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76-588: Gentile Virginio was the son of Napoleone II and Francesca Orsini. On the death of his uncle Carlo (1485), he obtained the reins of his prominent house, at the time an enemy to the King of Naples and an ally of the pontiff. Pope Sixtus IV appointed him general of his forces, which Virginio led to a victory over the Neapolitan army at the Battle of Campo Morto (1482). Almighty due to pontifical benefices, Virginio took advantage of

152-643: A heretic and facilitated his execution; and it ruled on issues of national sovereignty and the rights of pagans and just war in response to a conflict between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , the Kingdom of Poland and the Order of the Teutonic Knights . The council is also important for its role in the debates over ecclesial conciliarism and papal supremacy . Constance issued two particularly significant decrees regarding

228-615: A "mad dog" unworthy to be king. Falkenberg was condemned and imprisoned for such libel. Other opponents included Grand Master's proctor Peter Wormditt, Dominic of San Gimignano, John Urbach, Ardecino de Porta of Novara, and Bishop of Ciudad Rodrigo Andrew Escobar . They argued that the Knights were perfectly justified in their crusade as it was a sacred duty of Christians to spread the true faith. Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly published an independent opinion that attempted to somewhat balance both Polish and Teutonic positions. The council established

304-582: A clear difference in status between those who had converted and those who resisted. The ecclesiastical penalties were directed towards those who were enslaving the recent converts. As a civic patron in Rome, even the anti-papal chronicler Stefano Infessura agreed that Sixtus should be admired. The dedicatory inscription in the fresco by Melozzo da Forlì in the Vatican Palace records: "You gave your city temples, streets, squares, fortifications, bridges and restored

380-540: A hereditary ally and champion of the papacy. The angered Italian princes allied to force Sixtus IV to make peace to his great annoyance. For refusing to desist from the very hostilities that he himself had instigated and for being a dangerous rival to Della Rovere dynastic ambitions in the Marche , Sixtus placed Venice under interdict in 1483. He also lined the coffers of the state by unscrupulously selling high offices and privileges. In ecclesiastical affairs, Sixtus promoted

456-732: A line of Della Rovere dukes of Urbino that lasted until the line expired, in 1631. Six of the thirty-four cardinals that he created were his nephews. In his territorial aggrandizement of the Papal States , his niece's son, Cardinal Raffaele Riario (for whom the Palazzo della Cancelleria was constructed) was suspected of colluding in the failed Pazzi conspiracy of 1478 to assassinate both Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother Giuliano and replace them in Florence with Sixtus IV's other nephew, Girolamo Riario . Francesco Salviati , Archbishop of Pisa and

532-596: A main organizer of the plot, was hanged on the walls of the Florentine Palazzo della Signoria . Sixtus IV replied with an interdict and two years of war with Florence. However, Infessura had partisan allegiances to the Colonna and so is not considered to be always reliable or impartial. The English churchman and Protestant polemicist John Bale , writing a century later, attributed to Sixtus "the authorisation to practice sodomy during periods of warm weather" to

608-479: A patron of the arts, Sixtus was a patron of the sciences. Before he became pope, he had spent time at the very liberal and cosmopolitan University of Padua , which maintained considerable independence from the Church and had a very international character. As Pope, he issued a papal bull allowing local bishops to give the bodies of executed criminals and unidentified corpses to physicians and artists for dissection. It

684-519: A pope" and "true flood of corresponding lampoons, reviling poems, and fictional epitaphs" following his death are at the very least evidence for his contemporaries' opinions about the promotions of these young men. The secular fortunes of the Della Rovere family began when Sixtus invested his nephew Giovanni with the lordship of Senigallia and arranged his marriage to the daughter of Federico III da Montefeltro , duke of Urbino ; from that union came

760-457: A profound and continuous influence on the course of the council in his capacity of imperial protector of the church. An innovation at the council was that instead of voting as individuals, the bishops voted in national blocs. The vote by nations was in great measure the initiative of the English, German, and French members. The legality of this measure, in imitation of the "nations" of the universities,

