Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans. Episode 171 the Council of Constance Part 1 Cleaning House which is also episode 8 of season 9. The Reformation before the Reformation On a cold night in October 1414, the most unusual procession appeared near the village of Klusterle on the Alberg Pass. Not an army, but almost as large. 600 men, some soldiers and bodyguards, a few high ranking aristocrats, but mostly men of the cloth.
Clerics, doctors of theology, but also abbots, bishops and archbishops, as well as the true princes of the church. Cardinals, dozens of them. And at the centre of the procession, an enormous cart. And in it the true lord of all of Christendom, the bearer of both sorts, the temporal and the spiritual, Pope John xxiii. The roads they had travelled on for days were terrible.
Whatever was left of the old Roman infrastructure had long been buried underground or had deteriorated so badly it had gone out of use through the autumn mud. The procession plowed on and just as they were passing the hamlet of Klusterle in the holloway that masked as one of Europe's busiest north south connections, the attendants watched in panic as the right hand side wheels of the papal wagon climbed the bank of the road.
Before anyone could rein in the horses and prevent disaster, the carriage rose, went past the point of vanishing stability and with a terrifying thumb landed on its side. The Holy Father was thrown out of his vehicle and lay buried deep in the snow. His lords and bishops ran to him and asked, O Holy Father, has your holiness been harmed? And he responded, here, for the devil's sake, I lie. Shaken but unharmed.
The Vicar of Christ kept going as the panorama widened and he could see the city of Bludens down in the valley that leads to the lake and then to the city of Constance. He uttered, full of premonition, so this is where they catch the foxes. And the old fox was right to be worried. For a year later he will find himself in prison in Mannheim than just a solitary tower by the shore of the Rhine.
How that happened and why he is now resting in a magnificent tomb in the Baptistery of Florence, paid for by the Medici family and bearing the inscription John, the former Pope XXIII died in Florence AD 1419. That is what we will look at in this episode. But before we start your usual moment of discomfort and frantic clicking of the forward button.
Yes, the show is still advertising free and that is still down to the generosity of our patrons and donors who have gone to historyofthegermans.com support and have made a one time donation or signed up on Patreon. Just a brief update on the latter. For some reason Apple has not yet levied its pound of flash, so you can still go to patreon.com historyofthegermans and sign up there even if you have an iPhone.
But hurry, the one trillion dollar company is going to pounce on your hapless podcaster soon. This week we thank Scott F, Michael Martin S. John Paul Hart, William O'Brien, Caroline A. And James A. Who have already signed up. And with that, back to the show. Here we are. The Pope John XXIII is traveling across the Alps to go to a general church council in Constance. Which begs just one question. Why?
Why would Baldassarre Cosa, elected Pope and recognized as head of the church in dozens of lands born on the sun drenched island of Procida near Naples, call a church assembly to discuss the schism? And in a foggy mid sized town in the German lands to boot? Well, the answer is he didn't. Or at least he did not call a church council to debate the schism. As far as John XXIII was concerned, the schism was done and dusted.
The community of the faithful had come together in Pisa in 1409 and had deposed the two other competing contenders, Gregory XII and Benedict xiii, and had replaced them with his predecessor, Alexander V. And then he, Baldessare Cossa, had been canonically elected as the successor of Alexander V. The fact that Gregory XII and Benedict XIII were still around claiming supremacy was a logistical or maybe a military problem, but not one we need a church council for.
So the reason he did still call a church council had to do with one of the provisions of the previous council, the one in Pisa. The Pisan gathering had made Pope Alexander V swear he would call another council within the next three years to deal with the open issue of church reform. Because in all the debate about how to put an end to the schism, the important issue of how can we make a church a little less corrupt? Had fallen off the agenda.
That was why John XXIII found himself in a bind to call a church council. But he wasn't really opposed to the idea either. Presiding over a major reform council would elevate him onto the level of the great popes, the Innocent II and thirds, the Alexander III and Gregory X that would make everybody forget his how can I say that politely? Somewhat chequered past. But as so often, Pope John XXIII struggled to find a suitable venue for his grand ecumenical council.
