Council of Constance

Meeting in the lakeside city of Constance (Konstanz) in southern Germany from November 1414 to April 1418, this general council of the Catholic Church ended the Western Schism, during which rival popes had divided Latin Christendom for nearly four decades. It removed three competing claimants and elected Martin V, but it also condemned the Czech reformer Jan Hus, whose burning set off decades of conflict in Bohemia. Its claim that a council's authority came directly from Christ made it the high point of the conciliar movement.

Since 1378 there had been two lines of popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon. A council held at Pisa in 1409 tried to depose both and elected a third pope, leaving three claimants: Gregory XII in Rome, Benedict XIII of the Avignon line and John XXIII of the Pisan line. Sigismund, King of the Romans and of Hungary and later Holy Roman Emperor, was among those who pushed for a new council. John XXIII summoned it, and it opened at Constance, in the Holy Roman Empire, on 16 November 1414.

Constance drew around 29 cardinals, 134 abbots, 183 bishops and archbishops and some 100 doctors of law and theology, along with envoys of princes and universities. Sigismund reached Constance on Christmas Eve 1414 and shaped its work as protector of the Church. In an unusual step, members voted not as individuals but in national blocs: England, France, Italy and Germany, with a Spanish nation added after delegates from Castile, Aragon, Portugal and Navarre arrived.

Many members wanted all three popes to give up their claims. John XXIII promised on 2 March 1415 to resign but fled the city in secret on 20 March. On 6 April the council issued the decree Haec sancta, declaring that it held power directly from Christ and that everyone, even a pope, had to obey it in matters of faith, the schism and reform. John was then removed. Gregory XII sent representatives who formally convoked the council in his own name, and on 4 July 1415 his resignation was read out on his behalf. Benedict XIII refused to step aside and was excommunicated in July 1417. On 11 November 1417 the council elected Martin V, ending the schism. A second decree, Frequens, called for councils to meet regularly, but it was never put into practice.

The council also moved against teachings it judged heretical. It condemned the English theologian John Wycliffe on 4 May 1415. Jan Hus, a preacher from Prague influenced by Wycliffe, had come to Constance under a promise of safe conduct, but he was tried, found guilty of heresy and on 6 July 1415 handed over to the secular authorities, who had him burned at the stake. His follower Jerome of Prague met the same fate. Outrage in Bohemia helped lead to the Hussite Wars.

Constance was also asked to settle the dispute between Poland and Lithuania and the Teutonic Knights over Samogitia, which had continued after the Battle of Grunwald and the peace of 1411. The Polish scholar Paulus Vladimiri argued that forced conversion was invalid and that non-Christians had rights that neither pope nor emperor could override. The Dominican John of Falkenberg, who wrote that the Poles deserved death for defending pagans, was condemned and imprisoned. The council created a new diocese for Samogitia, but the wars with the Teutonic Order went on.

Later popes rejected the idea that councils stood above the papacy, and Eugene IV repudiated attempts to make Haec sancta binding doctrine. Yet the decree long kept supporters, especially in France, and theologians were still debating its status in the 1960s.

Our 1400 map shows the Holy Roman Empire, which included Constance, and the realms of Poland, Lithuania and the Teutonic Order around the time of the council. For the region today, see Germany.