The Schism
Seminar Questions
- Was the papacy strengthened or weakened during its residence in Avignon?
- Was 'Conciliarism' ever a feasible option for governing the medieval church?
Documents
- Petrarch: Letter Criticising the Avignon Papacy
- Manifesto of the rebellious cardinals (1378)
- The University of Paris on how to resolve the Schism (1393)
- Council of Constance: Sacrosancta, 1415.
Introductory Reading
Barber, The Two Cities, 108-111
Bartlett, The Making of Europe. No readings.
Waley and Denley, Later Medieval Europe, 112-131, 235-238
e-resources
- The Internet Medieval Sourcebook has sections on the problems of the papacy, ecclesiastical disarray (the Great Schism and conciliarism), and heresy.
- A medieval map of Rome from a manuscript of the period (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Ital. 81, folio 18). The illustration shows Rome personified as widow grieving the loss of the papacy.
- Map showing support for Avignon (red) and Rome (blue) during the Great Schism (before 1409).
- A map of Lollard influence in England and Scotland.
- The Lollard Society
- 'Anticlerical Poems and Documents' from James M. Dean , ed., Poems of Political Prophesy (Kalamazoo, MI, 1996)
- The Hussite Museum in Tabor
- The Acts of the Council of Constance
- The Acts of the Council of Basel, Ferrara, and Florence
Further Reading (See also reading for The Medieval Church: I)
General
Crowder, C.M.D. (ed. and trans.), Unity, Heresy and Reform, 1378-1460: the Conciliar Response to the Great Schism (London, 1977)
Thomson, J., Popes and Princes 1417-1517: Politics and Polity in the Late Medieval Church (London, 1980)
The Avignon Papacy
Menache, Sophia, Clement V (Cambridge, 1998) [also online]
Mollat, Guillaume, The Popes at Avignon, 1305-1378 (New York, 1965)
Renouard, Yves, The Avignon Papacy, 1305-1403, trans. Denis Bethell (London, 1970)
Wood, Diana, Clement VI: The Pontificate and Ideas of an Avignon Pope (Cambridge, 1989)
The Great Schism and Conciliarism
Antony Black, 'Popes and councils' in New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume 7, pp. 65 - 86.
Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, Poets, Saints and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378 -1417 (2006).
Swanson, R.N., Universities, Academics and the Great Schism (1979).
Tierney, Brian, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (Cambridge, 1955)
Ullmann, Walter, The Origins of the Great Schism (London, 1948)
