CONSTANCE
290
CONSTANCE
Constance for the deposition of Benedict and the elec-
tion of a new pope. St. Vincent Ferrer (q. v.) hither-
to the main support of Benedict, and his confessor,
now gave him up as a perjurer; the council confirmed
(4 Feb., 1416) the articles of Narbonne, the immediate
execution of which was retarded, among other causes,
by the flight of Benedict (13 Nov., 1415) from the
fortress of Perpignan to the inaccessible rock of Penis-
cola on the sea-coast near Valencia, where he died in
1423, maintaining to the end his good right (see Luna,
Pedro de).
Various causes, as just said, held back the appear- ance of the Spanish deputies at the council. Finally they arrived at Constance for the twenty-first session (15 Oct., 1416) and were thenceforth counted as the fifth nation (Fromnie, Die spanische Nation und das Konzil von Konstanz, Munster, 1896). The next eight months were largely taken up with complicated canonical procedure destined to compel the abdication or justify the deposition of Benedict XIII, who in the meantime had excommunicated solemnly his former royal adherents and with a courage worthy of a better cause maintained that Holy Church, the Ark of Noe, was now on the wave-worn peak of Peiiiscola, in the little group of a few thousand souls who yet clung to his shadowy authority, and not at Constance. He was finally deposed in the thirty-seventh session (26 July, 1417) as guilty of perjury, a schismatic, and a heretic; his private life and priestly character, imlike those of John XXIII, were never assailed. The Western Schism was thus at an end, after nearly forty years of disastrous life; one pope (Gregory XII) had volun- tarily abdicated; another (John XXlII) had been sus- pended and then deposed, but had submitted in canon- ical form; the third claimant (Benedict XIII) was cut off from the body of the Church, " a pope without a Church, a shepherd without a flock" (Hergenrother- Kirsch). It had come about that, whichever of the three claimants of the papacy was the legitimate suc- cessor of Peter, there reigned throughout the Church a universal uncertainty and an intolerable confusion, so that saints and scholars and upright souls were to be found in all three obediences. On the principle that a doubtful pope is no pope, the Apostolic See ap- peared really vacant, and under the circumstances could not possibly be otherwise filled than by the action of a general council.
The canonical irregularities of the council seem less blameworthy when to this practical vacancy of the papal chair we add the universal disgust and weariness at the continuance of the so-called schism, despite all imaginable efforts to restore to the Church its unity of headship, the justified fear of new complications, the imminent peril of Catholic doctrine and discipline amid the temporary wreckage of the traditional au- thority of the Apostolic See, and the rapid growth of false teachings equally ruinous to Church and State.
Election of Martin V. — Under the circumstances the usual form of papal election by the cardinals alone (see Concl.we) was impossible, if only for the strongly inimical feeling of the majority of the council, which held them responsible not only for the horrors of the schism, but also for many of the administrative abuses of the Roman Curia (see below), the immediate cor- rection of which seemed to not a few of no less impor- tance, to say the least, than the election of a pope. This object was not obscured by minor dissensions, e. g. concerning the rightful rank of the Spanish nation, the number of votes of the Aragonese and Castilians, respectively, the right of the English to constitute a nation, etc. The French, Spanish, and Italian nations desired an immediate papal election; a Church without a head was a monstrosity, said d'.\illy. Under Bishop Robert of Salisbury the Eng- lish held stoutly for the reforms that seemed im- perative in the administration of the papacy and the Curia ; Emperor Sigismund was foremost among the
Germans for the same cause, and was ready to take
violent measures in its interest. But Robert of Salis-
bury died, and curiously enough, it was by another
English bishop, Ileniy of Winchester, then on hLs
way to Palestine, and a near relative of the King of
England, that the antagonistic measures of papal elec-
tion and curial reform were reconciled in favour of the
priority of the former, but with satisfactory assur-
ance, among other points, that the new pope would at
once utidertake a serious reform of all abuses; that
those reforms would be at once proclaimed by the
council on which all the nations agreed; and that the
manner of the imminent papal election should be left
to a special commission. Among the five reform de-
crees passed at once by the council in its thirty-ninth
session (9 Oct., 1417) was the famous "Frequens"
which provided for a general council every ten years;
the next two, however, were to be convoked by the
pope after five and seven years respectively, the first
of them at Pavia.
In the fortieth session finally (30 Oct.) was dis- cussed the manner of the new papal election. The council decreed that for this occasion to the twenty- three cardinals should be added thirty deputies of the council (si.x from each nation) making a body of fifty- three electors. Another decree of this session pro- vided for the immediate and serious attention of the new pope to eighteen points concerning reformatio in capite et Curia Romana. The forty-first session (8 Nov.) provided for the details of the election and for this purpose had the Bull of Clement VI (6 Dec, 1351) read. That afternoon the electors assembled in conclave and after three days chose for the pope the Roman Cardinal Odo Colonna, who took the name of Martin V (q. v.). He was only a subdeacon, and so was successively made deacon, priest, and bishop (Promme, "Die Wahl Martins V.", in " Rom. Quartal- schrift", 1S96). Hiscoronation took place 21 Novem- ber, 1417. At its forty-fifth session he solemnly closed the council (22 April, 1418), whereupon, declin- ing invitations to Avignon or to some German city, he returned to- Italy, and after a short stay in Florence entered Rome, 28 Sept., 1420, and took up his resi- dence in the Vatican, thereby restoring to the See of Peter its ancient rights and prestige in Christendom
II. Reform.-vtign of Ecclesi.4stic.\l Govern- ment AND Life. — Tlie long absence of the popes from Rome in the fourteenth century, entailing the economical and political ruin of the ancient Patrimony of Peter; the many grave abuses directly or indirectly connected with the administration of French popes at Avignon ; the general civil dis- orders of the time (Hundred Years War, Condottieri, etc.), and other causes, had created, long before the Council of Constance, an earnest demand for a refonnation of ecclesiastical conditions. The writ- ings of theologians and canonists and the utterances of several popular saints (St. Bridget of Sweden, St. Catherine of Siena) are alone enough to show how well justified was this universal demand (Rocquain). In the minds of many members of the council "this re-' formation, as already stated, was of equal importance with the closing of the schism ; and to some, especially to the Gennans, it seemed to overshadow even the; need of a head for the Church. It was precisely thf' pope anil the cardinals, they argued, whose adminis-' tration most needed reform, and now, when both wert weakest and for the first time in their historj- had felt the mastery of the theologians and canonists, seemet to this party the psychological moment to write thesf refonns into the common ecclesiastical law, whenci they could not easily be expunged. Since July, 1415 there had been a reform commission of thirty-fivi members: a new one of twenty-five members had lieei appointed after the entry of the Spanish nation ii October, 1416. During its long career many memo rials were presented to the council concerning ever
(