836-566: A town near Savona . As a young man, Della Rovere joined the Franciscan Order , an unlikely choice for a political career, and his intellectual qualities were revealed while he was studying philosophy and theology at the University of Pavia . He went on to lecture at Padua and many other Italian universities. In 1464, Della Rovere was elected Minister General of the Franciscan order at

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912-462: Is by Antonio del Pollaiuolo ; it was completed by 1493. The top of the casket is a lifelike depiction of the Pope lying in state. Around the sides are bas-relief panels depicting allegorical female figures representing Grammar, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Painting, Astronomy, Philosophy, and Theology—the classical liberal arts , with the addition of painting and theology. Each figure incorporates

988-521: Is of much later provenance than the council itself, however: the Pisan line represented by John XXIII had been considered legitimate not just by most of the Latin church at the time of the council, but also subsequently by Pope Martin V, who referred to John as "our predecessor" in contrast to the other two claimants, who were merely "popes so-called in their obediences". The specific argument distinguishing two parts in

1064-405: Is to be relinquished to the secular court." (Council of Constance Session 15 – 6 July 1415). The secular court sentenced him to be burned to death at the stake. Jerome of Prague , a supporter of Hus, came to Constance to offer assistance but was similarly arrested, judged, found guilty of heresy and turned over to the same secular court, with the same outcome as Hus. Poggio Bracciolini attended

1140-562: The Acqua Vergine as far as the Trevi ..." In addition to restoring the aqueduct that provided Rome an alternative to the river water, which had made the city famously unhealthy, he restored or rebuilt over 30 of Rome's dilapidated churches such as San Vitale (1475) and Santa Maria del Popolo , and he added seven new ones. The Sistine Chapel was sponsored by Sixtus IV, as was the Ponte Sisto ,

1216-622: The Borgia family . Virginio Orsini had two sons, Gian Giordano Orsini , later Prince Assistant to the Papal Throne, by his wife Isabella Orsini (of the Salerno line), and Carlo Orsini , an illegitimate. Pope Sixtus IV Pope Sixtus IV (or Xystus IV , Italian : Sisto IV ; born Francesco della Rovere ; 21 July 1414 – 12 August 1484) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of

1292-592: The College of Cardinals to elect him Pope upon the unexpected death of Paul II at the age of fifty-four. Upon being elected Pope , Della Rovere adopted the name Sixtus, which had not been used since the 5th century. One of his first acts was to declare a renewed crusade against the Ottoman Turks in Smyrna . However, after the conquest of Smyrna, the fleet disbanded. Some fruitless attempts were made towards unification with

1368-631: The Diocese of Samogitia , with its seat in Medininkai and subordinated to Lithuanian dioceses, and appointed Matthias of Trakai as the first bishop. Pope Martin V appointed the Lithuanians Jogaila and Vytautas , who were respectively King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, as vicars general in Pskov and Veliky Novgorod in recognition of their Catholicism. After another round of futile negotiations,

1444-751: The Gallican Church and could never be shifted as long as Louis XI manoeuvred to replace King Ferdinand I of Naples with a French prince. Louis was thus in conflict with the papacy, and Sixtus could not permit it. On 1 November 1478, Sixtus published the papal bull Exigit Sincerae Devotionis Affectus through which the Spanish Inquisition was established in the Kingdom of Castile . Sixtus consented under political pressure from Ferdinand of Aragon , who threatened to withhold military support from his kingdom of Sicily . Nevertheless, Sixtus IV quarrelled over protocol and prerogatives of jurisdiction; he

1520-555: The Gollub War broke out in 1422. It ended with the Treaty of Melno . Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic wars continued for another hundred years. Although Pope Martin V did not directly challenge the decrees of the council, his successor Eugenius IV repudiated an attempt by a faction at the Council of Basel to declare the provisions of Haec sancta and Frequens a matter of faith. His 1439 bull on

1596-466: The Greek Church . For the remainder of his pontificate, Sixtus turned to temporal issues and dynastic considerations. Sixtus IV sought to strengthen his position by surrounding himself with relatives and friends. In the fresco by Melozzo da Forlì , he is accompanied by his Della Rovere and Riario nephews, not all of whom were made cardinals; the protonotary apostolic Pietro Riario (on his right),

