Constance, Council of

Council held by the Roman Catholic Church 1414-17 in Constance, Germany. It elected Pope Martin V, which ended the Great Schism 1378-1417 when there were rival popes in Rome and Avignon.

Constance, Council of

General Council of the Church held in Constance, Germany, 1414-18 that ended the Great Schism. Brought about by the diplomacy and cajoling of the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, it deposed the antipope John XXIII in 1415 and the Avignonese pope Benedict XIII in 1417 (although the latter, having moved to Aragon, continued to style himself pope until his death); the Roman pope Gregory XII resigned in 1415. Oddone Colonna was subsequently elected Pope Martin V.

In addition to ending the Great Schism, the Council was also set the goals of dealing with Hussite heresy and reforming the Church. The Hussite leader John (or Jan) Huss was called to the Council and was arrested, tried, and executed in 1415, as was his ally, Jerome of Prague. The next years were to show, however, that killing heretical leaders did not necessarily destroy a heresy. As to reform, the issue was how to improve the central institutions of the Church. Constance produced two conciliarist decrees: Haec Santa (1415), which claimed that popes were answerable to a General Council, and Frequens (1417), which demanded that a General Council should be held at regular intervals. These decrees laid the basic foundation for the 1430s conflict between the Council of Basel and Pope Eugenius IV.

The Council of Constance was not simply an event of international political moment; it was also a talking shop for scholars. In the entourages of the high clerics were several secretaries interested in the studia humanitatis. The Council gave them an opportunity to exchange books (some of Leonardo Bruni's writings circulated there, for example), to try out their rhetoric (Poggio Bracciolini, for instance, gave a funeral sermon in classicizing style on the death of Cardinal Zabarella), and to travel to nearby monasteries in search of classical texts. It also provided possibilities for patronage (two English bishops commissioned a Latin translation of Dante's Divine Comedy) and for employment (Poggio left Constance in the entourage of another English bishop). The Council of Constance was thus the first international conference for humanists.