. During the papacy’s residence in Avignon, not only had the church come under the political and religious domination of France but the College of Cardinals in Rome had filled the administrative vacuum by developing a form of government that can only be described as oligarchic. The powers that the cardinals had succeeded in appropriating were difficult for the centralized authority of the papacy, whether in Avignon or in Rome, to reclaim for itself.

Meeting in Rome for the first time in nearly a century, the College of Cardinals elected Pope Urban VI (reigned 1378–89). But Urban’s desire to reassert the monarchical powers of the papacy, as well as his evident mental illness, prompted the cardinals to renege on their choice later in the same year. In his place they elected Clement VII (reigned 1378–94), who soon took up residence back in Avignon. (This Clement VII is officially listed as an antipope, and the name was later taken by another pope, Clement VII, who reigned 1523–34.) The years from 1378 to 1417 were the time of the Great Schism, which divided the loyalties of Western Christendom between two popes, each of whom excommunicated the other and all the other’s followers. In the conflict between them, kingdoms, dioceses, religious orders, parishes, and even families were split, and the pretensions of the church to being, as the Nicene Creed said, “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” became a mockery. No one could be absolutely certain about the validity of the sacraments if the integrity and the very unity of the church, and therefore of the episcopate and priesthood as well, were in doubt. Speaking for a broad consensus, the University of Paris proposed three alternatives for resolving the crisis, which had now become, for laity and clergy alike, a crisis of faith: resignation by both popes, with the election of a single unchallenged successor; adjudication of the dispute between the two popes by some independent tribunal; or appeal to an ecumenical council, which would function as a supreme court with jurisdiction over both claimants.

The third of these of these options, the summoning of a general church council, seemed to the theologians at Paris and to many others to be preferable. The first of several reform councils was held at Pisa in 1409 to deal with the schism and with many other problems of discipline and doctrine. Pisa elected Alexander V (reigned 1409–10) pope—he was not accepted as pope, however, and is listed with the antipopes—in place of both incumbents. But, because neither of the other two would acknowledge the authority of the council and resign, the immediate result was that for a few years, as one cardinal said, the church was treated to “a simulacrum of the Holy Trinity”—the spectacle of three reigning popes. Although not well attended, the Council of Pisa nonetheless had widespread support throughout Western Christendom and established an important precedent for future councils.

The trinity of popes, and the Great Schism itself, came to an end through the work of the Council of Constance (1414–18), which was called by Alexander V’s successor, John XXIII (reigned 1410–15), under pressure from the Holy Roman emperor Sigismund. John, who was subsequently considered an antipope, failed in his attempt to undermine the council, and all three popes either resigned or were deposed, whereupon the council elected Oddone Colonna, who took the name Martin V (reigned 1417–31). In addition to settling the question of papal legitimacy, the council enacted a variety of reform legislation, among which was a stipulation that thenceforth, as a matter of church law, the church council would not be merely an expedient to be resorted to in an emergency but a standing legislative body, a kind of ecclesiastical senate that would meet at brief and regular intervals. The decree of the Council of Constance justified this provision on the principle that the authority of the ecumenical council as the true representative of the entire church was superior to that of the pope, who could not make a similar claim for himself apart from the council. This elevation of conciliar over papal authority was the central tenet of the late medieval movement called conciliarism.

This action also helps to account for the ambiguous position of the Council of Constance in the history of later Roman Catholic canon law, as the opinions of canonists and historians differ to this day about which sessions of the council are entitled to the status of a true ecumenical council. An ambiguity even more complex attended the next reform council, which used to be known as the Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence but is now sometimes divided into two councils, that of Basel and that of Ferrara-Florence, though the legitimacy of the Council of Basel is contested at least in part. The council opened in 1431 at Basel, was transferred by the pope in 1438 to Ferrara (where discussions for reunion with the Eastern Orthodox church at Constantinople began), moved in 1439 to Florence, and held its closing sessions in 1443–45 at Rome. While still at Basel, the council reaffirmed the conciliarist teaching of the Council of Constance about the superiority of the council to the pope. The council’s opposition to the pope, however, undermined its authority. Many of the delegates, hoping to achieve reunion with Constantinople, left Basel when the pope moved the council to Ferrara and then Florence. Those remaining in Basel took extreme conciliarist positions and even formally deposed the reigning pope and elected another. However, the deposition found little support and ultimately damaged the credibility of the council in Basel, as well as the credibility of conciliarism itself, as did the success of the council in Ferrara-Florence.