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1672-512: The Papal States from 9 August 1471 until his death. His accomplishments as pope included the construction of the Sistine Chapel and the creation of the Vatican Library . A patron of the arts, he brought together the group of artists who ushered the early Renaissance into Rome with the first masterpieces of the city's new artistic age. Sixtus founded the Spanish Inquisition through

1748-643: The Samogitian borders. The tensions erupted into the brief Hunger War in summer 1414. It was concluded that the disputes would be mediated by the Council of Constance. The Polish-Lithuanian position was defended by Paulus Vladimiri , rector of the Jagiellonian University , who challenged legality of the Teutonic crusade against Lithuania . He argued that a forced conversion was incompatible with free will, which

1824-569: The Sistine Bridge (the first new bridge across the Tiber since Antiquity), and the building of Via Sistina (later named Borgo Sant'Angelo ), a road leading from Castel Sant'Angelo to Saint Peter. All of that was done to facilitate the integration of the Vatican Hill and Borgo with the heart of Old Rome. That was part of a broader scheme of urbanization carried out under Sixtus IV, who swept

1900-568: The "Cardinal of Santa Lucia". This prompted the noted historian of the Catholic Church, Ludwig von Pastor , to issue a firm rebuttal. Sixtus continued a dispute with King Louis XI of France , who upheld the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438), which held that papal decrees needed royal assent before they could be promulgated in France. That was a cornerstone of the privileges claimed for

1976-592: The Bishops voted to accept the summons. Prince Malatesta immediately informed the council that he was empowered by a commission from Pope Gregory XII to resign the Papal Throne on the Pontiff's behalf. He asked the council whether they would prefer to receive the abdication at that point or at a later date. The Bishops voted to receive the Papal abdication immediately. Thereupon the commission by Gregory XII authorizing his proxy to resign

2052-581: The Canary Islands, and in the spring of 1478, they sent Juan Rejon with sixty soldiers and thirty cavalry to the Grand Canary, where the natives retreated inland. Sixtus's earlier threats to excommunicate all captains or pirates who enslaved Christians in the bull Regimini Gregis of 1476 could have been intended to emphasise the need to convert the natives of the Canary Islands and Guinea and establish

2128-656: The Church, notably in France, continued to uphold the validity of its decisions long after the event: Haec sancta was reaffirmed in the Gallican Articles of 1682, and even during the First Vatican Council of 1869–70 the French-American bishop of St. Augustine, Florida , Augustin Vérot , attempted to read Haec sancta into the record of deliberations. Despite the apparently definitive rejection of conciliarism at

2204-502: The English, who sent twenty deputies and three bishops. The Spanish deputies (from Portugal, Castile, Navarre and Aragon), initially absent, joined the council at the twenty-first session, constituting upon arrival the fifth nation. Many members of the new assembly (comparatively few bishops, but many doctors of theology and of canon and civil law, procurators of bishops, deputies of universities, cathedral chapters, provosts, etc., agents and representatives of princes, etc.) strongly favored

2280-834: The First Vatican Council, the debate over the status of Constance was renewed in the 20th century. In the 1960s, in the context of the Second Vatican Council , the reformist Catholic theologian Hans Küng and the historian Paul de Vooght  [ cs ] argued in defense of the dogmatic character of Haec sancta , suggesting that its terms could be reconciled with the definition of papal supremacy at Vatican I. Küng's argument received support from prelates such as Cardinal Franz König . Other Catholic historians adopted different views: Hubert Jedin considered Haec sancta to be an emergency measure with no binding validity beyond its immediate context, while Joseph Gill rejected

2356-584: The Italian historian Stefano Infessura , Diary of the City of Rome , Sixtus was a "lover of boys and a sodomite" ( Latin : puerorum amator et sodomita ) awarding benefices and bishoprics in return for sexual favours and nominating a number of young men as cardinals. Sexualised polemics, in truth concerned with politics and not the sexual lives of their victims, were not uncommon during this time; but as Pfisterer (sic) notes "the novel flood of accusations of sodomy against

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2432-606: The Knights. The Dominican theologian John of Falkenberg proved to be the fiercest opponent of the Poles. In his Liber de doctrina , Falkenberg argued that the Emperor has the right to slay even peaceful infidels simply because they are pagans. ... The Poles deserve death for defending infidels, and should be exterminated even more than the infidels; they should be deprived of their sovereignty and reduced to slavery. In Satira , he attacked Polish-Lithuanian King Jogaila , calling him

