Setting with died by the fire of the Czech Jean Hus
Shown of heresy at the time of the council of Constancy in 1414.
Europe enters, after 1315, in a very perilous stage of its history. It sinks in the crises, contradictions, the dramas. Conflict dominates others, long confrontation Franco-English, which leaves few kingdoms out of cause, which ruins the French economy rural, the trade continental and politically destroyed the unit of the Church. Papacy, the clerks and the monks are narrowly implied in the conflict which opposes the reigning families. Papacy in Avignon
In 1309, reducing Rome and the pressures which the big families exerted on the pontifical election, papacy had settled in Avignon, where it will remain until 1377. French popes succeed the Italian popes. The taxation inhabitant of Avignon is heavy: she will provide new reasons to denounce the greed of financial pontifical. Like, at the same moment, the war is expensive to each king, therefore with the people which it controls, the fight to find of the money, rare in a context where popular impoverishment worsens quickly, creates enormous tensions.
Rival popes
Death strikes, blindly and very massively, rich person, powerful and poor: during second half of the XIV E century, the waves of plague make lose in Europe at least a third of its population. The Christian beliefs are called into question; each one seeks protection against death; magic formulas and brotherhoods placed under the protection of a saint reappear like ten centuries earlier.
On this bottom of catastrophe and pessimism, the kings and the emperors grant or do not grant their recognition to the reigning pope. The “subtraction of obedience” divides Europe. The king of France is in general faithful to the popes inhabitant of Avignon; so the king of England and the emperor refuse their confidence to them. The return to Rome of papacy in 1377 does not change anything. Criticisms are so strong against pontifical omnipotence that after 1378 one forty years opens period during which the inconsistency is total. Two popes, sometimes three, elected by rival factions, do not manage to be made recognize. The lawyers of each country try to find solutions with this break between Christians. An agreement is reached at the beginning from the XV E century: to entrust to a general council a power higher than that of the pope, to put an end to the schism and to reform the basic Church in roof.
A papacy without influence
A first great council, to Constance in 1414, leads in 1417 to the election of a single pope: Martin V. Until 1431, this last will do nothing but worsen the defects of pontifical management. The most spectacular result of the council is the setting with died by the fire of the Czech Jean Hus, shown of heresy: whole people recognized themselves in a monk who dares to face Rome.
In 1434, none the problems not having been solved, Basle receives another council, which will fray session in session, then to move in 1449 in Florence, where an illusory union of the Churches seems during one brief moment to return to papacy the direction of the Occident. In fact, the problems remain: the kings continue to support the birth of “national” clergies which obey to them, and Rome is with the hands of rich and avid families of being able and richnesses, except for some great pontifical figures like the scholar Pie II, just and patron. The Christian Occident is transformed into a mosaic of rival Christian kingdoms which do not grant any more any power of arbitration to the chief of the Church.
A dubious futureOutside, the hopes of the XIII E century disappeared: neither the Mongols, neither the Turks, neither the Ethiopian ones, neither the Moslems, nor the whole of Slavic entered Roman obedience. After 1453, a major danger emerges in the middle of the Central Europe, that of the Othoman expansion. Even against this danger, Rome will not manage to mobilize the Occident, which entered during a new time of its history.