CHAPTER XI

JOHN XXIII. AND THE GREAT SCHISM

The next important stage in the devolution of the Papacy is the Great Schism, the spectacle of which moved the increasing body of cultivated laymen and the better clergy to examine critically the bases of the Papal claims and seek an authority which should control the wanton conduct of the Popes. The essential mischief of the long stay of the Papal Court at Avignon is obscured when it is called a Babylonian Captivity. Few of the Popes were servile to France, and it was not France that detained them on the banks of the Rhone. The gravest consequences of their voluntary exile were, that the isolation from their Italian estates led them to pursue a corrupt and intolerable fiscal policy: that the College of Cardinals degenerated and became less scrupulous in the choice of a Pope: and, especially, that the rival ambition of French and Italian cardinals to control the Papacy led to an appalling schism. This phase will be best illustrated by an account of the antecedents and the remarkable Pontificate of John XXIII.

The return of the Papal Court to Rome was mainly due to political causes. Clement VI. (1342-1352), whose voluptuous indolence ignobly crowned the fiscal system of John XXII., was followed by three Popes who at least desired reform. The third of these, Gregory XI., was too weak or resourceless to curb the ruthless action of his Legates in Italy, and the sight of wild Breton mercenaries and hardly less wild English adventurers (of Hawkwood's infamous company) spreading rape and rapine under the Papal banner, disgusted the cities and states of the Peninsula. Under the lead of Florence, they proceeded to affirm and establish the independence of Italy. It was this threat, rather than the romantic rebukes of a young nun (Catherine of Siena), which drew Gregory XI., in 1376, from the safe and luxurious palace-fortress at Avignon. A month after his arrival at Rome the Breton hirelings under Cardinal Robert of Geneva committed a frightful massacre at Cesena, and Gregory was almost driven back to Avignon by the storm which ensued. But he died on March 27, 1378, and the cardinals met nervously at Rome to choose a successor.

The din of the bloody encounter of Gascon, Breton, and Roman troops in the streets reached the cardinals in the privacy of the Conclave. One day, indeed, the armed Romans burst into the sacred chamber, and brandished their weapons before the eyes of the terrified French cardinals. Yet it is generally agreed that there was not such compulsion as to invalidate the election, and Urban VI. became the legitimate head of the Church. In the circumstances a delicate and tactful policy was required, and the austere Neapolitan, of humble birth, who secured the tiara was in this respect the least fitted of the cardinals. He violently and vituperatively denounced the wealth and luxury of his colleagues, and he alienated Italians no less than French by the grossness of his manners. Within a few months the French cardinals retired to Fondi, discovered that the election was invalid on account of intimidation, and set up Robert of Geneva, a ruthless soldier and entirely worldly-minded priest, as Anti-Pope, with the title of Clement VII. So the schism began, and Christendom split into two bitterly hostile "obediences." Clement retired to Avignon, and preyed on France more avariciously than John XXII. had done: Urban's impetuous rudeness wrapped Italy in a flame of war once more. In 1389 another Neapolitan, Boniface IX., succeeded Urban, and it is during his Pontificate that there came upon the scene Baldassare Cossa, the unscrupulous adventurer who became John XXIII.

Cossa was a Neapolitan, and is said by his hostile contemporary Dietrich von Nieheim to have been a pirate in his youth.[265] Many recent historians reject this statement, but as it is certain and admitted that Cossa's two brothers were condemned to death for piracy by Ladislaus of Naples, and it is clear that in his youth Cossa took some part in the Angevin-Neapolitan war, it is not improbable that Baldassare was himself engaged in raiding the Neapolitan commerce. He was born about 1368, of a noble but impoverished Neapolitan house, and he seems to have been known to the Neapolitan Pope. In his early twenties he forsook the army or the sea, for which alone he was qualified, and went to study law at Bologna. In 1392 Boniface made him Archdeacon at Bologna: in 1396 he was summoned to the office of Private Chamberlain at Rome, and his career began.