2508-487: The Papacy on his behalf was read and Malatesta, acting in the name of Gregory XII, pronounced the resignation of the papacy by Gregory XII and handed a written copy of the resignation to the assembly. Former Pope Gregory XII was then created titular Cardinal Bishop of Porto and Santa Ruffina by the council, with rank immediately below the Pope (which made him the highest-ranking person in the church, since, due to his abdication,

2584-742: The Pope to crown him monarch of Naples, the Orsini family hosted his troops in its fortresses and clamored for Alexander VI 's deposition together with the Colonna family and most of the Cardinals. Thus Virginio, who had also been named Constable of Naples, betrayed both the Pope and the Aragonese dynasty of Naples. Hoping to gain benefits for his house by the French king, Virginio followed the French on their campaign in Naples. After

2660-514: The Portuguese the rights to acquire slaves along the African Coast by force or trade. Those concessions were confirmed by Sixtus in his own bull, Aeterni regis , of 21 June 1481. Arguably the "ideology of conquest" expounded in those texts became the means by which commerce and conversion were facilitated. In November 1476, Isabel and Fernando ordered an investigation into rights of conquest in

2736-528: The Romans and of Hungary (and later Holy Roman Emperor), pressed for another council to resolve the issue. That council was called by John XXIII and was held from 16 November 1414 to 22 April 1418 in Constance , Germany. The council was attended by roughly 29 cardinals , 100 "learned doctors of law and divinity", 134 abbots , and 183 bishops and archbishops . Sigismund arrived on Christmas Eve 1414 and exercised

2812-461: The See of Peter in Rome was vacant). Gregory XII's cardinals were accepted as true cardinals by the council, but the members of the council delayed electing a new pope for fear that a new pope would restrict further discussion of pressing issues in the church. By the time the anti-popes were all deposed and the new Pope, Martin V , was elected, two years had passed since Gregory XII's abdication, and Gregory

2888-600: The age of 50. In 1467, he was appointed Cardinal by Pope Paul II with the titular church being the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli . Before his papal election, Cardinal della Rovere was renowned for his unworldliness and had written learned treatises, including On the Blood of Christ and On the Power of God . His reputation for piety was one of the deciding factors that prompted

2964-492: The assembled Bishops, and the King yielded the presidency of the proceedings to the papal legates, Cardinal Giovanni Dominici of Ragusa and Prince Carlo Malatesta . On 4 July 1415 the Bull of Gregory XII which appointed Dominici and Malatesta as his proxies at the council was formally read before the assembled Bishops. The cardinal then read a decree of Gregory XII which convoked the council and authorized its succeeding acts. Thereupon,

3040-456: The authority of the council and thus became a source for ecclesial conciliarism , was promulgated in the fifth session, 6 April 1415: Legitimately assembled in the holy Spirit, constituting a general council and representing the Catholic church militant, it has power immediately from Christ; and everyone of whatever state or dignity, even papal, is bound to obey it in those matters which pertain to

3116-448: The bachelor's, master's, licentiate, and doctoral degrees. The archbishop of Uppsala was also named as the university's Chancellor , and was charged with maintaining the rights and privileges of the university and its members. This act of Sixtus IV had a profound long-term effect on the society and culture of Sweden, an effect which continues up to the present. Sixtus IV became ill on 8 August 1484; this illness worsened on 10 August while

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3192-476: The bishop of Rome. Though the elected Antipope Alexander V and his successor, Antipope John XXIII (not to be confused with the 20th-century Pope John XXIII ), gained widespread support, especially at the cost of the Avignon antipope, the schism remained, now involving not two but three claimants: Gregory XII at Rome, Benedict XIII at Avignon, and John XXIII. Therefore, many voices, including Sigismund, King of

3268-510: The bull Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus (1478), and he annulled the decrees of the Council of Constance . He was noted for his nepotism and was personally involved in the infamous Pazzi conspiracy , a plot to remove the Medici family from power in Florence . Francesco was a member of Della Rovere family, a son of Leonardo della Rovere and Luchina Monleoni. He was born in Celle Ligure ,

