he died there remained three to contend for the papacy, Pope John XXIII, Gregory in Sicily and Benedict in Spain. But from what moving cause this diabolical strife originally came, even the blind can discern, namely, from the dotation. Hence, St. Jerome, in his Lives of the Fathers, wrote: "As the church increased in possessions, she decreased in virtues." And what is set down as a probability by the Chronicles seems clear, as narrated by Castrensis, 4: 86, who describes how, 'at the time of the dotation of the church, an angelic voice[1] was heard in the air, saying, that day poison was infused in the holy church of God. For, however it came to be, this is true: either a good angel or a devil uttered the voice, because it is certain that demons, who rejoice when they do evil, are bound to serve God and to be messengers of the truth, and it becomes God by the mammon of iniquity to announce in advance to the people their danger.' From these things the faithful are able to form a judgment whether any one, by the mere fact that he is called pope, is indeed the chief pontiff of the church and the most blessed father, and in matters of the faith learned above all worshippers of Christ, and whether he is the head of God's holy church.
- ↑ Rolls Series, 5: 130. Trevisa's translation runs: "The olde enemy cryde openliche in the ayer." Castrensis quotes Jerome's words as given by Huss, and he adds that "when Constantine was baptized of Sylvester, he opened the prisons, destroyed the temples of the idols, built new and restored old churches, endowing them with spiritual privileges and immunities and assigned one-tenth of all his possessions to the churches and, at the repairing of St. Peter's, turned the first spade of earth and carried ten baskets full of earth on his shoulders," etc.
of the notorious French cardinal, Robert of Geneva, by the Avignonese cardinals, and the papal schism followed, lasting 1378-1417, with one pope at Rome and another at Avignon. The council of Pisa, 1409, attempted to bring the schism to an end by the election of Peter Philargi, cardinal of Milan, Alexander V, who appears prominently in the history of Huss. He lived only a year after his election, and was followed by John XXIII, who was deposed by the council of Constance, 1415. After receiving the resignation of Gregory XII, of the Roman line, and deposing Benedict XIII, the last of the Avignon popes, the council, 1417, finally terminated the schism by the election of Martin V.