He was a typical Neapolitan--dark-eyed, keen-witted, of very robust frame and very frail moral instincts--and the Pope needed such men. During the first seven years of his Pontificate Boniface was kept in check by the older cardinals, but, as they died, he sought money by fair or foul means for the recovery of Italy. France and Spain sent their gifts to Avignon, and England and Germany were not generous. Benefices, from the highest to the lowest, were sold daily, and the "first fruits" were demanded in advance. As the system developed, spies were employed over Italy and Germany to report on the health of aged beneficiaries, and there was a sordid traffic in "expectations." Baldassare Cossa, the chief instrument of this gross simony, had various scales of payment, and the purchaser of the "expectation" of a benefice might find it sold over him to a higher bidder for a "preference." A Jubilee had been announced for the year 1390, and Boniface got the fruits of it, but this did not deter him from reaping another golden harvest from a Jubilee in 1400. As, moreover, many pilgrims, especially in Germany and Scandinavia, were deterred from coming to Rome by the bands of robbers and ravishers who infested the Papal estates, Boniface generously enacted that Germans might obtain the same pardon by visiting certain shrines nearer home and paying to Papal agents the cost of a journey to Rome.

These simoniacal practices are established and admitted, quite apart from the testimony of Dietrich. We must, indeed, admit the evidence of Dietrich when he tells us that he saw these Papal agents spread their silk curtains and unfold their Papal banners in the churches of Germany, and heard them declare to the ignorant people that St. Peter himself had not greater power than they. We may also easily believe his assurance that many of the German clergy denounced this traffic in indulgences[266] and that it brought enormous sums to the Papacy. But the precise sums, and the romantic stories, which Dietrich gives on hearsay, especially in regard to Cossa, must be regarded with reserve. He says that Cossa, when Legate at Bologna, arrested one of these monk-agents returning to Rome with his bags of gold and relieved him; and that the monk hanged himself in despair. These are fragments of foolish rumour. We cannot deal so summarily with his statement that the Chamberlain had his percentage of the profits and let it grow in the hands of the usurers; and that he extorted money from prelates by mendaciously representing that Boniface was angry with them and offering to mediate. All that we can say with confidence is that Cossa was the chief instrument of the Pope's nefarious system, and that, although he had no private means, he amassed an enormous fortune. The Council of Constance established this charge against him, as we shall see.

In 1402, Cossa became Cardinal-deacon of St. Eustace--the Council of Constance found that he bought that dignity--and in the following year he was made Legate at Bologna. We cannot control Dietrich's statement that the Pope wished to put an end to a scandalous _liaison_ of Cossa's at Rome. It is not improbable, and would not be very unusual at Rome, but the fact is that he knew Bologna and was a soldier, and Boniface needed a soldier-legate in the north. In a very short time Cossa won Bologna from the Milanese troops and made it a prosperous and profitable Papal possession. He fortified it and restored its institutions, even establishing a university of a very liberal character. But he ruled it with an iron hand and ground it with taxes. Even its gamblers and prostitutes had to pay the tithe of their earnings, and the grumblers who constantly revolted or attempted to assassinate Cossa were mercilessly punished. Dietrich boldly accuses him of violating two hundred maids and matrons of the city, but we can do no more than suspect that there must have been some foundation for so large a repute. Again the Council of Constance sustains the substance of the charge.

