Great Schism Research Articles

Geoffrey Chaucer by Janette Dillon

REVIEWS Far more problematic is Delany's proposition that she may hang alterna­ tive readings on Chaucer's naked texts primarily on the basis of the fact that they are not impossible interpretations. Many of Delany's most pro­ vocatively original observations are also, therefore, her most controversial assertions. For example, Delany reads "Dido" as the double entendre "Die­ do!" (p. 144). Since the plausibility ofher putative puns is contextual (and cumulatively reinforcing), such an individual suggestion cannot validly be challenged as an isolated item. But Delany would dismiss the interpretive controversy itself. Along with the "sincerity fallacy ," she throws off the burden of proof (p. 72n). I allow myself, however, to remain personally unconvinced by several of Delany's suggestions, including the identity of Bernard (pp. 52-53), the priority of the G Prologue on the basis of "another unverifiable subjective hypothesis" (p. 135), the atypically restrictive significance attached to the daisy as "the true saint" of the Legend (p. 115), calling Alceste a suicide (p. 112), and the significance attached to a scribal confusion of Admetus (sc. Almetus) and Alcestis (p. 112). But my most fundamental disagreement with Delany pertains to her outright rejection of the proposition that "a dedication to Queen Anne, or the possibility ofa female readership, or any other considerations of audience, need affect my (or any other) interpreta­ tion" (p. 238) though Delany herself had appealed to the decorum of a presumed courtly production to explain the Legends lack of "outright sca­ tology" (p. 140). In all particulars Delany's provocative readings may be vulnerable to rebuttal. But as a whole, however, it successfully mandates a radical, new, and remarkably positive reappraisal of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. WILLIAM A. QuINN University of Arkansas JANETTE DILLON. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers in Their Time Series. New York: St. Martin's, 1993. Pp. x, 212. $39.95. The St. Martin's Writers in Their Time series is designed to show that literary works are "historically and socially grounded, and that any method of study that ignores this is partial and impoverished" (flyleaf). In her introduction to Geoffrey Chaucer, Janette Dillon sets forth her own goal 195 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER with admirable directness: "The aim of this book is to enable the reader with little or no prior knowledge of medieval history to read the works of Chaucer in a historical context" (p. ix). Geoffrey Chaucer contains seven chapters. In the first chapter, "Chaucer's Life and Times," Dillon gives a sketch of Chaucer's life-his birth, educa­ tion, appointments, travels, marriage, death-and of the most important political and historical events ofhis time: the Black Death of1349-50, the death ofEdward and the accession ofRichard in 1377, the Great Schism of 1378, the English Rising of 1381. The second chapter, "Literary Produc­ tion and Audience," will be of more immediate interest to Chaucerians. Dillon reminds us about the methods ofproducticJO in a time when literacy was limited, when there were no copyright laws, and when, even though English was the dominant language in England, it was considered a less sophisticated medium for written texts than either Latin or French. Stu­ dents need to know that most manuscripls of fourteenth-century literary works were copied in "bookshops," that many of the "books" of the time were anthologies of works that had little or no generic relationship to one another--a Chaucerian fabliau might be bound with a toothache remedy and a homily--and that these works would often have been read aloud to members of the household. In her third chapter, "Four Estates," Dillon discusses the four large groupings offolk most often represented in medieval literature: those who worked for the church, those who fought in the wars, those who labored, and women. She groups the four in opposing groups of two, knights and peasants in one section, clerics and women in the other. In the fourth chapter, "Continental England," Dillon accumulates an impressive body of evidence that Chaucer's England was involved politically, economically, and artistically with the Continent. She concludes the chapter with an extended reading of The Parliament ofFowls as a Continental rather than an insular English work. One might...

Les professeurs de droit canonique à l’Université de Toulouse au XIVe siècle

This article provides bio-bibliographical entries for fifty-four professors for Canon Law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toulouse. A brief introduction recalls the origines and later, often brilliant careers of these professors, analyses the major contributions of their written work as it is preserved, and describes the important role they played in the discussions and quarrels that marked the Great Schism at the end of the century.

