Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378-1417 (review)

As Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski points out in Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378-1417, for most readers the 'calamitous' century conjures up the Hundred Years War. The Great Schism, in contrast, has little hold on the modern imagination. And yet, as anyone who has paged through late-fourteenth and early-fifteenth-century chronicles knows, the phenomenon occupied a central position among the period's many causes for concern. Leafing through a chronicle like that of Michel Pintoin, otherwise known as the Monk of St-Denis, one finds the story of the Armagnac-Burgundian war interrupted again and again by long sections devoted to what appears on the surface to be the much less compelling story of the dual papacy. But Blumenfeld-Kosinski's study brings the Great Schism and its effect on the medieval population to life through a reconstruction of what she calls the phenomenon's imaginaire, the sets of images through which different groups conceptualized and analysed the Schism. The writings of 'poets, saintly visionaries, and prophets', the 'groups that spoke most forcefully and most imaginatively about the Schism outside the "official" literature associated with this crisis' (p. 12), form the object of her investigation, which she carries out with the aim of uncovering the 'subjectivity of the people affected by the Great Schism as it manifests itself in texts and images' (p. 14).

Before entering into the heart of the matter, Blumenfeld-Kosinski usefully and lucidly explains in an introductory chapter how such a thing came to pass in the first place. The problem began with the departure in 1377 of Pope Gregory XI from Avignon, where the popes had resided since 1309. Following Gregory's death in 1378, the cardinals, fearing the Roman mobs, hastily elected the Italian Urban VI. But a group of French cardinals decided that his election had been forced and was therefore invalid, electing Clement VII instead and thereby initiating the Great Schism. Clement VII thus became the first of the Avignonese anti-popes (not to be confused with the Avignonese popes whose reigns had been uncontested). England, Flanders, and most of the Italian and German states supported Urban, while France Spain, and Scotland, and all the nations rallied behind Clement VII. On the Roman side, Boniface succeeded Urban VI upon the latter's death in 1389. On the Avignon side, the death of anti-pope Clement VII in 1394 might have brought the Schism to an end, but the French cardinals rapidly elected Benedict XIII, prolonging the situation. Although heavily pressured to abdicate, Benedict XIII stubbornly clung to his office, even when the Council of Pisa of 1409 deposed both him and his Roman counterpart to elect Alexander V. Even this did not resolve the problem; the Church now had three popes. The conflict finally ended with the Council of Constance (1414), which elected Martin V.

Blumenfeld-Kosinski then proceeds to show how the conflict was received by contemporaries. In chapter one, she sets out the particularities of the Great Schism vis-à-vis other schisms (why was this one the 'Great' one?) by comparing it to the schism of 1155. Two important characteristics of the Great Schism emerge from this first chapter. First, in contrast with earlier schisms, that of 1378-1417 was commented upon by a huge and socially diverse group of people. The many possibilities for lay involvement in religion that had proliferated since the thirteenth century guaranteed that individuals beyond the confines of religious institutions would respond to the crisis of the Church. Furthermore, the divisions of this Great Schism roiled the population of the various kingdoms involved down to the level of the parish. In any given parish, lay people might have to choose between rival popes. This forced taking of sides involved people in a much more intimate way in the struggle than the schism of 1155...