Initially, he wanted to do it in Rome. After all, Rome was his capital and it would also be a categorical statement that the times when the popes had to live away from the Eternal City was now well and truly over. The problem was that John XXIII had to live away from the Eternal City. For most of his pontificate, his neighbour, King Ladislas of Naples, kept conquering papal lands and sacking Rome on regular intervals.
That is, by the way, the same Ladislas who had inherited and pursued a claim on the crown of Hungary from his father, Charles the Short, who was made even shorter by Elizabeth of Bosnia. If this last sentence was complete goobledygook to you, well then you probably have to listen to episode 169 again. A lasting peace with Naples anyway was unlikely. Pope John XXIII did not like Ladislas of Naples very much.
Ever since Ladislaus had his two brothers hanged as pirates, Ladislaus did not like the Pope very much. Well, because he could. With Rome off the list of suitable venues, John needed another a neutral place in Italy. By then, the peninsula was in the grip of near perennial war. Many of the former communes have become principalities, ruled by local strongmen. And strongmen did what strongmen do.
They go after other people's lands, cities and treasure until there are armies criss crossing the land from early spring to late autumn. Enter stage left our friend Sigismund of Luxembourg. By now, this extremely intrepid man had not only secured his reign over Hungary, but had finally achieved his great ambition and had become King of the Romans. And best of all, his hated half brother Wenceslas, who had been King of the Romans before, was still around to see it happening.
So how did he become King of the Romans? Well, that was simple. Nobody really wanted the job anymore. The reign of Rudolf of the Empty Pocket had shown beyond any doubt that there was no money left to establish any kind of imperial authority. Only the very, very richest could afford to don the imperial coronation mantle. And even after four decades of infighting and mismanagement, the house of Luxembourg was still the richest of the great eligible families of the empire.
And being a squabbling lot, two Luxembourgs put their hat in the Sigismund, King of Hungary, and Jobst Margrav of Moravia. Weirdly, Jobst had the much inferior title, but he had a lot more money. But what he lacked was longevity. Both were elected by a mixture of correct and incorrect prince electors. But Jobst died in 1411, and that way Sigismund was ultimately confirmed by all electors. Being King of the Romans and future emperor came with the role of supreme protector of the Church.
And whilst Pope John XXIII May think the schism is over. Sigismund did not quite see it like that. He had to deal with the fact that some imperial principalities, the Palatinate and Baden, for instance, kept their allegiance to the deposed pope, Gregory xii. And he also knew that one way to gain true control over the empire, and with it the leverage to initiate much needed imperial ref, was to rescue the Holy Mother Church.
So that is why Sigismund pops up in Lodi in northern Italy in December 1413 to discuss the long overdue church council with the pope, or more precisely, its location. By now, John XXIII had considered Bologna and even Avignon of all places, but both had been turned down by his advisors as either too dangerous or totally inappropriate. At which point Sigismund suggested that they all come over to his yard. Yard being the word that my teenage son uses to describe a home.
And I thought I use it since I'm a bit tired of using the same words again and again. So to tell you what happens next, I have to introduce somebody else. The chronicler Ulrich Richental. He was a citizen of Constance and he wrote a very detailed account of the council that, despite some biases, is still our number one source for the events during that period. Henry Richenthal is a big fan of Sigismund, not so much of the pope.
So he does make things up occasionally, like the road accident at the start of this episode. But he does it so nicely, I couldn't stop myself pretending it did actually happen. And here is Ulrich's account of the two heads of Christendom, discussing the venue for the most momentous event of the 15th century. When Sigismund proposed to come to Germany, John XXIII responded, well, I cannot convince my cardinals to travel north across the Alps.