“Cum Status Ecclesie Noster Sit”: Florence and the Council of Pisa (1409)

Of all the divisions and crises that the Catholic church endured in its first fifteen hundred years of existence, none was so destructive as the Great Schism (1378–1417). For forty years learned theologians and doctors of canon law argued over whether the pontiff residing in Rome or in Avignon was the true pope. The effects of the schism upon the highly organized administration of the church were disastrous, as were its effects upon society in general. Countless clerics fought over claims to benefices with appointees from the other obedience; the revenues of the church, quite impressive in the mid-fourteenth century, shrank precipitously; and opportunistic rulers especially in Italy did not hesitate to wage private wars under the banner of one or the other papacy, or to prey upon the actual holdings of the church.

A Fifteenth-Century Lawsuit: The Case of St Anthony's Hospital

It is well known that the Council of Constance (1414–18) was concerned with reform, heresy and – above all – the ending of the Great Schism of the papacy. However, comparatively few realise how many personal and institutional suits were heard at tribunals there. Christopher Crowder has asserted with justifiable exaggeration that more ‘ecclesiastical carpetbaggers’ were in attendance than ‘ecclesiastical statesman’. This article, based on hitherto unused material, is a case study which presents the activities of certain ‘carpetbaggers’ and their agents in some detail. It is offered partly because it further documents Crowder's assertion, partly because it supports his conclusion that judicial procedures at the papal curia in the late Middle Ages operated with great continuity, and partly because it suggests how closely King Henry v could concern himself with the details of ecclesiastical business. It also throws unusual light on medieval English hospitals, especially on alien priory establishments. Furthermore, it exemplifies the inordinate amounts of time, documentation, money and gifts required in order to pursue cases at the papal curia; difficulties stemming from reliance on proctors there; the time lags and other problems related to international correspondence and financial transactions in the early fifteenth century; and connections between ‘carpetbaggers’ and ‘ecclesiastical statesmen’ that sometimes affected curia cases.