Boniface died on September 29, 1404, and Cossa was not present at the Conclave. He had constantly to lead his troops against external as well as internal enemies. The new Pope, Innocent VII., spent two futile years in dreams of peace, and in November, 1406, the See again fell vacant. Christendom now clamoured for an end of the scandalous schism, and, when Gregory XII., an ascetic and worn old cardinal, assumed the tiara, he was greeted as "an angel of light." He thanked God, with tears in his eyes, that he was chosen to end the schism; if he could not get mules or galleys, he would go on foot to meet Benedict XIII. (who had succeeded Clement at Avignon) and resign together with him. And within a few months Christendom witnessed the still more odious spectacle of the two Popes, both men of advanced years and great piety, straining every nerve to avoid each other and evade resignation. They were to meet at Savona, but, as Leonardo quaintly says, "whenever there was question of their meeting, one would, as if he were a land animal, not approach the coast, and the other, as if he were an aquatic animal, would not leave the sea." Benedict reached Savona; Gregory could not be driven beyond Lucca. The best that can be said for him is that he was ruled by greedy relatives. At last, on a pretext provided by his supporter Ladislaus of Naples, Gregory fled back to Rome and refused to listen to any further counsel of resignation.

Christendom, in disgust, now called for a General Council. France disowned Benedict and, when he excommunicated the King, tore his Bull in halves and ordered his arrest. He fled to Perpignan and Gregory to Venice, and the cardinals began to negotiate with the princes for the holding of the Council of Pisa. Cardinal Cossa, who had disdainfully taken down the arms of Gregory XII. at Bologna, and who was in league with Florence against Naples, took the lead in the new movement. When Gregory excommunicated him, he burned the Bull in the market-place. When Ladislaus of Naples advanced against Pisa, he united his troops to those of Florence and scattered the southerners. When Benedict's representatives asked for a safe-conduct through Italy, he said: "If you come to Bologna, with or without a safe-conduct, I'll burn you." So the Council met at Pisa, deposed Benedict and Gregory, and, in effect, set up a third Pope, Alexander V. The situation being without precedent, there was no canonical basis for such a Council, and no executive to enforce the Council's decisions. Benedict and Gregory--the one under the protection of Spain and the other with the support of Naples, Rimini, and part of Germany--continued to fulminate against each other, and a third discharge of anathemas only distracted Christendom the more.

Cardinal Cossa set out once more at the head of his troops, and, with the aid of Louis of Anjou and the Florentines, swept the Neapolitan troops southward and opened Rome for Alexander. But that feeble and aged Anti-Pope never reached the Lateran. He died at Bologna on May 4, 1410, and Louis of Anjou (representing the French influence) and the Florentines urged on the cardinals the election of Cossa himself. At midnight on May 17th, the expectant crowd at Bologna was informed that the cardinals had come to an agreement, and an hour later Baldassare Cossa, or John XXIII., stepped forth in the scarlet mitre and spotless robes of a Vicar of Christ. There are chroniclers who say that he had bribed the electors, and chroniclers who say that he had bullied them. The first charge is not unlikely, as bribery was now becoming common enough on the eve of or during a Conclave, but we cannot check these rumours. Dietrich von Nieheim admits that Cossa nominated another cardinal for the tiara, and the Council of Constance did not impeach the regularity of his election. He was chosen because of his vigour and military ability. Such was the condition of the Papacy that none seemed to care that he was "a complete failure and worthless in spiritual matters."

He must have been at that time about forty-three years old: a tall, spare, soldierly-looking man, with large nose and piercing dark grey eyes under bushy eyebrows. After devoting a few days to the customary festivities, he set about the work of enabling Louis of Anjou to displace Ladislaus on the throne of Naples and thus destroy Gregory's main support. It may have been in deference to the feeling of some of the cardinals that he first summoned Benedict and Gregory to resign and asked his bitter enemy Ladislaus--the man who had condemned his brothers--to pay the arrears of sixty thousand ducats which he owed to the Roman See. All three contemptuously refused to recognize him, and, as Ladislaus presently destroyed the fleet of Louis of Anjou and advanced against the Papal troops, the prospect was uncertain. John feverishly sought allies and funds. He conciliated England, where the call for a real Ecumenical Council to depose the three Popes was already heard, by suppressing an obnoxious Bull of Boniface IX. and by other graces, and he contrived--after the blunders of his legates had roused fierce opposition--to get a good deal of money from France. Spain still supported Benedict.

