| At the death of Gregory XI in Rome, the cardinals
were forced by a Roman mob to elect an Italian pope.
They chose Urban VI in hopes that he would be compliant
to their advice. They were mistaken in this hope. Urban
decided that both pope and papal administration should
resume its residence in Rome, and threatened to reform
the college of cardinals to increase Italian
representation up to a majority in the body. Unable to
control their new paper as they had hoped, the French
cardinals fled Rome. The Italian cardinals, naturally,
remained with Rome's new champion. When the French
cardinals reached a point where they were same from the
pope's power and the pressure of the Roman mobs, they
assembled and declared that the election of Urban was
invalid and void because they had acted under duress.
They held another, rump, election, chose a Frenchman and
returned to Avignon.
This created a knotty problem. The clergy had worked
long and hard to establish the principles that the
Church was independent of the State and immune from
secular sanctions for its actions, and that the pope,
once selected as bishop of Rome by the College of
Cardinals, held absolute and supreme power within the
Church. Since there was no secular power or person
superior to the pope in churchly affairs, it followed
that there was no power or person competent to judge the
pope's actions. This meant that neither was there any
power or person qualified to determine which of two
claimants to the bishopric of Rome, was the true Vicar
of Christ.
The financial situation of the Church as a whole grew
even worse than it had been during the Avignon papacy.
There were now two papal capitals for which it was
necessary to provide upkeep; there were two entire papal
administrations to be maintained in a style befitting
their dignities. When the two papal claimants began
competing with each other in matters such as pomp,
lavish gifts, patronage, and bribery, the drain on
ecclesiastical resources increased still further.
There were other forms of competition available and
the rivals soon made use of them. Not only did each
papal administration declare the other and its clergy to
be heretical, but they reached the point of declaring
that anyone accepting sacraments from a heretical - for
which you may read "rival" - cleric would be considered
excommunicate. It didn't take a genius to figure out
that, since the rival popes each enjoyed the support of
about half of Europe, half the population might be
receiving the sacraments from a true priest, but the
other half were being attended by a heretic, were dying
excommunicate. While all of the population were making
perfect acts of contrition, being absolved of their
sins, receiving the sacrament of Extreme Unction and
dying in certain hope of a Glorious Resurrection and
Life Everlasting, the souls half of them were descending
directly into the first of Hell to suffer the
unspeakable torments of the damned for all eternity.
This was obviously a difficult matter for the
faithful to accept, and it was clear that the true pope,
whichever of the claimants he might have been, was
powerless to save many thousands of believing Christians
from being cast into Hell. As a matter of fact, it was
at the command of the true pope that they were being so
cast. There were two ways to solve the dilemma. One was
to have the real pope stand up and so be able to reunify
the Church. The other was to conclude that the Church
was an ineffective institution as it had been operating
and to reorganize it, or, if that proved impossible, to
toss the Church hierarchy and established doctrine aside
as being unnecessary for individual salvation. Naturally
enough, the established leaders of society chose to
pursue the first option and to find the real pope.
Several secular rulers were asked to exert their
power and influence in settling the matter, but the
secular rulers had already entered the game and chosen
to support whichever of the claimants it was more
advantageous for them to support. They were in no mood
to support their opponents' man, and so did nothing to
solve the problem. Distinguished figures called upon
both popes to abdicate for the good of Christendom, but
failed to persuade the rivals.
The theological faculty of the University of Paris
was asked the decide the issue, but could come to no
clear decision. One must note, however, that the
realization that, if they opted for either one, the
other would excommunicate them collectively and
individually may have affected their logical powers. The
question they had to decide, though, was not really
which of the claimants to the Throne of Saint Peter was
truly God's choice as exercised through the College of
Cardinals but whether they had any right to pass upon
the qualifications of the Vicar of Christ. One of the
claimants, you see, must have been the true pope, and
for the theology faculty to have presumed to pass
judgment on his worthiness would have been a grievous
sin.
Some people went so far as to poll those people - and
it was not all that small a body - who were generally
considered to be saints in all things save the final
requirement of being dead. Unfortunately, of those who
were willing to offer an opinion, there was not clear
majority for either claimant. The pope himself, the king
and princes, the wealthy and famous, the learned, and
the holy - none of them provided the leadership needed
in what was far from a minor difficulty.
While members of the establishment were trying, and
failing, to distinguish the true pope from the false
claimant, others were approaching the matter in more
basic ways. On the principle that the bishopric of Rome
would not be such a bone of contention were it not for
the wealth and taxes that accrued to the position, some
people revived the call for the Church to accept
"apostolic poverty," in emulation of Jesus and his
disciples. Influential thinkers and writers began to
claim that the authority of the monarchs was superior to
that of the pope and, in its role as protector of the
people, the state had the responsibility of overseeing
the Church's discharge of its functions. Generally
speaking, the radical reformers of the Avignon period
regained strength, but at too slow a pace to suggest to
anyone that their resolution of the problem could be
expected in the near future.
Popular responses to the situation arose -- critics
of the Church and its practices that neither papal
administration found easy to silence. Some of these
critics addressed some of the basic beliefs that
underlay the power and prestige of the Church. Wyclif
and Hus, after all, claimed that the sacraments - which
the ecclesiastical administrations recognized as
essential to the Church's continued existence - were
simply memorial rituals --
"For I received from the Lord that which I also
delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night
in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had
given thanks, He broke it, and said, This is My
body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of
Me" (1Cor.11:23-24).
without supernatural power.
The response of many members of a population that
found itself without leaders and, to a certain degree
without restrictions, was to embrace mystic movements
such as the Rhineland Mystics of Meister Eckhardt. The "Pietist"
movements that spread among the peasantry stimulated a
new sense of personal religiosity. All of these
movements were similar in their tendency to circumvent -
even without intending to do so - the entire Church
hierarchy by placing priestly powers in the hands of the
individual. In many ways, this was the foundation of the
concept of "the universal priesthood of all true
believers" that would form an important element in the
Protestant Reformation of the next century.
Over time, the situation only grew worse. There were
still two papal claimants, and their rivalry led to
increased corruption within their administrations and a
decrease of interest in anything other than gaining
advantage over their opponent. As time passed, the
various reformers managed to settle on common principles
and upon the way in which those principles might be put
into action. They agreed upon the principle that the
sovereignty of the Church rested in a body
representative of its members. On this basis, they
claimed that a general council would have the power to
depose popes and address the other problems facing the
church. Because of their insistence on the power of a
council, they were known as the Conciliarists, and the
group soon included virtually everyone committed to
ecclesiastical reform.
They supported their position that general councils
held supreme power within the church by numerous
arguments:
1. Scriptural: In order to gain approval of his
conversion of non-Jews to the Christian faith, Paul felt
it necessary to gain approval of the Council of
Jerusalem.
2. Historical: When the Emperor Constantine wanted
Christians to formulate their common set of beliefs, he
called the Council of Nicaea into session.
3. Parallels: Other monarchs, even though claiming
supreme authority "By the Grace of God, shared their
power with representative assemblies on matters of
general import.
4. Philosophical: Nominalism, acceptance of which was
growing, held that truth is what has been established
and accepted by common will -- that justice is superior
to law and that justice is a social construct. |