3344-459: The church up to the 19th century, present-day Catholic theologians generally regard these decrees as either invalid or as practical responses to a particular situation without wider implications. The council's main purpose was to end the Papal schism which had resulted from the confusion following the Avignon Papacy . Pope Gregory XI 's return to Rome in 1377, followed by his death (in 1378) and

3420-539: The collections of the Capitoline Museums . He also refounded, enriched and enlarged the Vatican Library . He had Regiomontanus attempt the first sanctioned reorganisation of the Julian calendar and increased the size and prestige of the papal chapel choir, bringing singers and some prominent composers ( Gaspar van Weerbeke , Marbrianus de Orto and Bertrandus Vaqueras ) to Rome from the north. In addition to being

3496-473: The constant presence of the King, other rulers demanded that they have a say in who would be pope. Gregory XII then sent representatives to Constance, whom he granted full powers to summon, open, and preside over an Ecumenical Council; he also empowered them to present his resignation of the papacy. This would pave the way for the end of the Western Schism. The legates were received by King Sigismund and by

3572-528: The constitution of the Catholic Church: Haec sancta (1415), which asserted the superiority of ecumenical councils over popes in at least certain situations, and Frequens (1417), which provided for councils to be held automatically every ten years. The status of these decrees proved controversial in the centuries after the council, and Frequens was never put into practice. Though Haec sancta , at least, continued to be accepted as binding by much of

3648-469: The controversial election of his successor, Pope Urban VI , resulted in the defection of a number of cardinals and the election of a rival pope based at Avignon in 1378. After thirty years of schism, the rival courts convened the Council of Pisa seeking to resolve the situation by deposing the two claimant popes and electing a new one. The council claimed that in such a situation, a council of bishops had greater authority than just one bishop, even if he were

3724-625: The council and related the unfairness of the process against Jerome. Paweł Włodkowic and the other Polish representatives to the Council of Constance publicly defended Hus. In 1411, the First Peace of Thorn ended the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War , in which the Teutonic Knights fought the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania . However, the peace was not stable and further conflicts arose regarding demarcation of

3800-463: The council was seemingly first made by the 17th-century Sorbonne theologian André Duval, and remained a fringe view for some time before its vindication within the Catholic Church under the influence of 19th-century ultramontanism . With the support of King Sigismund , enthroned before the high altar of the cathedral of Constance, the Council of Constance recommended that all three papal claimants abdicate, and that another be chosen. In part because of

3876-425: The defeat of the French in the Battle of Fornovo (6 June 1495) and the restoration of the Aragonese in Naples the same month, Virginio was arrested and imprisoned by Ferdinand II of Naples , the new Neapolitan king, with the consent of the Pope. He died probably of poison in the Castel dell'Ovo , in Naples (8 January 1497), while Alexander VI was confiscating the Orsini strongholds in the Papal States in favor of

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3952-461: The disorder which followed Sixtus's death (1484) in order to exterminate the Roman house of Colonna , something he didn't manage completely due to the Sacred College ’s restoring the order. During the reign of Innocent VIII (1484–1492), the Orsini family reached the peak of its power and held significant influence over the Roman Curia through Virginio's cousin, Cardinal Giambattista Orsini of Monterotondo . The ascension of Alexander VI to

4028-469: The dogma of the Immaculate Conception , which had been confirmed at the Council of Basle in 1439, and he designated 8 December as its feastday. In 1476, he issued the apostolic constitution Cum Praeexcelsa , establishing a Mass and Office for the feast. He formally annulled the decrees of the Council of Constance in 1478. The two papal bulls issued by Pope Nicholas V , Dum Diversas of 1452 and Romanus Pontifex of 1455, had effectively given

4104-428: The faith, the eradication of the said schism, and the general reform of the said church of God in head and members. Haec sancta synodus marks the high-water mark of the Conciliar movement of reform. The acts of the council were not made public until 1442, at the behest of the Council of Basel ; they were printed in 1500. The creation of a book on how to die was ordered by the council, and thus written in 1415 under