“To Throttle the Hydra”: The Middle Class and Rugby’s Great Schism

“To Throttle the Hydra”: The Middle Class and Rugby’s Great Schism

Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages by André Vauchez

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER frequent enough to be disconcerting, as are the inconsistent practices for providing translations and the unacknowledged repetition of both material and references throughout its chapters. Such inconsistencies accurately indicate that this book, despite the merits of its derail, is a stitching together of previous work under the fashionable rubric of translation, rather than a concerted study of Chaucer as a translator. KATHLEEN DAVIS Bucknell University ANDRE VAUCHEZ. Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell, with a foreword by Richard Kieckhefer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xxviii, 645, 43 plates, 34 tables, 3 maps. $95.00. This publication is a complete, elegant, and most welcome translation of the revised edition (1988) of Vauchez's classic, La saintete en occident aux derniers siecles du moyen age, d'apres !es proces de canonization et !es dorn­ ments hagiographiques (Rome: Ecole Frans;aise, 1981). Vauchez's book, which has also been translated into Italian, is one of the regrettably small number of studies that not only draws on scholarship in most of the major relevant languages (especially French, Italian, German, and English) but has gained a worldwide academic readership, providing a basic reference point for all scholars of hagiography for the last two de­ cades. Like its two predecessors-La spiritualite du moyen age occidental: Vllle-Xlle siecles (1975), and Religion et societe dans !'occident medieval (1980)-and like Les lafrs au moyen age: Pratiques et experiences religieuses (1987), Vauchez's next book-Sainthood in the Middle Ages is a rich mix of archival work and carefully considered synthetic analysis, written with a Bair for language and a hopeful, but far from naive, understand­ ing of medieval ecclesiastical politics. All this brief review can do is to explain what is and is not here, and suggest some of its uses to scholars of Middle English. Despite its overgeneralized English title, what Vauchez's book is not is a consideration of all aspects of sainthood and sanctity in later medi­ eval culture. There is little about the saints medieval people spent most of their time venerating: the early Christian apostles, martyrs, and con394 REVIEWS fessors, whose feasts were long-established events in the liturgical year, and whose lives and usually violent deaths are the subject of the vast majority of medieval hagiographic writings. This is, rather, a study of how medieval people came to be venerated as saints themselves or de­ cided to venerate one another, how the Church (especially the papacy) tried to regulate and channel these decisions, and how sainthood was defined and imagined in both the official and the popular mind. Book 1 describes from various angles the growth (from the eleventh century on) of the idea that moderns could truly be considered as saints and of the canonization process itself, the thirteenth-century heyday of processes and canonizations, and the decline in canonizations in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries (apart from an upsurge during the Great Schism), as the length and expense of processes grew, and as the papacy redefined formal sainthood in more and more explicitly political terms. Book 2, building on an earlier discussion of the increasing number of figures venerated as saints despite their failure to achieve canonization (chapter 5), provides typologies of three kinds of sainthood, "popular," "local," and "official," focusing (in the hundred-page chapter 12) on how the criteria for official sainthood changed between 1100 and 1400, espe­ cially in favor of members of the mendicant orders, mystical women religious, and the laity. (Chapter 11, pp. 249-84, previews this discus­ sion with a long series of charts and maps, which usefully distinguish canonization processes by various criteria, including date, geographical origin, and profession). Book 3 describes the relative importance given to pre- and posthumous miracles, personal virtues, and career achieve­ ments in popular and official attitudes to sanctity, and how these, too, both evolved and became increasingly dichotomized in the centuries after 1100. Finally, two appendices provide editions of documents con­ nected with the canonization of Thomas Cantilupe (the bishop of Here­ ford who died in 1282 on his way to Rome to plead against his excom­ munication by archbishop John Peckham), while a...

A State Like Any Other? The Fourteenth-Century Papal Patrimony Through The Eyes of Roman Law Jurists

In the fourteenth century, and notably under Cardinal Albornoz, the papal patrimony began its uneven development into a form of early modern state. As Paolo Prodi has pointed out, these early stages, although interrupted by retrogression caused by the Great Schism, served as the foundations for the construction of the state of the Renaissance papacy. In reality, the popes exercised sovereignty in a state whose origin and nature were essentially temporal: to this extent their regnum was no different from those of secular monarchs. There was, however, a problem impeding the perception of the true nature of the growth of papal state power: a certain ambiguity hung over the papal lands in that the papacy justified its rule both by hierocratic arguments and by reference to grants of jurisdiction from emperors and kings. The spiritual office of the popes could obscure the fact of the kind of state of which they were the sovereign. In the works of the fourteenth-century Commentators on the Roman law, however, there gradually emerged a clear recognition of the direction which the papacy was taking: that the Patrimony of St Peter was no more and no less than a state created by human institution.

Papal Authority and Religious Sentiment in The Late Middle Ages

Undergraduate ideas about medieval papal history tend to take the following form. In the late eleventh and early twelfth century the papacy led a reform movement and increased its power. In the mid- to late twelfth century its spiritual authority waned as its legal activities expanded. Innocent III gave a new lease of life to the institution by extending its protection to those elements in the effervescent spiritual life of the time which were prepared to keep their enthusiasm for evangelical preaching and apostolic poverty within the limits of doctrinal orthodoxy. By the middle of the thirteenth century, however, the papacy was more preoccupied with Italian politics than with the harnessing of spiritual enthusiasm. Its power and prestige remained great until the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Pope Boniface VIII was humiliated by the forces of the French King, acting with the Colonna family. The ‘Babylonian Captivity’ at Avignon, which followed shortly afterwards, was a period of grandiose claims and real weakness in relation to secular powers (especially France), of financial exploitation of the clergy, and of costly involvement in Italian wars. The Great Schism and the Conciliar Movement marked a still lower point in the religious prestige of the papacy. In the later fifteenth century the superiority of pope over council came to be generally recognized. Moreover, the papal state, in central Italy, was consolidated to provide a relatively secure base, and popes became patrons of painting and humanism. The patronage was a largely secular matter, however, and the papal court that of a secular prince. As for the popes’ control over the Western Church, it was limited, at least in practice, by the power of kings and princes over the clergy of their territories. Above all, the idea of sovereign papal authority in the religious sphere no longer had any connection with the real forces of religious sentiment and spirituality.