The uncertain element was Germany, where, at the time, the outstanding figure was Sigismund of Hungary. Sigismund had stood aloof from the Council of Pisa. For some years he had diverted all money from the Papal agents to his own pockets, because Boniface had recognized Ladislaus, and he detested the French, who had had much to do with the Council at Pisa. His support was of material importance to John, as owing to the death of Rupert the day after John's election, he became the chief candidate for the Empire. To John's delight, Sigismund now sent ambassadors to do homage, and an agreement was reached. The Pope was to validate the appropriation by Sigismund of church-moneys and influence the Electors in his favour, and Sigismund would support John against Ladislaus.[267] But there was still an element of danger and uncertainty. Sigismund had sworn to end the Papal schism, and he was known to be favourable to the summoning of another and more weighty council. Moreover, John, who was a poor diplomatist, made a serious blunder. The elected monarch became, by law of the Empire, King of the Romans without any Papal confirmation; the _imperial_ crown and title alone were given by the Pope. Yet John, seeking to magnify his authority, persisted in addressing Sigismund until the anxious days of the Council of Constance, as "Elected to be King."

I may tell very briefly the sequence of events in Italy. After a year at Bologna, John proceeded to Rome and flung his troops upon the Neapolitans. They won the important battle of Rocca Secca, but, owing to the incompetence of the Papal legate who held supreme command, they failed to follow up the success and Ladislaus recovered. In the next few months John heard with increasing alarm that Louis of Anjou had returned in despair to France: that the ablest Papal commander, Sforza, had transferred his services to Naples: that Malatesta of Rimini, the only other supporter of Gregory, was winning success in the north: and that the Neapolitans were marching against Rome. He levied taxes on the churches and citizens of Rome until they became restless. He petulantly had an effigy of Sforza hanged on a gallows at Rome. He pressed the sale of indulgences so flagrantly, and by such repellent agents, that the reformers of Bohemia burned his Bull in the streets. He excommunicated Ladislaus and proclaimed a crusade against him; and not a prince in Europe stirred.

Now seriously concerned, John offered to recognize Ladislaus as King of Naples if he would abandon Gregory, and that monarch at once basely deserted his Pope. He ordered the stubborn old man to quit Gaeta, and it is said that the people of Gaeta, who had grown fond of him, had to pay his passage to his last refuge, the lands of the Lord of Rimini. Ladislaus was made Gonfaloniere of the Church, and the Pope promised him 120,000 ducats. But so onerous a peace could not endure. After some mutual charges in the spring of 1413 the Neapolitan troops approached Rome. The Romans assured John that they would eat their children rather than surrender, but, when they saw the Pope and cardinals secure their own position by crossing the river, they opened the gates and admitted the Neapolitans. Their warrior-Pope, surrounded by cardinals who wept for the treasures they had abandoned in Rome, fled to the north, and at length reached Florence. Even here the citizens were afraid to admit him. They assigned him the bishop's palace outside the walls, and from this lowly centre John continued his sale of benefices and indulgences.

One other event will complete the record of John's Pontificate, before we begin the story of his undoing. The abuses of the Roman Curia had excited, or encouraged, various hostile movements. There were Lollards in England, and followers of Hus and Jerome of Prague in Bohemia. These vague and unimportant movements--from the Papal point of view--were left to local prelates, but the growing Christian demand for another General Council was disquieting. The Council of Pisa had put itself above the Popes, and grave doctors at many universities argued that a council must effect that reform of the Church which Popes refused to effect. Probably John XXIII. did not appreciate the full significance of this Conciliar movement, but he did see that there was grave danger that a Council would depose him, as well as Benedict and Gregory, unless he controlled it. He, therefore, in 1412, announced that a General Council would be held at Rome, and he reminded prelates that the Council of Pisa had enjoined this. But only a few French and Italian prelates responded to his summons, and a strange accident increased his uneasiness. One day, when all were assembled in St. Peter's, a screech owl issued from a dark corner and perched opposite the Pope. John reddened and perspired, as he gazed into the uncanny eyes of the bird, and at last he left his seat and broke up the sitting. It was there again at the next sitting, and was killed only after a great commotion. A strange form for the Holy Ghost, the mockers said; a dreadful omen for the Pope, said others. Reforms were promised, and the works of Wyclif were condemned, but the Council was too small to have effect and it was prorogued until December 1, 1413.

