In July 1415 Huss was burned alive, crying aloud with steadfast courage as those about him urged him to recant, ‘Lo! I am prepared to die in that truth of the Gospel which I taught and wrote.’ Lest he should be revered as a martyr, the ashes of Huss were flung into the river, his very clothes destroyed; but measures that had prevailed when an Arnold of Brescia preached to a few, some two centuries before, were unavailing when a John Huss died for the faith of a nation. Sigismund kept his council together, but he paid for his broken word in the flame of hatred that his accession in 1419 aroused in Bohemia, and which lasted during the seventeen years of what are usually called the Hussite Wars.

The Council of Constance had condemned heresy: it succeeded in deposing three rival popes, and by its united choice of a new pope, Martin V, it put an end to the long schism that had divided the Church. The question of reform, the most vital of all the problems discussed, resulted in such controversy that men grew weary, and it was postponed for settlement to another council that the new pope pledged himself to call in five years.

Such were the practical results of the first real attempt of the Church to solve the problems of mediaeval times, not by the decision of one man, whether pope or emperor, but by the voice of Christendom at large. If the attempt failed the difficulties in the way were so great that failure was inevitable.

The Conciliar Movement was modern in the sense that it was an appeal to the judgement of the many rather than of a single autocrat; but it proved too mediaeval in actual construction and working for the growing spirit of nationality that brought its prejudices and misunderstandings to the council hall. English and French, Germans and Bohemians, Italians and men from beyond the Alps, were too mutually suspicious, too assured of the righteousness of their own outlook, to be able to sacrifice their individual, or still more their national, convictions to traditional authority. The day for world-rule, as mediaeval statesmen understood the term, had passed; and the Council of Constance was a witness to its passing.

Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. [368–73].

Dante Alighieri1265–1321
King Robert of Naples1309–43
Joanna I of Naples1343–82
Ladislas of Naples1386–1414
Joanna II of Naples1414–35
St. Catherine of Siena1347–80
Pope Gregory XI1371–8
Pope Urban VI1378–89
Pope Clement VII1378–94
Pope Martin V1417–31

XXII
PART I. THE FALL OF THE GREEK EMPIRE

The final failure of Christendom to preserve Eastern Europe from the infidel may be traced back to the disastrous Fourth Crusade[48] in the thirteenth century, when Venice, for purely selfish reasons, drove out the Greek rulers of Constantinople, and helped to establish a Latin or Frankish Empire. This Empire lasted for fifty-seven years, weak in its foundation, and growing ever weaker like a badly built house, ready to tumble to the ground at the first tempest. It pretended to embrace all the territory that had belonged to its predecessors, but many of the feudal landowners whom it appointed were never able to take possession of their estates that remained under independent Greek or Bulgarian princes, while in Asia Minor the exiled Greek emperors ruled at Nicea, awaiting an opportunity to cross the Bosporus and effect a triumphant return.