Sigismund responded, in that case, I cannot get the princes and electors to travel south across the Alps. Gridlock. Sigismund turns to one of his entourage, the duke of Tack. Isn't there some imperial city close to the Alps? Sure, sire. The city of Campton. At which point a count of Nellenburg intervenes. Nah, there's not enough food in Campton. But there's another city just an hour's right away. Constance on the lake. They have a bishopric and everything.
Holy father, do you like Constance, John xxiii? O my beloved son, I do like Constance. That's it. That's how it went down. Richtenthal told us so, so it must definitely be true. On October 27, Pope John XXIII and his entourage of 600 entered the city of Constance under a golden baldachin carried by four eminent burghers of this free imperial city, the imperial bailie performed the service of the groom, and a group of schoolchildren sang appropriate hymns.
The Pope, grateful for the friendly welcome, blessed the congregation. Everything was going swimmingly. The Pope, in his immediate entourage, was given accommodation in the bishop's palace opposite the cathedral. The others were distributed amongst the homes of the locals, who were all too happy to Airbnb their spare rooms for outrageous rents. Because it wasn't just the 600 Papal delegates, which included humanists like Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini, as well as the various prelates.
There were also a total of 3 Patriarchs, 23 Cardinals, 27 Archbishops, 106 Bishops, 103 Abbots, 344 Doctors of Theology, all of whom came with their scribes, procurators and administrators of various kinds. Then there were the princes, a full complement of the seven prince electors, then the Dukes of Bavaria, Austria, Schleswig, Mecklenburg, Lothringia and Teck, as well as a further 676 noblemen.
Those high aristocrats who did not come themselves, like the kings of France, England, Scotland, Denmark, Poland, Naples, Castile and Aragon, sent representatives, as did the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Emperor of Ethiopia. And then there were all these people who came hoping to make some money of this incredible gathering.
Goldsmiths, cobblers, furriers, blacksmiths, bakers, shopkeepers, apothecaries, moneylenders, buglers, pipers, entertainers, barbers, heralds, merchants of any kind, and then the often mentioned whores and public girls. All of them needed to stay somewhere, and somehow all of them did. The City Museum at the Rosegarten hosts a wonderful model of Constance from around that time of the council, which gives a great idea of its size, or lack of it.
Constance at the time had maybe 6 to 8,000 inhabitants, which isn't huge now, and wasn't even at that time. Places like Augsburg or Nurnberg were at least twice the size or more. How many people came to this medium sized town for the council is hard to determine, in particular since our friend Richenthal tends to exaggerate a bit. Plus not everyone stayed all throughout the three years, and some the council lasted.
In one of my secondary sources, they talk about 5,000 monks and 16,000 priests, which would suggest a total number of 25 to 30,000 visitors. I struggle to believe that, but it is likely that the population at least doubled during the whole of the council and maybe more than tripled in its initial phase. Given there is so much information available about Constance during that period, I may dedicate it a future episode on the conditions, not just during the council, but also before and after.
We have not done a Germany in the year 1400 episode yet, so this might be a good one. But for now we leave the cramped conditions behind and go back to the high politics. The Pope was here, but the emperor had not yet arrived. The reason for the delay was that Sigismund had been elected three years earlier, but had not yet been crowned, not even as King of the Romans. That had to happen before he went toe to toe with the Pope.
So on November 8, 1414, he was crowned in Aachen and then progressed south towards Constance. In Strasbourg he told everyone that he and John were like totally aligned on everything. And from there he took the road along the Neckar valley to Stuttgart and then down to the lake where he arrived in at midnight on 24 December. He had called ahead and had asked for transport across the lake.
In the middle of Christmas Eve, the boatmen of Constance set off across the lake to bring their emperor into their city. It was three in the morning when Sigismund finally arrived with his wife, several princes and their attendants all loaded up on torch lit boats. The city council came to the harbor to greet him and to lead him to the town hall where he was given a drink.
And then they all dashed across the square to the cathedral where, and that is really hard to believe, the Pope was waiting for him. Pope John XXIII had halted midnight mass for the emperor. And not only that, he had allowed Sigismund to do what the Luxembourg rulers have been doing since Carl Ivan. He let him read the Gospel According to Luke, where it says in those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.
