History 441/541 Sixteenth-Century European Reformations

1. Introduction: The Late Medieval Crisis of Papal Monarchy
2. Historical Outline: The Great Schism and Conciliarism
3. Popes of the Great Schism and the Conciliar Era
4. Restoration and Counter-Reformation Popes
5. Suggestions for Further Reading

Most people know that the unity of western Christianity ended with the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. From the 1520s on, western Christianity would be permanently divided between Roman Catholicism and the various Protestant confessions or denominations—Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed (or “Calvinist”), and Anabaptist, just to enumerate the oldest of these.

1. Introduction: The Late Medieval Crisis of Papal Monarchy
Less well known is the fact that prior to the Reformation, the church experienced one of the most profound and transforming crises in its history—one which in many ways laid the groundwork for both the Protestant split and the revival of “Counter-Reformation” Catholicism. This was a crisis of power and authority within the church, brought on by the legal election of two popes in the year 1378. This division in the leadership of the church—called the “Great Schism”—would not end for nearly forty years.  Between 1378 and 1417, both popes—the one residing in Rome, the other in the city of Avignon in southern France—would claim the obedience of the entire church, and condemn anyone who obeyed his rival. Out of this impossible situation grew a fundamental challenge to the authority of popes in general. In their search for a solution to the Great Schism, leading church intellectuals and officials revived the ancient theory that a “General Council” of all the leaders of the church possessed an authority even greater than that of the pope himself. If so, then a “General Council” had the power to depose a legitimately elected pope and thereby restore the institutional unity of the church. This theory soon transformed into a powerful ideology and political movement, which historians refer as “conciliarism” and the “conciliar movement.”
        The crisis of authority in the church touched on virtually every aspect of cultural life in Europe. To give but one example: as long as there were two popes, one could not be sure who the “true” pope was; and because each pope had excommunicated his rival’s followers, one could not be certain that any church sacrament or ritual—baptisms, marriages, communion, last rites, or any other sacraments—had any validity. Furthermore, because the pope was considered to be the supreme judge in legal matters under the church’s jurisdiction, one could not be certain whether the decision of a church court was valid or not. To which pope should one appeal a verdict? All this confusion and uncertainty added many voices to the growing chorus of criticism against corruption in the late medieval church. As if this were not complicated enough, the “Great Schism” quickly got entangled in the dynastic rivalries and superpower ambitions of the western European monarchies—not to mention the unimaginably complex politics of Renaissance Italy. The kings of France tended to support the Avignon popes, for obvious reasons; France’s traditional rivals, the kings of England, endorsed the Roman succession—and for much of this period, England controlled most of northern France. The princes of Germany and Italy were largely autonomous and supported whomever appeared most advantageous politically; this resulted in a roughly even split. The Iberian peninsula included three Christian kingdoms, which were also inclined toward the Roman obedience.
        All this coincided with a massive, grass-roots movement for reform of the church in general, especially what many considered to be the popes’ excessive greed for power and money. Under the “Avignon Papacy,” in particular, the papal administration had acquired a reputation for unbridled greed. With this came accusations that by demanding heavy payments from nominees to high church offices, the papacy had made itself guilty of “simony”—the sin of attempting to purchase the spiritual benefits of the church. These accusations did not abate when the Avignon Papacy ended; rather they intensified when the Great Schism compounded the crisis of legitimacy.

Gregory XI [Pierre Roger de Beaufort] 1370-1378
 

The Roman Succession Urban VI [Bartolomeo Prignano] 1378-1389 Boniface IX [Pietro Tomacelli] 1389-1404  Innocent VII [Cosimo de' Migliorati] 1389-1404 Gregory XII [Angelo Correr] 1406-1415

Conciliar Popes Council of Pisa: Alexander V [Pietro Philarghi] 1409-1410 John XXIII [Baldassare Cossa] 1410-1415 Council of Constance: Martin V [Oddone Colonna] 1417-1431 Council of Basel: Felix V [Amadeo VIII of Savoy] 1439-1449

The Avignon Succession Clement VII [Robert de Geneve] 1378-94 Benedict XIII [Pietro de Luna] 1394-1417/1423 Clement VIII [Gil Sanchez Muñoz] 1423-1429 Benedict XIV [Bernard Garnier] 1425-1430