The Problem of Subjection: The University of Toulouse, Royalism, and Papalism in The France of Charles VI

In the early years of the fifteenth century, the European universities achieved what was probably the height of their influence within the Western Church, an influence accorded final sanction by their independent representation at the two general councils of Pisa (1409) and Constance (1414-18). Both of these assemblies had been summoned in the hope of terminating the Great Schism, the division of the Latin Church which had erupted with the rival elections of Urban VI and Clement VII as popes in 1378. During the course of the subsequent debates seeking a resolution to the dispute, the universities and their members had taken a prime role in formulating theories intended to find a way out of the dilemma of having two popes, each supposedly legitimate. Their scope for concrete, independent action was, however, limited: whatever their aspirations for a role on the wider stage of the medieval Church, the universities had to exist within the narrower confines of individual political entities, for the most part monarchies, whose rulers had their own conceptions of the appropriate place of scholars in the scheme of things.

The Polonization of Christianity in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

The process of adapting universal religions to local cultures, conditions, and milieux is as old as the religions themselves. As far as Christinity is concerned, it was also subject to the continuous blending of general doctrinal principles with the national form of their expression, especially with age-old traditions in folklore. Consequently, Frankish or Germanic Christianity differed considerably from the Slavic version, while the latter again differed from that prevailing in the Eastern Roman Empire. Although in missionary areas the Church sometimes approved of investing the cult with specific features, taking into account the nationality and mentality of its congregations, in Europe itself conflicts between local church authorities on the one hand and Rome on the other often broke out over these matters. They found expression and were finally ossified in successive divisions of Christianity; beginning with the Great Schism of 1054, through the attempt to organize a national church in Bohemia (the Hussite Movement), to the permanent split brought about by the Reformation.

Sociological Implications of the Great Western Schism

Sociological Implications of the Great Western Schism

Conciliarism, Papalism, and Power, 1511-1518

If ‘the later conciliar controversy’ may be regarded as having come to an end by the middle of the fifteenth century, the years considered here may perhaps be seen as the period of the last controversy of quite that kind. It is true that words like ‘first’ and ‘last’ are always hazardous in historical discourse, and perhaps nowhere more so than in the history of ideas. Clearly the argument about the place of general councils in the polity of the Church had not completely died away in the second half of the fifteenth century; nor did it come to a sudden end in 1518 (specified here as the year which saw the Concordat of 1516 reluctantly accepted by the University of Paris and also the publication of John Mair’s Commentary on St Matthew’s Gospel, with its strenuous assertion of conciliarist principles). Twenty years more were to pass before the posthumous publication of the longest single work generated by the entire conciliar controversy, Domenico Giacobazzi’s De concilio. And seven years later it was, of course, a council of the Church that faced the challenge of what had, from small beginnings within the period examined here, become a schism more fundamental and far-reaching than that which had precipitated the original conciliar movement. Even at Trent, moreover, there were those who were prepared to speak up for ‘conciliarist’ principles and policies. Yet it still seems true to say that the years of the Council (or what purported to be the Council) of Pisa and Milan, and of the Fifth Council of the Lateran, saw the last significant and direct confrontation between conciliarism and papalism as those positions had developed in the ecclesiology and ecclesiastical politics of the period inaugurated by the Great Schism. No doubt this last act was an anticlimax, a controversy over the dubious claims of a conciliabulum which was at least politically used if not originally inspired by purely political motives. In the history of ideas, however, and perhaps especially in the history of political ideas, the debate is not so easily dismissed.

