The third of these of these options, the summoning of a general church council, seemed to the theologians at Paris and to many others to be preferable. The first of several reform councils was held at Pisa in 1409 to deal with the schism and with many other problems of discipline and doctrine. Pisa elected Alexander V (reigned 1409–10) pope—he was not accepted as pope, however, and is listed with the antipopes—in place of both incumbents. But, because neither of the other two would acknowledge the authority of the council and resign, the immediate result was that for a few years, as one cardinal said, the church was treated to “a simulacrum of the Holy Trinity”—the spectacle of three reigning popes. Although not well attended, the Council of Pisa nonetheless had widespread support throughout Western Christendom and established an important precedent for future councils.
The trinity of popes, and the Great Schism itself, came to an end through the work of the Council of Constance (1414–18), which was called by Alexander V’s successor, John XXIII (reigned 1410–15), under pressure from the Holy Roman emperor Sigismund. John, who was subsequently considered an antipope, failed in his attempt to undermine the council, and all three popes either resigned or were deposed, whereupon the council elected Oddone Colonna, who took the name Martin V (reigned 1417–31). In addition to settling the question of papal legitimacy, the council enacted a variety of reform legislation, among which was a stipulation that thenceforth, as a matter of church law, the church council would not be merely an expedient to be resorted to in an emergency but a standing legislative body, a kind of ecclesiastical senate that would meet at brief and regular intervals. The decree of the Council of Constance justified this provision on the principle that the authority of the ecumenical council as the true representative of the entire church was superior to that of the pope, who could not make a similar claim for himself apart from the council. This elevation of conciliar over papal authority was the central tenet of the late medieval movement called conciliarism.
This action also helps to account for the ambiguous position of the Council of Constance in the history of later Roman Catholic canon law, as the opinions of canonists and historians differ to this day about which sessions of the council are entitled to the status of a true ecumenical council. An ambiguity even more complex attended the next reform council, which used to be known as the Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence but is now sometimes divided into two councils, that of Basel and that of Ferrara-Florence, though the legitimacy of the Council of Basel is contested at least in part. The council opened in 1431 at Basel, was transferred by the pope in 1438 to Ferrara (where discussions for reunion with the Eastern Orthodox church at Constantinople began), moved in 1439 to Florence, and held its closing sessions in 1443–45 at Rome. While still at Basel, the council reaffirmed the conciliarist teaching of the Council of Constance about the superiority of the council to the pope. The council’s opposition to the pope, however, undermined its authority. Many of the delegates, hoping to achieve reunion with Constantinople, left Basel when the pope moved the council to Ferrara and then Florence. Those remaining in Basel took extreme conciliarist positions and even formally deposed the reigning pope and elected another. However, the deposition found little support and ultimately damaged the credibility of the council in Basel, as well as the credibility of conciliarism itself, as did the success of the council in Ferrara-Florence.
Both the Council of Constance and the Council of Ferrara-Florence have additional importance in the history of late medieval reform in Roman Catholicism—Constance for dealing with the problem of heresy within the Western church, and Ferrara-Florence for addressing itself to the relation of Western Roman Catholicism to Eastern Christendom. Jan Hus
A major item on the agenda of the Council of Constance was the challenge posed to the authority of both contending parties, council as well as pope, by the teachings of the Czech preacher Jan Hus. Although influenced by John Wycliffe, Hus was not as radical as the English theologian, especially regarding transubstantiation in the Eucharist (Wycliffe, though not Hus, held that the bread and wine in the Eucharist retain their material substance). Hus was highly critical of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and argued that its authority was only spiritual. He also advanced an Augustinian definition of the church, according to which the earthly church is made up of only the saved and the damned.
Despite the accusations of his critics, it seems clear that Hus did not draw from this premise the radical conclusion that sacraments administered by a hypocritical priest or bishop or pope were invalid in themselves; the priestly office and the sacraments retained their objective validity. A prominent element of the Hussite demands, however, was a call for the administration of Holy Communion to the laity “under both kinds” (sub utraque specie), bread and wine; that is, they demanded the restoration of the chalice. Accordingly, the followers of Hus emblazoned a chalice on their banners. The Hussite movement of reform coalesced with the rising nationalism of the Czech people, many of whom resented German domination of Bohemia.
In 1411 Hus was excommunicated by John XXIII. In keeping with the widespread spirit of conciliarism, Hus appealed his case to an ecumenical council of the church. Summoned to appear before the Council of Constance, he was promised safe-conduct by Sigismund, the Holy Roman emperor. Once at the council, however, Hus was arrested and imprisoned. He was tried for heresy (particularly because of his doctrine of the church) and condemned, and on July 6, 1415, he was burned at the stake. His main prosecutors, notably including Jean de Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, were also the leaders of the reform movement at the Council of Constance.
The death of Hus was not the end of his movement. A civil war in Bohemia soon led to the formation of an independent Bohemian Catholic church, which was later absorbed by Rome. Remnants of the Hussite movement evolved first into the Unitas Fratrum (a religious group that rejected transubstantiation and advocated nonviolence and a strict biblical faith) and then into the Moravian Church. In the emergence of churches independent of Rome, as well as in various specific doctrinal and moral teachings, Hus anticipated the Protestant Reformation a century later. In the 16th century his disciples joined with the Lutherans in their struggle against the church and the emperor. Efforts to heal the East-West Schism
At Basel and then especially at Ferrara-Florence, there were extensive negotiations and discussions over the newly revived proposals for effecting a reunion of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Western Roman Catholicism. Earlier attempts at such a reunion—for example, at the Council of Lyon in 1274—had failed. But now the time seemed ripe on both sides for a new effort at reconciliation. Christian Constantinople was under increasing threat from the Turks and desired Western support, moral as well as military. Leaders of the West, regardless of party, regarded the long-sought rapprochement with the East as a means of restoring the prestige of both the papacy and the ecumenical council, which could then be seen as having resolved both the major schisms of Christian history—the Great Schism and the East-West Schism—in the space of one generation. The patriarch of Constantinople, Joseph II, and the Byzantine emperor, John VIII Palaeologus, both came in person to the Council of Ferrara-Florence for the theological negotiations toward reunion of the two churches.