And Sigismund read this whilst bearing his crown and holding the imperial sword. No previous pope, not even the King of France, had allowed such a display to go ahead in their presence. Nobody wanted to be reminded that even the Bible acknowledged that the empire was an institution older than the papacy and one that was meant to rule the whole of the Roman world. John XXIII left no record of his thoughts that night. The council had started debating before Sigismund had arrived.
But as the Cardinal Filastri noted, nothing of substance had yet been discussed because nobody, AKA in particular the Pope, wanted to touch on the actual subject, the unity of the church and the continued schism. That being said, the council wasn't idle. Let's think about the sheer scale of what was going on. These thousands of delegates were pushed together into this mid sized medieval town.
The grand debates take place in the Munster, the cathedral, but few delegates get the chance to address the whole Council. So they started to meet in smaller groups to debate specific issues, initially spontaneously and after a while in a formal structure of committees and working groups. Unsurprisingly, factions were forming, and these did not form around political programs or theological perspectives, but along geographic and cultural lines. The Council was establishing nations.
The idea of a nation came from the way medieval universities were organized, as we have heard about Paris and Prague in previous episodes. And since most delegates had studied at university or were practicing academics, these divisions appeared natural to them. But it's not just an organizational measure, it's also a sign of a changing world.
Whilst from the outside it looked as if the Council was resurrecting the idea of a unified Christendom under one pope and one emperor, the reality was that this concept was fading away, not just as a political structure, but also as a cultural entity. Instead, the peoples of Europe were developing separate identities. We are still centuries away from people seeing nationality as one of their primary defining characteristics and source of belonging. But there's clearly something shifting.
The vernacular had taken over from Latin in much of the cultural and administrative output of the times. For instance, our chronicler Richenthal wrote his work in German, more precisely in his native dialect. It's not that he didn't speak Latin, it's more that he did not feel he needed to use it to be taken seriously. In Italy, we have Dante, and in England, Chaucer, who elevate the vernacular to a literary language, whilst French has become the language of the Court of the Valois.
I'm not that familiar with developments in Poland and Hungary, but as we have seen last week, the Czech language has become a crucial marker of belonging in Bohemia. Still, the nations that form in Constance were not yet as rigidly defined by etymology and culture as modern nations are. The Consilia nations are created through a mixture of political significance, compass orientation and language. There were, in the end, five.
There was Italica, Gallicana, Germania, which included Scandinavia, Poland, Lithuania, Croatia, Hungary and Bohemia. Anglica, which was England, Scotland and Ireland, and Iberica, which comprised the various Spanish kingdoms and Portugal. There were discussions about the structure of these nations, but interestingly, mostly from the Iberian side. Aragon wanted its own nation, and that was turned down because in that case, Castile and Portugal would also have their own separate nations.
And if that happened, then the Germania nations would splinter as well, making the entire concept unworkable. Now, do you remember the Cardinal Filastri, the one who had been moaning that nothing had been moving forward in the great Church Council? Well, by February 1415. Two months into the debate, he had had enough.
He issued a treatise stating that, well, all three popes should resign and that the council had the power to force all these three popes to step down, if that was in the interest of the unity of the Church. The response from John XXIII and his supporters was, sorry, last time we did that and deposed two popes. Well, all we got was three popes. Why do you think by deposing three popes you will now not end up with four in total? And quite frankly, what was wrong with me as pope?
Well, on the last question, well, quite a lot, an awful lot. Most of it were rumors at the time, but still, he might have been a pirate in his youth. After all, his brothers had definitely been. Pope Alexander V, the one the Council of Pisa had chosen, had died only days after having lunch at the house of the man who would become his successor.
Then the bribes that were paid to the cardinals at his election were legendary, almost as legendary as income from the sale of church benefices once he was made pope, and his sexual prowess with thousands of nuns. John XXIII's opponents had put together a list of 18 accusations, each one of them pretty damning. But that would not have meant that he was done for.
