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“Cum Status Ecclesie Noster Sit”: Florence and the Council of Pisa (1409)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Alison Williams Lewin
Alison Williams Lewin
Affiliation:
An independent scholar residing in Morgantown, West Virginia. This essay is the Sidney E. Mead prize winner for 1992.
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Extract

Of all the divisions and crises that the Catholic church endured in its first fifteen hundred years of existence, none was so destructive as the Great Schism (1378–1417). For forty years learned theologians and doctors of canon law argued over whether the pontiff residing in Rome or in Avignon was the true pope. The effects of the schism upon the highly organized administration of the church were disastrous, as were its effects upon society in general. Countless clerics fought over claims to benefices with appointees from the other obedience; the revenues of the church, quite impressive in the mid-fourteenth century, shrank precipitously; and opportunistic rulers especially in Italy did not hesitate to wage private wars under the banner of one or the other papacy, or to prey upon the actual holdings of the church.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 178 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1993

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References

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