Meantime John was driven to the north, and from Florence he appealed to Sigismund. Many eyes were turned to Sigismund from various parts of Europe, and that singular monarch took quite seriously the high function which was thrust upon him of saving and reforming Christendom. He was a man of considerable ability, though it was apt to take the form of cunning rather than statesmanship, but his narrow cupidity, his notorious license in morals, and his general indifference to principle made him an incongruous instrument for the reform of the Church. He at once informed John that the state of the Church was to be submitted to a General Council, and a struggle ensued between the two as to whether it should be held south or north of the Alps. We have the reliable assurance of Leonardo, John's secretary at the time, that the Pope proposed to send two cardinals with full powers to treat, which they were to show to Sigismund, and with secret instructions restricting them. John told this design, with great complacency, to his secretary,[268] though he did not carry it out. The Papal legates met Sigismund at Como in the autumn and were pleased to think that they made an impression on him, but John was dismayed to learn that, on October 30th, the King of the Romans issued a proclamation to the effect that a General Council would be held, under his presidency, at Constance, on All Saints' Day, 1414.

John is described as stricken with fear and grief at the prospect of a council outside Italy, but Sigismund was inflexible. They spent two months together at Piacenza and Lodi, and the Pope must have penetrated the King's design. He already leaned to the plan of deposing the three Popes and electing another. John was compelled, on December 9th, to issue a Bull convoking the Council, and he then went to Bologna to await the attack of the Neapolitans. There, about the middle of August, he received the welcome news that Ladislaus had been poisoned by the father of one of his mistresses. He proposed to break faith with Sigismund and disavow the Council, but the cardinals restrained him from taking this wild step, and on October 1st he set out for the north, sadly, with a troop of six hundred horse. He had for some time wavered between gloomy apprehensions of a mysterious fate which pursued him and buoyant confidence in his wealth and power.

The last words of his friends at Bologna must have recurred to him again and again as he passed up the autumnal valley of the Adige and entered the snows of the Tirol. He would not return a Pope, they said. In the Arlberg Pass his carriage was overturned, and he exclaimed, as he lay in the snow: "Here I lie, in the name of the devil, and I would have done much better to stop at Bologna." He remained for some days at Meran with Duke Friedrich, whom he made captain-general of the Papal troops, with a salary of six thousand ducats a year. It was well to make a friend of this powerful and discontented vassal of Sigismund. At last, on October 27th, his troops turned the crest of the last low hills before Constance, and he gazed down on the hollow between the guardian mountains. "A trap for foxes," he is said to have muttered. On the following day he rode into Constance, on his richly harnessed white horse, under a canopy of cloth of gold, and occupied the episcopal palace.

For three weeks the snowy roads down the mountain-sides from all directions discharged gay streams of princes and prelates, bishops and abbots, theologians and lawyers, thieves and prostitutes, bankers and acrobats, upon the sleepy old town, until it seemed to burst with a ravening multitude. Something between fifty and a hundred thousand visitors had to be housed and entertained, and it is reported by grave observers that more than a thousand prostitutes flocked to Constance in the days of the Council.[269] There were, in the course of time, twenty-nine cardinals, thirty-three archbishops, a hundred and fifty bishops, a hundred and thirty-four abbots, and a hundred doctors of law and divinity: among the latter a certain pale and thin man, Master John Hus, who did not suspect that he had come to be tried on a capital charge. But the Emperor was late--he was crowned at Aachen on November 8th--so the first sitting of the Council, on November 5th, was adjourned to the 16th, and then until the new year. Meantime the thousands of entertainers did their duty, and the city rang day and night with revelry, and a crowd speaking thirty different languages filled the streets and overflowed on to the roofs and into the sheds and even the empty tubs of Constance.