Simon de Cramaud and the Great Schism. Howard Kaminsky

<i>Simon de Cramaud and the Great Schism</i>. Howard Kaminsky

Raymond Aron and the History of the Twentieth Century

Raymond Aron would undoubtedly have wished that those who render him homage speak with a critical mind rather than sentimentally or from their remembrances. He would have wanted them to analyze his work as much as himself as a person. But no one would have understood better than he (and permitted one to understand) that a judgment about the intellectual contribution of his different works is inseparable from the experience of the reader. I discovered the existence and thought of Raymond Aron in 1948 through The Great Schism. I heard him speak for the first time in June 1950, the day after the outbreak of the Korean War, which he tried to place in perspective in light of the interpretation of wars and of revolutions of the 20th century that he was going to present in The Century of Total War. That explains in part why I have maintained a particular fondness for those two books, that Aron himself retrospectively considered to be too journalistic. Certainly in trying to define for the readers of The Committed Observer what all his books had in common, he was led to the following formula: 'They constitute a reflection upon the twentieth century, in the light of Marxism, and an attempt to understand better all the sectors of modem society: Economies, social relationships, class relationships, political systems, relations among nations, and ideological arguments' (Aron, 1983: 254). But he criticized The Great Schism and The Century of Total War for having combined these different levels too much, and he preferred those of his books 'that have absolutely nothing to do with journalism: The Introduction to the Philosophy of History, Histoire et Dialectique de la Violence, Clausewitz' (Aron, 1983: 260). He criticized himself for having been too obsessed with reality to give to his

The Call for Unity at the Council of Constance: Sermons and Addresses of Cardinal Zabarella, 1415–1417

On 11 November 1417 the Great Western Schism ended with the election of one pope accepted by almost all of western Christendom. The thirty-nine terrible years of disunity were over, and the members of the Council of Constance had good reason to rejoice. Among those at Constance who did not live to see this happy day was Cardinal Franciscus Zabarella, who had died in late September and who up to his death had been considered a leading candidate for the papacy. During the council he had indicated in several sermons and addresses how much the unity which they had sought for so long meant to him and his contemporaries. He expressed these ideas and sentiments on the occasions when, little by little, various groups were united with and took their places at the Council at Constance in the years 1415–1416, reintegrating the fragmented western church. These sermons reflected the hopes and dreams of the members of the council.

FitzRalph's Antimendicant ‘proposicio’ (1350) and the Politics of the Papal Court at Avignon

The conciliar movement is often seen as the major political issue in which the universities of Oxford, Paris and the newer universities became actively embroiled during the fourteenth century and thereafter. It was the last and most ambitious product of the medieval vision of government by consent and representation that had evolved during the fourteenth century, and it marshalled the resources of theorists and practitioners of politics, of arts and theology faculty lecturers, of canon and civil lawyers, of monarchical publicists and papal hierocrats. In general, conciliarism drew upon the university-trained in a manner not previously seen on such a scale. During the Great Schism (1378–1449), the universities assumed exceedingly important roles in the affairs of the universal Church, with the University of Paris playing a dominant part from the start in proposing the via concilii. Pierre d'Ailly was, like Gerson, Conrad of Gelnhausen and Henry of Langenstein, and like the earlier Marsilius of Padua, a Paris scholar. And it has recently been argued that university support for the Basle conciliar programme was motivated not only by an attachment to the ideal of conciliar government but also by the hope of reforms which would improve the status of university-trained doctors in the Church. While the bulk of controls proposed by the conciliar movement concerned the reduction of papal control, a few aimed more explicitly at promoting the interests of graduates.

