I\u2019m Sicilian from my mother\u2019s side of the family, which means I was ostensibly raised Catholic. Really, that meant I went to church and catechism school until my body grew large enough that it was harder for my mom to make me go places. After that, I totally checked out from the religion, including the four years I spent at a Catholic college.<\/p>\n
By that time, I had grown even larger than I\u2019d been in middle school, and while the administration could certainly force me to sign up for two theology courses to fulfill core requirements, they could not make me show up to class<\/i>. If I had, though, I bet I would have learned all about the Western Schism in the Catholic church.<\/p>\n
There have been a couple of great Catholic schisms. An earlier schism stuck\u2014which is why we have the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches today. A few hundred years later, the Catholic church was rocked by another schism. From 1378 to 1417, the Catholic church in Western Europe was split not once, not twice, but three times, each with its own pope. The 14th century pope<\/strong> situation was…interesting, to say the least. And, whether you\u2019re a recovering Catholic like me, a practicing Catholic, or you\u2019ve never been Catholic in your life, I think we can all agree: one Catholic church is the magic number. Same goes for popes\u2014they\u2019re kinda like extremely mortal Highlanders. There can be only one.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Well, nobody planned it that way. Human history has found itself in a lot of really stupid jams, and it\u2019s usually because we get a little caught up in tribalism and miss the big picture. In this case, a lot of Catholics\u2014particularly in Italy, and particularly<\/i> in Rome\u2014were sick of having French popes.<\/p>\n See, for almost all of the 14th century, up until 1376, the papacy had been seated in Avignon, France, rather than Rome. During that time, there was a string of seven French popes based in France. The optics weren\u2019t great: it looked like the French crown owned the Catholic church.<\/p>\n Historically, there are a couple things that you can count on most of Western Europe to do: stop Germany from taking over the world, and resent France, for one reason or another. This time, France was earning that resentment by appropriating the Catholic church. At least, that was the common perception among the people of Rome at the time.<\/p>\n It looks like Pope Gregory XI, the last of the popes in Avignon, felt the pressure, because he moved the papal court back to Rome in 1376. Two years later, Gregory XI died, and it was time to vote in a new pope. The people of Rome, worried that they\u2019d get yet another<\/i> French pope, exercised their own political power by rioting in the streets and scaring the sh*t out of the cardinals.<\/p>\n The cardinals weren\u2019t in a rush to get to heaven, so they acquiesced and elected an Italian pope, as god intended. The archbishop of Bari was coronated as Pope Urban VI in 1378, and everything was all cleared up.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> <\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Ahh, come on, we were so close.<\/p>\n OK, so Pope Urban VI, it turned out, f**king hated the cardinals. Possibly because the majority at the time were French, and Urban had jumped from archbishop (just beneath cardinal) to pope (just above cardinal). If you were suddenly promoted to your boss\u2019 boss, maybe you\u2019d be a d**k about it, too. Urban VI also had a violent temper. As the mobs of Rome previously established, the cardinals weren\u2019t fond of violence aimed at cardinals. So, they huddled back up and decided that\u2014whoops!\u2014that last papal election hardly counted, what with all the threats of violence directed at the goodly cardinals. A new and less threatening electoral process was needed to amend the terrible mistake made by electing Urban VI. This likely did not improve Urban VI\u2019s attitude toward cardinals.<\/p>\n It probably didn\u2019t make the Roman mobs happy, either, because the cardinals (who, remember, were mostly French) elected an even newer, French-er pope. In fact, Antipope (kind of cool, right?) Clement VII was so<\/i> French, he was indeed from France. He also placed his seat back in Avignon, at the Palais des Papes, right back where this whole thing started. The cardinals, I imagine, liked the idea of getting the f**k out of Rome and away from any mob retribution. The whole thing was a big renege.<\/p>\n The thing about electing a very new pope in Avignon when you\u2019ve still got an old new pope kicking around in Rome is that, uh, now you\u2019ve got two popes. Sure, you could try and fire the old pope, but good luck: you\u2019ve already told him he\u2019s infallible.<\/p>\n On top of that, the entire nature of papal infallibility was on the line, here. How could you have two dudes who disagree, but still have each of them be right 100 percent of the time? It presented the kind of paradox that, quite frankly, should have awoken the Great Old Ones from their ancient slumbers to rule over Earth and drive humankind to madness.<\/p>\n That didn\u2019t happen, but it was still a bad spot for Western Europe to be in. Europe fractured, with various crowns and kingdoms picking their favorite pope. Some liked the Avignon pope, others liked the Roman pope.<\/p>\n In a stroke of potentially divine intervention, the church\u2019s pope problem was nearly solved when both<\/i> popes eventually died. Alas, letting a conflict simple wane into the ether is not the human way, so the cardinals on each side kept the conflict alive, electing replacements for their dead popes.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> <\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAll right, that\u2019s enough of this,\u201d was the thesis of a church council that met in Pisa in 1409. The idea was to make a compromise: the Avignon and Rome popes would resign, and the council would elect a new pope. That way, neither side would be happy.<\/p>\n They got the ball rolling by electing a new pope first: Antipope Alexander V. They really jumped the gun, though, because the popes in Avignon and Rome, ah, did not<\/i> agree to any of that. Instead, they stayed on as popes, and that\u2019s how you get three<\/i> popes. Or antipopes, depending on who you think is a real<\/i> pope, and who\u2019s a phony.<\/p>\n This schism mess played out like a bad episode of The Three Stooges <\/i>(the Shemp years) for another five years, with popes from Avignon, Rome, and now Pisa all jockeying for control over the Catholic church, becoming stuck together in the narrow door of history, as it were.<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> <\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Finally, in 1414, Alexander V\u2019s successor, John XXIII, tried a radical change in tack: another church council. Kind of like the one in Pisa five years prior. You know, the church council that tried to decrease the number of popes, but instead gave the church a third pope.<\/p>\n This time, though, things were different. The council was led by John XXIII in Pisa, and gained the support of Gregory XII in Rome. That\u2019s two popes on board, leaving the Benedict XIII, in Avignon, the odd pope out.<\/p>\n The next steps play out like some kind of Settlers of Catan murder-suicide gambit where nobody gets to win the game: John XXIII and Gregory XII excommunicate Benedict XIII, totally removing Avignon from the board. Then, John and Gregory both resigned, wiping the slate clean. Only the council was left, and it elected one final pope: Martin V, who would reign from 1417-1431. The schism was over, and the Catholic church never faced any problems ever again. OK?<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n OK, OK, maybe some problems persisted. But let\u2019s not muddy the waters too much. The important takeaway regarding this <\/i>specific issue is that it created lasting problems with the Catholic church.<\/p>\n All this succession drama, where different people and places claimed to be the rightful seats and holders of power\u2014that was nothing new to medieval Europe. That continent has been a factional powder keg through most of its recorded history, and people were already plenty familiar with that brand of instability by the 14th century.<\/p>\n But it was one thing for kings, queens, nations, and city states to duke it out among one another for power. The Catholic church was supposed to be above the fray of worldly concerns. All this mucking around in politics, well, that was the kind of muddy secular pursuit better left to humans than to the infallible voice of god on Earth. When you\u2019ve got two or three popes, well, none of them seem all that special, do they?<\/p>\nWhose bright idea was it to have three popes at the same time?<\/h3>\n
Uh oh, Pope Urban VI was a 14th century papal d**k<\/h3>\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\nAnd that’s how you get two 14th-century popes.<\/h3>\n
The third pope<\/h3>\n
Pain d\u2019Avignon<\/h3>\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\nOne pope to rule them all, one pope to find them in the 14th century<\/h3>\n