censure or remonstrance as having followed upon this flagrant and unprecedented invasion of the immemorial privileges of the Church; but the Papacy was, as we have seen, at its lowest point of depression; Henry IV., like the succeeding Lancastrian princes, was the dutiful and obedient son of the Church, with whom it did not suit the Pope to quarrel; and he had, besides, purchased a right to some indulgence by granting in the Statute of Heresy some four years before, also for the first time in English history, a licence to the bishops and clergy to put men to death for holding erroneous opinions.
Abroad, the Papacy itself had reached its lowest point in the years immediately preceding the assembling of the Council of Constance. The closing years of the reign of Henry IV. saw the Council of Pisa solemnly depose two rival popes, describing them both as notorious schismatics and heretics, guilty of enormous iniquities and excesses, and annulling their official acts; and following upon this the still further scandal of three popes at once, all arrogating to themselves the superhuman dignity of supreme pontiff and vicar of Christ, all denouncing one another as heretics and Anti-christs, and all equally debasing and discrediting the character of the Christian Church.
There is in one respect a curious resemblance between the state of things at this time in England, and that which existed in the later years of Henry VIII. after the enactment of the Six Articles, for in both cases there was a hot persecution of heresy instituted by the King, and existing coincidently with a depreciation of the papal and an exaltation of the royal authority. But the difference is far greater than the similarity, for the depression of papal authority was in the one case slight and temporary, in the other deep and permanent; in