On Christmas morning, two hours after midnight, Emperor Sigismund made a stately entrance from the Lake and a vast crowd attended John's midnight mass. Then the struggle began. John's money circulated freely, yet the view that he must be deposed with the other two was gaining ground. He was gouty and his vigour was prematurely undermined, but he fought for his tiara. Envoys came to represent Benedict and Gregory, and he objected to their being received with honour; he was overruled. He held that none less in rank than a bishop or abbot should vote, and that the voting should be by heads, not nations; and again he was overruled, and his Italian prelates would be outvoted. Then some anonymous Italian put into circulation a memoir on his crimes and vices, and he was greatly alarmed. To avoid scandal, however,--for John admitted some of the accusations,--it was suppressed, but it was decided that he must abdicate. After some evasive correspondence, he promised to abdicate "if and when Peter de Luna and Angelo Corario" did the same, and on March 7th he was compelled to embody the formula in a Bull. He became ill and desperate, and there were rumours that he was about to fly. Sigismund put guards at all the gates, but refused to imprison him as the English, headed by the fiery Bishop of Salisbury, demanded.

On March 20th, Duke Friedrich of Tirol drew all Constance to a grand tournament outside the city, and in the midst of it he was noticed to receive a message and leave the ground. Presently it was learned that the Pope, disguised as a groom, had slipped out of the gate on a poor horse, with two companions, and Friedrich had joined them at Schaffhausen. Sigismund sternly forbade the dissolution of the Council, laid a heavy punishment on his vassal, and sent some of the cardinals to see John. The Pope declared that he had left solely on account of his illness; he would abdicate and not interfere with the Council, but the cardinals must join him at once or be excommunicated. The Council, now led by the great Gerson and other strong French doctors, ignored the Pope, and declared that it had, direct from Christ, a power to which Popes must bow. As Sigismund's troops were after them, John and Friedrich fled farther, and at last John quarrelled with his supporter and fled in disguise across the Black Forest to Freiburg. He arrived within reach of Burgundy, whose Duke was friendly, and he demanded better terms. He would resign on condition that he was appointed Perpetual Legate for the whole of Italy, with a pension of 30,000 florins; the alternative in his mind seems to have been a court at Avignon under the protection of the Duke of Burgundy.

The end of his adventures is well known. The burghers of Freiburg refused to protect him and he fled to Breisar, where the envoys of the Council came to press for his resignation. He put on his rough disguise once more, and made off with a troop of Austrian cavalry, but Friedrich, to obtain a mitigation of his own sentence, betrayed him. For several days he miserably resisted the pressure of the envoys, weeping and wailing piteously, and on May 2d the Council summoned him to appear before it within nine days to answer charges of heresy, schism, simony, and immorality. On the seventh day a troop of horse came for him, but he was ill and irresolute. On May 14th the patience of the Council was exhausted; it suspended him from office and ordered the public trial of the charges which had already been examined and on which a mass of evidence had been taken. Two days later the great assembly of prelates and doctors drew up the appalling indictment, in seventy-two articles, of Baldassare Cossa. In the main the charges referred to those acts of simony, bribery, corruption, and tyranny which I have recounted, but it should be added that he was described as "addicted to the flesh, the dregs of vice, a mirror of infamy" (art. 6), and "guilty of poisoning, murder, and persistent addiction to vices of the flesh" (art 29). The worst charges of Dietrich were solemnly endorsed by the gravest lawyers and priests of Europe.

