Concerning the overthrow of these three popes the same author gives this statement: “In this year, Pope John XXIV., having been convicted in fifty-four articles, of heresies, crimes, and base villainies, was deposed from papal dignity, by the council of Constance, and given in custody to the palsgrave. When these articles were successively read to him, he sighed deeply and replied, that he had done something still worse, namely, that he had come down from the mountains of Italy, and committed himself under the jurisdiction of a council, in a country where he possessed neither authority nor power.
After he had been in confinement at Munich three years, to the astonishment of every one, he was released, and made cardinal and bishop of Tusculum, by Pope Martin V., whose feet he submissively came to kiss at Florence. Shortly afterwards, in the year 1419, he died there, and was buried with great pomp and solemnity in the church of St. John the Baptist.
After he had thus received his sentence, the other two popes were summoned; of whom Gregory XII., who resided at Rimini, sent Charles Maletesta thither, with instructions to abdicate voluntarily in his name the papal dignity; in reward of which he was made a legate in Marca d’Ancona, where he subsequently died of a broken heart, at Racanay, a seaport on the Adriatic Sea.
Benedict XIII., the pope at Avignon, remained obstinate in his purpose, so that neither entreaties nor threats, nor the authority of the council could move him, to submit, or lay down his office, for the tranquillity of all Christendom. See the aforementioned Chronicle, 15th Book, for the year 1415. page 773. col. 2. and 774. col. 1.
Note.—Pope Benedict XIII., through the incitation of the King of France, and the University of Paris, sent his legates to Pope Boniface IX.; but they received as an answer, that their master could not properly be called a pope, but an antipope; whereupon they refuted him. See De Ondergang, 15th Book, Anno 1404. page 757. col. 1.
Here it is proper to note what the last mentioned author narrates concerning the plurality of the popes, who existed at one and the same time.
“Besides this,” he writes, “It is related that there were sometimes four, sometimes three, and sometimes two popes at the same time.”
Victor, Alexander III., Calixtus III., and Paschalis, possessed together the papal authority, at the time of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa; and also Benedict VIII., Sylvester II., and Gregory V. were popes together, till finally, Henry III. deposed them.
Likewise Gregory XII., Benedict XIII., and Alexander V. arrogated, by excommunications, the papal authority.[60]
Further, how Stephen III. and Constantine, Sergius III. and Christophorus, Urbanus V. and Clemens VII., Eugene IV. and Clemens VIII., and many other popes, whom to mention it would take too long, strove and contended with each other for the triple crown, their own historians have sufficiently elucidated. See in the 9th Book of the Chronicle for the year 891. page 315. col 2. from the tract, Den Onpartijdigen Rechter.