CONSTANCE, COUNCIL OF. This council, convoked at the instance of the emperor Sigismund by Pope John XXIII.— one of the three popes among whom Christendom was at the time divided—with the object of putting an end to the Great Schism of the West and reforming the church, was opened on Nov. 5, 1414, and did not close until April 22, 1418. In spite of his reluctance to go to Constance, John XXIII., who succeeded Alex ander V. (the pope elected by the council of Pisa), hoped that the new council, while confirming the work of the council of Pisa, would proclaim him sole legitimate pope and definitely condemn his two rivals, Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII. But he was soon forced to renounce this hope. So urgent was the need of restoring union at any cost that even prelates who had taken an active part in the work of the council of Pisa, e.g., Pierre d'Ailly, cardinal bishop of Cambrai, were forced to admit, in view of the fact that the decisions of that council had been and were still contested, that the only possible course was to reconsider the question of the union de novo, entirely disregarding all previous deliberations on the subject, and treating the claims of John and his two competi tors with the strictest impartiality. Feebly supported by the Italians, by the majority of the cardinals, and by the representa tives of the king of France, John soon found himself in danger of being driven to abdicate and fled into Austria.
The fathers, determined to have their will carried out, drew up in their 4th and 5th sessions (March 3o and April 6, 1415) a set of decrees with the intention of justifying their attitude and put ting the fugitive pope at their mercy. Interpreted in the most general sense, these decrees,which enacted that the council of Con stance derived its power immediately from Christ, and that every one, even the pope, was bound to obey it and every legitimately assembled general council in all that concerned faith, reform, union, etc., were tantamount to the overturning of the constitu tion of the church by establishing the superiority of the council over the pope. The validity of the decrees was especially con tested on the ground that the council was not ecumenical, since it represented at that date the obedience of only one of three rival popes. Nevertheless, John, who had been abandoned by the duke of Austria and imprisoned in the castle of Radolfzell, near Con stance, was arraigned, suspended and deposed (May 29), and himself ratified the sentence of the council. Gregory X1I. was next required to renounce his rights, and this he did, with as much independence as dignity, through a legate, who previously convoked the council in the name of his master, and thus in some sort gave it the necessary confirmed authority. This was the regular extinction of the line of pontiffs who, if the validity of the election of Urban VI. on April 8, 1378, be admitted, had held the legitimate papacy for thirty-seven years. All that remained was to obtain the abdication of Benedict XIII., the successor of the Avignon pope, Clement XII., but the combined efforts of the council and the emperor were powerless to overcome the obstinacy of the Aragonese pope. Abandoned by almost all his adherents Benedict found refuge in the impregnable castle of Pefiiscola, overlooking the Mediterranean, and remained intractable. At the council proceedings were instituted against him, which ended at last on July 26, 1417, in his deposition.
The action of the council of Constance in renewing the con demnation of the doctrines of Wycliffe pronounced at Rome in 1413, and in condemning and executing John Huss and Jerome of Prague, is dealt with elsewhere (see these names) ; nor is it pos sible to mention here all the intrigues and quarrels that arose during three and a half years among the crowd of prelates, monks, doctors, simple clerks, princes and ambassadors composing this tumultuous assembly. From the outset, voting by count of heads had been superseded by voting according to nations, i.e., all questions were deliberated and settled in four distinct assemblies —the Italian, the French, the German and the English,—the de cisions of the nations being merely ratified afterwards pro forma by the council in general congregation, and also, if occasion arose, in public session (it is noteworthy that the English, who had hitherto been considered to form part of the German "nation," were recognized as a separate nation at this council for the first time). These four groups, however, were of unequal importance, and thanks to this arrangement the English, although weakest in point of numbers, were able to exercise the same influence in the council as if they had formed a f ourth of the voters.
The reform which the council had set itself to effect was a sub ject the fathers could not broach without stirring up dissension: some stood out obstinately for preserving the status quo, while others contemplated nothing less than the transformation of the monarchical administration of the church into a parliamentary democracy, the subordination of the sovereign pontiff, and the annihilation of the Sacred College. In view of these difficulties, the opinion which tended to assure the success of one at least of the great tasks before the council, viz. the re-establishment of unity by the election of a single pope, finally prevailed. The general reform on which the council had failed to come to an understanding had to be adjourned, and the council contented itself with promulgating, on Oct. 9, 1417, the only reforming decrees on which an agreement could be reached; e.g., the princi ple of the periodicity of the councils (the first was to assemble after the lapse of five years, the second within the next seven years, and subsequent councils were to meet decennially). In the event of a fresh schism, the council, which bound itself to assem ble immediately, even without formal convocation, was to remain sole judge of the conflict. The execution of the general reform of the church in its head and members was left in the hands of the future pope, who had to proceed conjointly with the council, or rather with a commission appointed by the nations—in other words, once the new pope was elected, the fathers, conscious of their impotence, were disinclined to postpone their dispersion until the laborious achievement of the reform. They were weary of the business, and wished to be done with it.
In order to rebuild the see of St. Peter on a basis now cleared of obstacles, an attempt was made to surround the election of the future pope with all the necessary guarantees. The authority of the cardinals, who were the only persons judicially invested with the right of electing the pope, emerged from the crisis through which the church had just passed in far too feeble and contested a condition to carry by its own weight the general assent. It was therefore decided that with the cardinals each nation should associate six delegates, and that the successful candidate should be required to poll two-thirds of the suffrages, not only in the Sacred College, but also in each of these five groups. The ad vantage of this arrangement was that the choice of the future pope would depend, not only on the vote of the cardinals, thus safe guarding tradition, but at the same time on the unanimous con sent of the various nations, by which the adhesion of the whole Catholic world to the election would be guaranteed. There was, indeed, a danger lest the rivalries in the assembly might render it exceedingly difficult, not to say impossible, to obtain such unanimity. But at the end of three days the conclave resulted in the election of Cardinal Otto Colonna, who took the name of Martin V. (Nov. I1, 1417), and the Great Schism of the West was at an end.
To all seeming the pope had admitted the canonicity of several of the decrees of Constance—for instance, he had submitted to the necessity of the periodical convocation of other councils; but from his reticence on some points, as well as from his general attitude and some of his constitutions, it appeared that the whole of the decrees of Constance did not receive his unqualified ap proval, and without any definite pronouncement he made some reservations in the case of decrees which were detrimental to the rights and pre-eminence of the Holy See.
See J. H. Wylie, Council of Constance to the Death of John Huss (1900) ; art. "Constance" in the Catholic Encyclopaedia; M. Creighton, History of the Papacy from the Great Schism, vols. i., ii. (1897) ; N. Valois, La France et le grand schisme de l'Occident (1896 ff.) ; H. Finke, Forschungen u. Quellen zur Geschichte des Konstanzer Konzils (188o) .