John lay, prostrate and in tears, in an inn at Rudolphzell. He wished to submit a defence, but a few friendly cardinals advised him to submit, and when, on May 26th, he heard that the Council had endorsed the indictment, he made no further resistance. He was deposed on the 29th and accepted the sentence with words of humility and repentance. A few days later the wretched man was consigned to the castle of Gottlieben, and then to a castle at Mannheim. There was, in the following year, a futile attempt to rescue him, and he was confined in the castle of Heidelberg, where he remained three years, with a cook and two chaplains of his once magnificent establishment, composing verses on the vanity of earthly things. The hollow words of his consecration-ceremony, _Sic transit gloria mundi_, had for him assumed a terrible reality.

How Gregory resigned, and Benedict retired with his tawdry court to a rocky fortress of his, and the Council burned John Hus and appointed a new Pope, may be read in history.[270] Martin left Cossa in Heidelberg, but in the spring of 1419 his keeper was heavily bribed and he was allowed to escape to Italy. It must have moved many when, as Martin officiated at the altar in Florence cathedral, the familiar figure of Baldassare Cossa broke from the throng and knelt humbly at his feet. He was restored to the rank of cardinal, and, apart from a foolish attempt, a few months later, to form a Lombard league against the Emperor, he lived peacefully in the house of Cosmo de' Medici until his death in December (1419). He was buried with pomp by the Republic, and the fine monument which Cosmo raised in the Baptistery shows that some appreciable qualities must have been united with his undisputed vices.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 265: _Historia de Vita Papæ Joannis XXIII._, which must be cited with reserve, as the author had a bitter quarrel with John and is often inaccurate. See C. Hunger, _Zur Geschichte Papst Johanns XXIII._ (1876). More reliable are the references in the _Commentarii rerum suo tempore in Italia gestarum_ (in Muratori, _Rerum Italicarum scriptores_, xix.), of Leonardo of Arezzo, at one time John's secretary. Leonardo's temperate verdict, that John was "a great man in temporal things, but a complete failure and unworthy in spiritual things," is endorsed by all. Exhaustive bibliographies will be found in E.J. Kitto's excellent works, _In the Days of the Councils_ (1908), and _Pope John the Twenty-third and Master John Hus of Bohemia_ (1910).]

[Footnote 266: As in modern Spain, the word "traffic" or "sale" would be resented. The theory is that you give an alms to the Church and the Church grants the indulgence. The amount of the alms is fixed according to the grace required: there are four different _bulas_ in Spain today. It is hardly necessary to add that the agents did not officially sell the pardon of sins, but the remission of the punishment due in Purgatory for such sins as were confessed. Nevertheless we have the official assurance of the Council of Constance (art. 20) that John XXIII. "sold absolution both from punishment and guilt," and there are other indications of this grave abuse.]

[Footnote 267: We learn from later letters of the Pope that he worked for Sigismund in Germany, especially when a rival "King of the Romans" was elected. See the evidence in Dr. J. Schwerdfeger's _Papst Johann XXIII. und die Wahl Sigismunds zum römischen König_ (1895).]

[Footnote 268: _Commentarii_, p. 928.]

[Footnote 269: The clergy had, of course, large troops of lay followers, and numbers of lay doctors attended the Council, but we have seen often enough the moral state of the clergy themselves in the Middle Ages. A picturesque summary of the chroniclers is given by Kitto, _Pope John the Twenty-third and Master John Hus of Bohemia_. See also H. Blumenthal's _Die Vorgeschichte des Constanzer Concils_ (1897) and, for the proceedings, H. Finke's _Acta Concilii Constantiensis_ (1896), and H. von der Hardt's _Magnum OEcumenicum Constantiense Concilium_ (1696, etc.).]

[Footnote 270: I have not dwelt on Hus, as the Pope had little to do with him. For some time, thinking to please the Emperor, John protected Hus from his rabid opponents. The shameful ensnarement of Hus seems to have been done without John's approval, and he was deposed before the trial of Hus began.]

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