4180-453: The future Pope Julius II / Giuliano Della Rovere standing before him; and Girolamo Riario and Giovanni della Rovere , behind the kneeling Platina , author of the first humanist history of the popes. His nephew, Pietro Riario, possibly also benefited from his alleged nepotism. He was successively promoted to be a cardinal, the bishop of Florence, the Patriarch of Constantinople and given some 45 additional benefices . Pietro became one of

4256-429: The impression they left on his contemporaries as causal. Criticisms of Pietro 's meteoric rise were not constrained to the charge of benefiting from nepotism as Sixtus IV's nephew, nor to allegations of possibly having been Sixtus IV's illegitimate son. Indeed, Pietro and his brother Girolamo Riario were alleged to have been lovers of Sixtus IV in polemics against the latter. According to the later published chronicle of

4332-419: The long-established markets from the Campidoglio in 1477 and decreed in a bull of 1480 the widening of streets and the first post-Roman paving, the removal of porticoes and other post-classical impediments to free public passage. At the beginning of his papacy, in 1471, Sixtus had donated several historically important Roman sculptures that founded a papal collection of art, which would eventually develop into

4408-412: The matter, Moyses vir Dei , was underwritten by the Council of Florence . In convening the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17), Pope Julius II further pronounced that Frequens had lost its force; Lateran V is sometimes seen as having itself abrogated Haec sancta , though the reading is controversial. Either way, while Rome itself came to reject the provisions made by the council, significant parts of

4484-471: The most notable being Bonaventure (1482); he also beatified one person, John Buoni (1483). In 1477, Sixtus IV issued a papal bull authorizing the creation of Uppsala University – the first university in Sweden and in the whole of Scandinavia . The choice of this location for the university derived from the fact that the archbishopric of Uppsala had been one of the most important sees in Sweden proper since Christianity first spread to this region in

4560-485: The ninth century, as well as Uppsala being long-standing hub for regional trade. Uppsala's bull, which granted the university its corporate rights, established a number of provisions. Among the most important of these was that the university was officially given the same freedoms and privileges as the University of Bologna . This included the right to establish the four traditional faculties of theology , law ( Canon Law and Roman law ), medicine, and philosophy, and to award

4636-399: The oak tree ("rovere" in Italian), symbol of Sixtus IV. The overall program of the panels, their beauty, complex symbolism, classical references and their relative arrangement are compelling and comprehensive illustrations of the Renaissance worldview. None of them actually states how he died. Sixtus created an unusually large number of cardinals during his pontificate (23) who were drawn from

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4712-417: The opening session and condemned in the eighth on 4 May 1415, and Jan Hus , along with their followers. Hus, summoned to Constance under a letter of safe conduct , was found guilty of heresy by the council and turned over to the secular court. "This holy synod of Constance, seeing that God's church has nothing more that it can do, relinquishes Jan Hus to the judgment of the secular authority and decrees that he

4788-444: The papal throne (August 1492) changed the status quo in the Roman politics. Afraid of the new Pope's intentions to curb the power of his audacious barons, Virginio approached King Ferdinand I of Naples , who was suspicious of Alexander's relations to King Ferdinand II of Aragon , his formal overlord. It was with Neapolitan financial help that Virginio bought the Roman castles of Cerveteri and Anguillara from Franceschetto Cybo ,

4864-490: The pope was attending an event in Rome. He felt unwell that evening and was forced to cancel a meeting he was to hold with his cardinals the following morning. The Pope grew weaker during the night of 11 August and he was unable to sleep. Sixtus IV died the following evening – 12 August. The envoy of the Medici family summed up Sixtus' reign in the announcement to his master, "Today at 5 o'clock His Holiness Sixtus IV departed this life – may God forgive him!" Pope Sixtus's tomb

4940-419: The richest men in Rome and was entrusted with Pope Sixtus IV's foreign policy, in addition to being given an unofficial post as the de facto ruler of Rome. He reportedly spent 200,000 gold ducats on foodstuffs and festivities during two years in office. Pietro died prematurely in 1474. Chroniclers of his life seem to regard his death as unnatural and thus connect his alleged grandiose spending habits and