Howard Kaminsky. &lt;italic&gt;Simon de Cramaud and the Great Schism&lt;/italic&gt;. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. 1983. Pp. xii, 369. $30.00

Journal Article Howard Kaminsky. Simon de Cramaud and the Great Schism. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. 1983. Pp. xii, 369. $30.00 Get access Kaminsky Howard. Simon de Cramaud and the Great Schism. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. 1983. Pp. xii, 369. $30.00. Thomas E. Morrissey Thomas E. Morrissey State University College Fredonia, New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 89, Issue 3, June 1984, Page 753, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/89.3.753 Published: 01 June 1984

The Way of Action: Pierre d’Ailly and the Military Solution to the Great Schism

The traditional role of the medieval latin church in legitimising warfare tends to fall into two main categories. On the one hand, there are the secular political wars, in which the church can perhaps be seen as a third force: while called on to legitimise and support partisan conflict between supposedly Christian antagonists, it could also work as a force for peace. On the other hand, there are the religious wars, to which the church was itself a party, either in warfare against infidels, or against those who, in their obstinacy, refused to recognise and accept the authority of the Roman church.

Authority and Power: Studies on Medieval Law and Government Presented to Walter Ullmann on His Seventieth Birthday

Foreword List of abbreviations 1. The alleged territoriality of Visigothic law P. D. King 2. Some Carolingian law-books and their function Rosamond McKitterick 3. The earliest surviving royal Ordo: some liturgical and historical aspects Janet L. Nelson 4. The Epistola Widonis, ecclesiastical reform and canonistic enterprise 1049-1141 John Gilchrist 5. Ralph de Diceto, Henry II and Beckett (with an appendix on decretal letters) Charles Duggan and Anne Duggan 6. Fides et culpa: the use of Roman law in ecclesiastical ideology E. F. Vodola 7. Hostiensis on Per venerabilem: the role of the College of Cardinals J. A. Watt 8. Centre and locality: aspects of papal administration in England in the later thirteenth century Jane Sayers 9. The Spanish Church revisited: the episcopal gravamina of 1279 Peter Linehan 10. Ockham and the birth of individual rights Arthur Stephen McGrade 11. Public expediency and natural law: a fourteenth-century discussion on the origins of government and property Brian Tierney 12. The King's Hall, Cambridge and English medieval collegiate history Alan B. Cobban 13. A fourteenth-century contribution to the theory of citizenship: political man and the problem of created citizenship in the thought of Baldus de Ubaldis Joseph P. Canning 14. What was conciliarism? Conciliar theory in historical perspective A. J. Black 15. The problem of the cardinalate in the Great Schism R. N. Swanson 16. Paulus Vladimiri's attack on the just war: a case study in legal polemics Frederick H. Russell Bibliography of the writings of Walter Ullmann Peter Linehan.

The Hicksite Separation on Nantucket

The tragedy of the Great Schism of 1827-1828 had its limited repercussion in New England primarily on the meetings on the island of Nantucket. Fortunately for us, one of the main participants, Obed Macy, was not only a sensitive Quaker elder, but an historian. His history of Nantucket is generally welcomed as the best of pre-twentieth century accounts. During the Hicksite controversy Friend Obed kept his own running commentary contemporaneously with the events, beginning in the autumn of 1828 and ending in the autumn of 1835. This account, labelled A Compendium, or abstract history, or a narrative of the Monthly Meeting on Nantucket toward their members commenced in the eleventh month 1828, 5,1 indicates by its inception that Obed Macy was aware that troubles were brewing for Quakerism on the island. Macy was no ordinary member. He had been clerk of the original Nantucket Monthly Meeting thirty years earlier when forty years old. He had served actively in every phase of monthly meeting appointments. His portrait reveals an open sensitive countenance framed in appropriate Quaker simplicity. The great separation did not come unknown and unexpected upon the Island Quaker establishment. The Friends there had welcomed Hannah Jenkins Barnard, a minister from Hudson Monthly Meeting in New York, itself almost a colony of Nantucket, shortly before her fateful trip to the British Isles where her