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The Great Schism Essay

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The crises of the Catholic Church were the Great Schism. It started five months after Urban’s election of the thirteen cardinals, all but one of them French, formed their own conclave and elected Pope Clement, a cousin of the French king. The both of them insisted they had voted for Urban in fear of their lives, having been surrounded by a Roman mob demanding the election of an Italian pope. This became a scandal to Christendom, and the allegiance to the two papal courts divided along political lines. Like England and its allies acknowledge d Urban VI, while France and its orbit supported Clement VII.
Now they had to make approaches to end the schism. They first thought to attempt to win the mutual cession of both popes, so it would clear the way for the election of a new one. The other idea was to secure the resignation of the one in favor of the other. But at the end, both of the approaches failed and now each pop considered himself fully legitimate, and too much was at stake for either to make a magnanimous concession. They realized that there was now only one way, to go to a special church council empowered to depose of them both.
In legal terms, only a pope was allowed to convene and dissolve a church council and the competing popes weren’t going to summon a council they knew …show more content…

In the eyes from the pope, he thought of the church threatened both its political and religious unity. Now the cardinals that were representing both popes convinced another council on their own authority in Pisa in the year 1409. There is when they deposed both the Roman and the Avignon popes and elected a singular pope, Alexander V. Then the council said that neither pope accepted its action, and Christendom suddenly faced the spectacle of three contending popes. This Pisan successor John XXIII, the popes from Rome and Avignon refused to step down from the

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