The council of Constance in 1414: this had greater authority; it caused John Huss and Jerome of Prague to be burned; further, it declared the superiority of general councils over the popes; a doctrine always disapproved of at Rome, and to which Martin V: did not adhere, though elected by this very council of Constance. But the church had no longer more than two heads, Martin V. and the obstinate Benedict XIII. Gregory XII. sent in his resignation; and John XXIII. the successor of Alexander V. was thrown into prison, from whence he did not come out until he had acknowledged Martin V. There is no vice, no crime, which contemporary historians and the council of Constance do not reproach John XXIII. with An act of accusation prepared against him, presented, they say, a complete catalogue of every mortal crime²⁷⁷ They assert that he had seduced three hundred nuns²⁷⁸ according to Theodoric de Nieve²⁷⁹ he kept at Bologna two hundred mistresses. These exaggerations discover calumny; and the friendship and hospitality with which the Florentines, especially the Medicis, a family at this period distinguished, honoured a pontiff so weakly established, would suffice to refute or weaken the accusations with which, his enemies and his misfortunes have loaded his memory. The weakness of his character stimulated the insults of his rivals, and his disgraces those of the historian. Stripped of his states by Ladislaus, king of Naples, betrayed by Frederick, duke of Austria, hunted by the emperor Sigismund, John used too liberally the sole resources which remained to him, simony and usury; he brought to perfection, even after Boniface IX. the traffic in benefices²⁸⁰ and we read²⁸¹ that a note for one thousand florins would be passed him where he lent eight hundred for four months.
²⁷⁷ Theodor, de Niem. ap. Vonder Hart. vol. ii. p. 389.
²⁷⁸ L’Enfant’s Hist, of Coun. of Constance, 1. 2, p. 184.
²⁸⁰ Fleury’s Eccles. Hist. 1. 103, n. 46.
The council of Basle in 1431: theologians declare it oecumenical to its twenty-fifth session only; it held forty-five. This council also humbled a good deal the papal authority; and its decrees on this head, as well as those of Constance, served to prepare in France the celebrated pragmatic sanction, to which we shall revert by and by. The fathers of Basle deposed Eugene IV., the successor of Martin V., describing the said Eugene as a disturber, a heretic, and a schismatic. Eugene excommunicated this third council, and held a fourth at Florence in 1459. In it the reconciliation of the Greeks was treated of: John Paleologus, emperor of the East, was at it, endeavouring to confirm by this re-union the throne upon which he tottered; but the priests of Constantinople persisted in the schism.