He had made sure that the majority of the participants at the council were Italians, and that the Italians would be very wary of opening up the ballot again, potentially ending up with a Frenchman who could take the Church back to Avignon. But that line of defense crumbled when Sigismund used his immense charm and power of persuasion to introduce a change in the voting process. No longer should it be by heads or by rank, but by nation.
Each of the five nations was to have one vote, as would the College of Cardinals. Voting by nations softened the church hierarchy, because suddenly the archbishops and bishops find themselves acting alongside the priests, monks and doctors of their nation, rather than with their brother bishops. And where it was even harder to take was for the cardinals. They had become accustomed to being a sort of cabinet of the Church that would make all the major decisions along with the pope.
But here in the council, they were relegated to having just one vote that ranked equal to any one of the nation's votes. John XXIII was a smart politician, and he realized the non Italian nations had a majority. His line of defense had collapsed. The game was up. So to avoid the publication of the 18 accusations, he agreed to resign.
Conditions were negotiated over for another two weeks, but then, at the end of February 1415, three months after he had seen the fox trap from his vantage point above Bludenz, that trap had snapped shut. John XXIII declared his resignation. Immediately after that, Sigismund put Constance into lockdown. The deposed pope must not be able to escape, because if he escaped and gathered new supporters, he could dissolve the council that he had called in the first place.
And if he did that, the horror scenario of four popes would almost certainly materialize. Then what happened? Well, what do you think? The pope escaped, disguised as a groom and sitting on for added humiliation on a tiny horse. As we had heard in the beginning, John had had his premonitions when he crossed the Alps. So he took out life insurance with Frederick of Habsburg, the Duke of Austria. Frederick promised to help and protect him should the worst happen. And now the worst had happened.
So it was to neighbouring Schaffhausen, one of the duke's possessions, that the ex pope John xxiii, or to give him his now correct name, Baldassare Cossa, went. The helpful duke immediately came to his side to face down Sigismund and the council members. Sigismund did not waste a second. He gathered the imperial princes who were in Constance anyway, and formed an imperial court. The court gave Frederick three days to show up and defend himself, and when he failed to do so, they condemned him.
They put Duke Frederick of Austria into the imperial ban. He was made an outlaw, his vassals released from their oath and an imperial army was gathered. Ten days after the spectacular flight of the pope, Sigismund's forces were moving out towards the gates of Schaffhausen. Baldassarre Cossa fled to Laufenburg, another 30 miles down the Rhine. But there was no solution. So he ran towards Basel.
But before he left Laufenburg, he issued a papal bull revoking his resignation and dissolving the council. Now, at that point, the future of the Church and the future of Sigismund hung in the balance. If the majority of the council attendants recognized this dissolution order, it was all over. But by now the Church and the universities had been discussing the role of the council and its relationship with the popes for decades.
The schism created by the selfishness of cardinals and popes had undermined Holy Mother Church to a point. A Gregory VII or an innocent III would barely have recognized her anymore. It was time for the congregation of the faithful to put their foot down. The council passed the decree Hec Santa, which became a sort of Magna Carta of the Church.
It opened with first, the council declares that legitimately assembled in the Holy Spirit, constituting a general council and representing the Catholic Church militant, it has power immediately from Christ and that everyone of Whatever state or dignity, even papal, is bound to obey it in those matters which pertain to the faith, the the eradication of the sad schism and the general reform of the sad Church of God in head and in members. End quote.
It also banned the Pope from dissolving the council, from moving the curia from Constance, and to do anything that would undermine its power. The Ecumenical Council continued and Baldassarre Cossa kept running until he could run no more. He was caught near Radolf Zell and brought back to Constance to stand trial. The ruling was no surprise. He was convicted and declared unworthy, useless and dangerous.
Stripped of all his Church offices, the next four years he spent as a prisoner of the Count Palatinate in a customs tower at Mannheim. In 1419, he paid an enormous ransom and was allowed to return to Rome, where he submitted to the new pope, Martin V, who made him a bishop and cardinal again. He died shortly afterwards in Florence.