5016-541: The roster of the princely houses of Italy, France and Spain, thus ensuring that many of his policies continued after his death: Pope Sixtus is portrayed by Raoul Bova in the second season, and John Lynch in the third season of the TV series Medici: Masters of Florence . Pope Sixtus is also portrayed by James Faulkner in all three seasons of the Starz TV series Da Vinci's Demons . Council of Constance The Council of Constance ( Latin : Concilium Constantiense ; German : Konzil von Konstanz )

5092-421: The son of Pope Innocent VIII . It seems that Alexander VI had already reached an agreement with Cybo over the two fortresses and their unexpected purchase by his chief vassal with Neapolitan money (40,000 ducats) was considered by the Pope as an act of treason. Nevertheless, Alexander and Ferdinand were reconciled in the summer of 1493. When Charles VIII of France seized Rome in the December 1494, demanding from

5168-435: The title Ars moriendi . Haec sancta is today generally considered invalid by the Catholic Church, on the basis that Gregory XII was the legitimate pope at the time and the decree was passed by the council in a session before his confirmation. On this reading, the first sessions of the Council of Constance represented an invalid and illicit assembly of bishops, gathered under the authority of an antipope. This historiography

5244-562: The voluntary abdication of all three popes, as did King Sigismund. Although the Italian bishops who had accompanied John XXIII in large numbers supported his legitimacy, he grew increasingly more suspicious of the council. Partly in response to a fierce anonymous attack on his character from an Italian source, on 2 March 1415 he promised to resign. However, on 20 March he secretly fled the city and took refuge at Schaffhausen in territory of his friend Frederick, Duke of Austria-Tyrol. The famous decree Haec sancta synodus , which gave primacy to

5320-420: Was already dead. The council took great care to protect the legitimacy of the succession, ratified all his acts, and a new pontiff was chosen. The new pope, Martin V , elected November 1417, soon asserted the absolute authority of the papal office. A second goal of the council was to continue the reforms begun at the Council of Pisa (1409). The reforms were largely directed against John Wycliffe , mentioned in

5396-494: Was an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church that was held from 1414 to 1418 in the Bishopric of Constance (Konstanz) in present-day Germany. This was the first time that an ecumenical council was convened in the Holy Roman Empire . The council ended the Western Schism by deposing or accepting the resignation of the remaining papal claimants and by electing Pope Martin V . It was the last papal election to take place outside of Italy. The council also condemned Jan Hus as

5472-542: Was an essential component of a genuine conversion. Therefore, the Knights could only wage a defensive war if pagans violated natural rights of the Christians. Vladimiri further stipulated that infidels had rights which had to be respected, and neither the Pope nor the Holy Roman Emperor had the authority to violate them. Lithuanians also brought a group of Samogitian representatives to testify to atrocities committed by

5548-501: Was destroyed in the Sack of Rome in 1527 . Today, his remains, along with the remains of his nephew Pope Julius II (Giuliano della Rovere), are interred in St. Peter's Basilica, in the floor in front of the monument to Pope Clement X. A marble tombstone marks the site. His bronze funerary monument, now in the basement Treasury of St. Peter's Basilica , made like a giant casket of goldsmith's work,

5624-464: Was more than questionable, but during February 1415 it carried and thenceforth was accepted in practice, though never authorized by any formal decree of the council. The four "nations" consisted of England, France, Italy, and Germany, with Poles, Hungarians, Danes, and Scandinavians counted with the Germans. While the Italian representatives made up half of those in attendance, they were equal in influence to

5700-495: Was that access to corpses which allowed the anatomist Vesalius , along with Titian 's pupil Jan Stephen van Calcar , to complete the revolutionary medical/anatomical text De humani corporis fabrica . The Pope created 34 cardinals in eight consistories held during his reign, among them three nephews, one grandnephew and one other relative, thus continuing the practice of nepotism that he and his successors would engage in during this period. Sixtus IV named seven new saints, with

5776-672: Was unhappy with the excesses of the Inquisition and condemned the most flagrant abuses in 1482. As a temporal prince who constructed stout fortresses in the Papal States , he encouraged the Venetians to attack Ferrara , which he wished to obtain for another nephew. Ercole I d'Este , Duke of Ferrara , was allied with the Sforzas of Milan , the Medicis of Florence along with the King of Naples , normally

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