Continues from the
previous post –
The inquisitor's
announcement of the penalties imposed provides an exciting public
spectacle, with the condemned on parade to hear their fate.
The
inquisitor may prescribe penalties such as fasting, pilgrimage, the
wearing of a yellow cross, the confiscation to property (forcing them
to stay poor), flogging, or imprisonment for any period, including
even life. But he cannot impose a death sentence, on the grounds that
the church does not shed blood.
Instead, those condemned to death are handed over to the temporal (king's) authorities - who know their Christian duty and are happy to comply. Death by burning at the stake, long the traditional punishment for heresy has the added attraction of maintaining - in a very literal sense - the fiction that no blood is being shed.
The
medieval Inquisition is mainly used against the Cathars
in France, though the
burning of both John Huss
and Joan
of Arc
follow investigations by
inquisitors. The inquisitorial procedure becomes firmly established
in the two centuries from Gregory IX's creation of the Inquisition in
the 13th century to the deaths of Huss and Joan of Arc in the 15th.
From
1048 to 1257, the papacy experienced increasing conflict with the
leaders and churches of the Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine
Empire. The latter culminated in the East–West Schism, dividing the
Western Church and Eastern Church. From 1257–1377, the pope, though
the bishop of Rome, resided in Viterbo, Orvieto, and Perugia, and
then Avignon. The return of the popes to Rome after the Avignon
Papacy was followed by the Western Schism: the division of the
western church between two and, for a time, three competing papal
claimants. During
this period, seven popes, all French, resided in Avignon starting in
1309: Pope Clement V (1305–14), Pope John XXII (1316–34), Pope
Benedict XII (1334–42), Pope Clement VI (1342–52), Pope Innocent
VI (1352–62), Pope Urban V (1362–70), Pope Gregory XI (1370–78).
In 1378, Gregory XI moved the papal residence back to Rome and died
there.
After
seventy years in France the papal curia was naturally French in its
ways and, to a large extent, in its staff. Back in Rome some degree
of tension between French and Italian factions was inevitable. This
tension was brought to a head by the death of the French pope Gregory
XI within a year of his return to Rome. The Roman crowd, said to be
in threatening mood, demanded a Roman pope or at least an Italian
one. In 1378 the conclave elected an Italian from Naples, Pope Urban
VI. His intransigence in office soon alienated the French cardinals.
And the behaviour of the Roman crowd enabled them to declare, in
retrospect, that his election was invalid, voted under duress.
The
French cardinals withdrew to a conclave of their own, where they
elected one of their numbers, Robert of Geneva. He took the name
Clement VII. By 1379, he was back in the palace of popes in Avignon,
while Urban VI remained in Rome.
This
was the beginning of the period of difficulty, from 1378 to 1417,
which Catholic scholars refer to as the "Western Schism"
or, "the great controversy of the antipopes" (also called
"the second great schism" by some secular and Protestant
historians). When parties within the Catholic Church were divided in
their allegiances among the various claimants to the office of pope
the Council of Constance, in 1417, finally resolved the controversy
in a very unusual way.
For
nearly forty years, the Church had two papal curias and two sets of
cardinals, each electing a new pope for Rome or Avignon when death
created a vacancy. Each pope lobbied for support among kings and
princes who played them off against each other, changing allegiance
according to political advantage.
In
1409, a council was convened at Pisa to resolve the issue. The
council declared both existing popes to be schismatic (Gregory XII
from Rome, Benedict XIII from Avignon) and appointed a new one,
Alexander V. But the existing popes had not been persuaded to resign
so the church had three popes.
Another council was
convened in 1414 at Constance. In March 1415 the Pisan pope, John
XXIII, fled from Constance in disguise; he was brought back a
prisoner and deposed in May. The Roman pope, Gregory XII, resigned
voluntarily in July.
Continues in next
post –
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