Showing posts with label Pope Martin V. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pope Martin V. Show all posts

Thursday, September 22, 2022

Electing a Third Pope

The existence of rival popes in the Western Schism led to the Council of Pisa and, ultimately, to the need to elect a third pope.

After months of discussion and debate, the cardinals obedient to Avignon and those obedient to Rome joined in Conclave. Canon Law declared that an election not take place until 10 days after the death of a pope, but the cardinals agreed that the Papal See had been vacant for at least that long. The Conclave of cardinals went on for 11 days, while the general Council of Pisa continued separately. The Council felt that, if the cardinals could not find a suitable candidate who was agreeable to all, they would intervene and have their own election. This was not allowed by Canon Law, however, and did not get much traction.

Finally, Baldassare Cardinal Cossa convinced the Conclave to vote unanimously for Peter of Candia. He had been made a cardinal by Innocent VII in 1405, but had worked to heal the division between popes. On 26 June he was elected Pope Alexander V. He presided over the remaining council meetings, pledged to work for reform, and confirmed appointments and ordinations made by the various cardinals.

The two (now) antipopes repudiated the outcome of the Council of Pisa, and an interesting dilemma was raised: if Popes Benedict and Gregory were deemed illegitimate, then did that mean that their appointment of cardinals was illegitimate, and if so, could these cardinals have the authority to elect a pope? The Council of Pisa was nor received by everyone with a sigh of relief that the schism was over; there were serious concerns about its ability to elect Alexander.

In act, the controversy continued into the 20th century. Let me explain.

Alexander V's time as pope was brief: he died 3 May 1410, having been pope less than a year (that is his tomb above). He was succeeded by none other than his strongest proponent at Pisa, and Cardinal Cossa became Pope John XXIII. Keep in mind that Benedict in Avignon and Gregory in Italy never "resigned" their titles, so there were still three men claiming to be pope. In fact, Benedict outlasted John and Gregory.

The Annuario Pontificio ("The Pontifical Yearbook") listed the Roman popes as legitimate until 1409, followed by the Pisan popes elected by the reconciled cardinals; that means Gregory XII, Alexander V, and John XXIII were "official" (even though Gregory and Alexander were claiming legitimacy concurrently). I say "were" because that changed in 1958 when Angelo Cardinal Roncalli was elected pope to replace Pius XII. He chose the papal name John XXIII, claiming there had been only 22 legitimate Pope Johns. The Annuario Pontificio was re-written to indicate that the Roman Pope Gregory's time in office was officially recognized as lasting until 1415, to be succeeded by Pope Martin V.

So all that work to find a compromise candidate in Peter of Candia to become Alexander V and heal the schism has been quietly ignore, and "Alexander V" and the first "John XXIII" are now deemed antipopes.

[edit] Of course, nothing required a pope to be in Rome, and Avignon wasn't the only non-Rome location for some popes. And speaking of Popes: who was the first pope? I know what you are thinking, but wait until tomorrow for the real answer.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

A Papal Secretary Makes His Mark

Poggio's notes on monument [link]
Many months ago this post mentioned a time when there were three popes at once, who were finally removed and replaced with a fourth. The truth is that there was a two-year gap before the Cardinals settled on a single pope. During this time, what did all the servants and staff of the Vatican do with themselves? One of them went searching for manuscripts from the past and made of them a gift to the future.

His name was Gian Francesco Poggio (later called "Bracciolini," and he was born in Tuscany on 11 February, 1380, but grew up in Florence where his father took him to be educated. It was soon clear that he had a great talent: his penmanship. In an age when all documents were created by hand, penmanship was prized. He was put in school to become a notary.

Notaries were authorized to oversee certain legal documents and transactions. At 21 he was a member of the Notaries Guild in Florence. Two years later, he was working for a cardinal, and a few months after that, for the Vatican itself. With his penmanship skills and knowledge of proper document organization and preparation, he quickly moved up through all the ranks of official Vatican scriptors, working under four popes.

Then came 1414 and the Council of Constance that got rid of all three warring popes, beginning a two-year gap in the need for secretaries who produced official documents. Poggio decided to travel. He visited the German spa at Baden, abbeys in Switzerland and Swabia, St. Gall and many others. He brought to light sole copies of important works by classical authors that might have otherwise disintegrated without being copied.

At Gall he found unique documents by Cicero, Quintilian, Statius, Gaius Valerius Flaccus, and more. Cicero's complete Orations were recovered at Cluny. The only known copy of the encyclopedic De Rerum Natura ["On the Nature of Things"] by Lucretius was recovered from a German monastery (probably Fulda). One Harvard scholar credits Lucretius' 7400-line poem on the world with kickstarting the Renaissance.

He returned to his Vatican duties, being named Apostolicus Secretarius, the papal secretary, under the newly elected Pope Martin V. He traveled a great deal still, moving around when the pope did and on re-assignments (he spent five years in England, which he hated), looking for manuscripts that needed bringing into the light. He worked under several more popes until he finally retired to a villa that he had built with the money from the sale of a manuscript by Livy. In 1453,* he was offered the position of Chancellor of the Florentine Republic by Cosimo de Medici. He fulfilled his duties there until his death in 1459.

*Coincidentally, he retired from a career created by his excellent hand-writing of documents at the same time Gutenberg was perfecting movable type and ushering in an era of mass-produced books.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Dealing with Pagans

The Council of Constance (illustrated here) in 1414 has been mentioned before—or, at least, its outcomes. It was at this, the 16th ecumenical council recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, that Jan Hus and John Wycliffe were both condemned as heretics. There was more to the Council than that, however.

It also dealt with the Three Popes Controversy, forcing the ouster of antipopes John XXIII, Gregory XII, and Benedict XIII; they elected Pope Martin V.

One of the largest debates at the Council took place over the subject of how to deal with pagans. A few years earlier, the Teutonic Knights had fought against Poland and Lithuania; an uneasy and oft-broken peace existed between the players in that conflict, turning into another war in 1414. The Council of Constance was chosen as the place to decide the matter between the groups. The debate blossomed into a larger issue than where the borders should be: did the Teutonic Knights have a right to start the war in 1411? They had done so as a Crusade against the pagan inhabitants of those regions, intending to force them to convert to Christianity.

A doctor of canon law named Paulus Vladimir delivered an essay called Tractatus de potestate papa et imperatoris respect infidelium [Treatise on the power of the pope and emperor respecting infidels], in which he argued that a forced conversion was a violation of the right of free will granted by God. Free will was necessary for a true conversion. He claimed the Teutonic Knights could only wage a war if the enemy had done something to violate natural rights of Christians.

The opposing view said that the pope had every right to condemn pagans simply for being non-Christians. The loudest proponent of this view, John of Falkenburg, was condemned and imprisoned for his views, and for calling the Polish king a "mad dog."

The Council could not come to a conclusion, however. They established a diocese in Poland so that Christianity could be introduced more peacefully. The Polish-Teutonic wars resumed, on and off, for another century.