[MR] Wikipedia: The Western Schism of 1378

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble Friends,

I've commented on the Western Schism in the Roman church before in other
contexts, but today marks the date the Church ended up with THREE rival
popes.

In 1305, French dominance of the Church began with the election of
Archbishop of Bordeaux Raymond Bertrand as Pope Clement V under the
"sponsorship" of French King Philip IV (aka Philip "The Fair"). Bertrand
was a lifelong friend of Philip, and was his toady. Together they destroyed
the Knights Templar to erase Philip's huge debt to the order. Clement
refused to settle in Rome and in 1309 moved the papal court to Avignon. A
total of seven French popes ruled the church from Avignon, and were largely
under the thumbs of successive French kings.

The last of the first line of Avignon popes was Gregory XI, who returned to
Rome in 1377. When he died a year later, the French cardinals refused to
recognize his Italian successor, Urban VI. They elected their guy, Robert
of Geneva, who was pretty much booed out of Italy by angry Italian mobs. He
returned to Avignon to establish the second line of popes there. Until
1409, the two rival papicies split (and purposefully manipulated) the
loyalties of Europe, with various kings and princes allying themselves with
one side or the other. Those loyalties become the excuse for lots of wars,
often territorial land grabs disguised as crusades against "heretics'.

In 1409, a group of cardinals met in Pisa to try to clean up the mess. The
Pisa crowd tried to chuck out both the Roman and Avignon popes, electing
their own Italian as Pope Alexander V. He ruled at Pisa from 26 June 1409
for less than a year before dying. Alexander was followed by John XXIII.

This business of popes and anti-popes was clearly out of hand. So in 1414
the Council of Constance was convened by John XXIII, to settle the matter.
Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut, because the Council gave John the
boot and placed him under arrest. The Roman pope Gregory XII was forced to
resign. The Avignon pope, Benedict XIII, refused to resign and was
excommunicated. The Council then elected Martin V as pope, almost ending
the Schism.

Almost, but not quite. Benedict XIII continued to hold out with support
from the King of Aragon. After Benedict died in 1423, three dissident
cardinals elected Gil Sanchez Munoz y Carbon as Clement XIII in the Avignon
line. Lacking any substantial support Clement resigned in 1429, ending the
Western Schism for good.

By now some of you are probably all yelling "Scorecard! Scorecard! Can't
tell one pope from another without a scorecard!" At least we don't have to
worry about the promise of eternal damnation or getting killed as a heretic
for backing the wrong guy.

If you want to read all the details, the story is at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism .

Yours Aye,


Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge  🦆
Continuing a crusade to keep Merry Rose relevant and in business.