Both the Council of Constance and the Council of Ferrara-Florence have additional importance in the history of late medieval reform in Roman Catholicism—Constance for dealing with the problem of heresy within the Western church, and Ferrara-Florence for addressing itself to the relation of Western Roman Catholicism to Eastern Christendom.

Jan Hus

A major item on the agenda of the Council of Constance was the challenge posed to the authority of both contending parties, council as well as pope, by the teachings of the Czech preacher Jan Hus. Although influenced by John Wycliffe, Hus was not as radical as the English theologian, especially regarding transubstantiation in the Eucharist (Wycliffe, though not Hus, held that the bread and wine in the Eucharist retain their material substance). Hus was highly critical of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and argued that its authority was only spiritual. He also advanced an Augustinian definition of the church, according to which the earthly church is made up of only the saved and the damned.

Despite the accusations of his critics, it seems clear that Hus did not draw from this premise the radical conclusion that sacraments administered by a hypocritical priest or bishop or pope were invalid in themselves; the priestly office and the sacraments retained their objective validity. A prominent element of the Hussite demands, however, was a call for the administration of Holy Communion to the laity “under both kinds” (sub utraque specie), bread and wine; that is, they demanded the restoration of the chalice. Accordingly, the followers of Hus emblazoned a chalice on their banners. The Hussite movement of reform coalesced with the rising nationalism of the Czech people, many of whom resented German domination of Bohemia.

In 1411 Hus was excommunicated by John XXIII. In keeping with the widespread spirit of conciliarism, Hus appealed his case to an ecumenical council of the church. Summoned to appear before the Council of Constance, he was promised safe-conduct by Sigismund, the Holy Roman emperor. Once at the council, however, Hus was arrested and imprisoned. He was tried for heresy (particularly because of his doctrine of the church) and condemned, and on July 6, 1415, he was burned at the stake. His main prosecutors, notably including Jean de Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, were also the leaders of the reform movement at the Council of Constance.

The death of Hus was not the end of his movement. A civil war in Bohemia soon led to the formation of an independent Bohemian Catholic church, which was later absorbed by Rome. Remnants of the Hussite movement evolved first into the Unitas Fratrum (a religious group that rejected transubstantiation and advocated nonviolence and a strict biblical faith) and then into the Moravian Church. In the emergence of churches independent of Rome, as well as in various specific doctrinal and moral teachings, Hus anticipated the Protestant Reformation a century later. In the 16th century his disciples joined with the Lutherans in their struggle against the church and the emperor.

Efforts to heal the East-West Schism

At Basel and then especially at Ferrara-Florence, there were extensive negotiations and discussions over the newly revived proposals for effecting a reunion of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Western Roman Catholicism. Earlier attempts at such a reunion—for example, at the Council of Lyon in 1274—had failed. But now the time seemed ripe on both sides for a new effort at reconciliation. Christian Constantinople was under increasing threat from the Turks and desired Western support, moral as well as military. Leaders of the West, regardless of party, regarded the long-sought rapprochement with the East as a means of restoring the prestige of both the papacy and the ecumenical council, which could then be seen as having resolved both the major schisms of Christian history—the Great Schism and the East-West Schism—in the space of one generation. The patriarch of Constantinople, Joseph II, and the Byzantine emperor, John VIII Palaeologus, both came in person to the Council of Ferrara-Florence for the theological negotiations toward reunion of the two churches.

In the doctrinal discussions between the Greeks and the Latins, all the major points of difference that had historically separated the two churches received detailed attention. The Greeks acknowledged the primacy of the pope, and the Latins acknowledged the right of the Greeks to ordain married men into the priesthood. The chief sticking point, as always, was the doctrine of the Filioque: Did the Holy Spirit in the Trinity proceed from the Father only, as the East taught, or “from the Father and the Son” (ex Patre Filioque), as the Western addition to the text of the Nicene Creed affirmed? Almost all those present at Ferrara-Florence came to an agreement that the dispute over the Filioque was chiefly one of words, not of content, since it could be amply documented that both versions of the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit had substantial attestation from the teachings of the Church Fathers in both churches. Agreement on the Filioque and on all other points at issue led to the adoption of a document of union, Laetentur coeli (“Rejoicing of heaven”), promulgated on July 6, 1439 (and still commemorated in a plaque on the wall of the Duomo in Florence). But the reunion came too late for both sides. It was repudiated in the East in Constantinople, where the memory of Crusader violence persisted, as well as in other Orthodox churches, notably the Church of Russia. Once again, as on so many occasions throughout Christian history, the reunion of the Eastern and the Western churches proved to be a dead letter and an unattainable goal.