His memorial in the Great Baptistery is a spectacular piece created by the Renaissance masters Donatello and Michelozzo, who paid for it well, not Baldassarre Cossa, but Florentine bankers, including the Medici family, who one can only assume owed the Pope their rise to the top of the financial industry. In Italy, the name John XXIII was taken off the official list of popes, which is why we have two popes called John XXIII.
The last one, reigning from 1958 to 1963, is one of the most popular and the most sympathetic figures of recent Church history, and, ironically, was a pope who presided over a church council. With Baldassarre Cosa gone, the council was still left with two false Gregory XII and Benedict xiii, who needed to be removed before a new, universally recognized pope could be elected and the unity of the Church could be restored. Now Gregory XII was relatively easy.
He was already a thousand years old and had lost all his support in Italy, had been elected with the explicit provision to resign when asked. All he demanded was that he would not be deposed by a council that had been called by his enemy, the no longer Pope, John xxiii. So a weird charade took place. Two of Gregory's ambassadors arrived in Constance and formally called a council in the name of Gregory xii.
In Constance, the council then reconstituted itself, now as one called by Gregory xii, not John xxiii. It endorsed all its previous decisions. And then they read a letter from Gregory where he resigned as pope. That was it. Gregory XII stepped back into the College of Cardinals and died two years later. His much more modest memorial is in the small town of Recanati in the Marche. But swings and roundabouts. He was the one who remained on the list of canonical popes.
One effect of this strange castling was that Sigismund was now no longer the president of the council. He had taken that rule during the proceedings against Baldassarre Cosa. But now that a viable pope had resumed the reigns, if it was only for a technical second, he was no longer needed. The task he took up instead was to rail in the last of the popes, the Avignon Pope, Benedict xiii.
Now, this was the most stubborn of the whole lot, the one who never yielded, not even when he had lost the support of the French. By 1415, he was living in Aragon, enjoying the support of his last remaining ally, King Alfonso V. Benedict XIII agreed to meet with Sigismund, who had come to Perpignan to speak to him directly. This time, the legendary charmer failed. Yes, Benedict XIII promised to resign, but only under one condition.
Since he was the only surviving cardinal who had participated in the election of Urban vi back in 1378. He was the only truly legitimate cardinal in the whole world. All other cardinals have been appointed by contested popes. Therefore, he was also the only person in the whole of Christendom entitled to elect the new pope. He promised he would do so within 24 hours. And he also promised not to elect himself.
Let's say the argument was compelling, but somehow there wasn't the resounding support that Benedict might have expected. So Sigismund gave up on the stubborn Spaniard. Instead, he worked on the Iberian monarchs. And by December 1416, King Alfonso V of Aragon abandoned his pope and submitted to the Council of Constance. And that was all that really mattered.
Benedict went to Penniscola, a town and castle overlooking the sea between Valencia and Barcelona, where he would spend the next eight years ranting and raving against the council, the king and everybody else. When he died, his ragtag band of cardinals elected a new pope they called Clement VIII. It took until 1429 before this Pope finally resigned. The negotiator who brought this sorry tale to an end was an Aragonese bishop by the name of Alfonso da Borgia.
As a reward for this achievement, he was made a cardinal, and he would later rise to become Pope Calixtus iii, who paved the way for his nephew, Roderigo Borgia Alexander vi, the most notorious of Renaissance popes. Hooray. We've done it. The schism is over. Three popes are gone. But we still need a new one, and ideally, one that everybody will agree on. They will find one.
There are still, however many matters to discuss, including the matter of a certain Jan Hus, a a complaint from the Teutonic Knights and some Frenchmen wanting a clarification on the term tyrannicide. So there will be a part two of the Council of Constance episode which I hope you will join us again for next week. Before I go, just a quick reminder. The website if you want to make a one time donation or sign on for Patreon is historyofthegermans.com SA.