'The church was then believed to enjoy that perfect peace which every one desired, as well by the election of the late well beloved pope Martin as after his decease by the undoubtedly canonical and legal choice of your holiness to the apostolical throne. But we are now constrained to exclaim with the prophet Jeremiah, 'We have looked for peace, but behold tribulation!' and also with Isaiah, 'We have looked for light, and behold darkness!' for several children of perdition, few in number, and of little authority in the council of Basil, have done their utmost, by force and deceit, to put end to these flattering hopes.
'This council had been transferred from Basil to Florence[23], in the laudable expectation, (so much wished for by every sect of Christians) of the union of the eastern and western churches and went on for some time, through your authority, with vigour.
'When those before mentioned, who had remained at Basil, had failed in their promises to the Greeks, and perceived from the leaders of the oriental church, that the most noble prince and emperor, John Paleologus, together with Joseph, of happy memory, patriarch of Constantinople, and numbers of prelates and dignitaries of the eastern church were about to attend the œcumenical council at the place appointed by your holiness, and that you, with a multitude of prelates and churchmen, were already gone thither at great expense,—in order to prevent the emperor from meeting you at this council, these aforesaid persons published a detestable monitory against your holiness and against our reverend lords the cardinals of Rome.
'This not having the desired effect of putting an end to the intentions of the emperor to come to Florence, they published a suspension of your holiness from the functions of the papacy. Notwithstanding these iniquitous and sacrilegious proceedings, by your labour and care, together with the energy of the council, and by divers arguments and disputations, every attempt was made to remove this schism between the eastern and western churches, which had lasted five hundred years.
'At the head of these disturbers of the union of the church was that most disloyal and diabolical Amadeus, late duke of Savoy, who had long before premeditated what he executed, through the instigation of several accursed men and women, who, laying aside all religion, have been converted to Satan by the wicked delusions of devils, who, in common language, are called Sorceresses Frangules, Straganes, or Vaudoyses, of whom there are numbers in this country.
'By such means, he has for a long time been seduced from the right faith; and in order that he might be elected as the monstrous and deformed head of God's church, he put on the frock of a hermit, aux avichoix[24], of a most false hypocrite, that under cover of sheep's cloathing, he might indulge his wolfish appetite, confident that, in process of time, his adherents in the council of Basil (many of whom were his subjects and the idols of this new Beelzebub) would constitute and elect him pope in opposition to your holiness, the undoubtedly-true vicar of God and legal successor to St Peter, to the profanation and pollution of the Christian church.
'An unbounded ambition has induced the execrable Amadeus to undertake this diabolical project, which, according to the apostle, is the servitude of devils; and by the advice of a blasphemous synagogue of abandoned men, the stinking abomination of all Christendom, who have deputed for electors certain men, or rather devils disguised under the figures of men, who (like the idol of Nebuchadnezzar) elevated themselves in the true church of God.
'This Amadeus, in consequence of his profane election, which he gained by means suited to his vast ambition, felt no remorse, or horror, in clothing himself with a papal vesture, and in exercising the powers of a roman pontiff, causing himself to be reverenced as such.
'He has neither been ashamed nor afraid to send his bulls sealed, to divers parts of the world, in which he styles himself Pope Felix V. proclaiming himself thus the most wretched man on earth, and endeavouring to scatter abroad the poison of his pestilent mind.