History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, Volume II

The Western Schism has ended, but the Catholic Church stands at a crossroads. Mandell Creighton's second volume traces the papacy through its most turbulent decades: a period of desperate reform, bitter schism, and the collision of religious idealism with raw political power. The narrative opens with the Council of Constance's dramatic condemnation of Jan Hus, whose burning at the stake ignites a Bohemian civil war that will rage for fifteen years. We witness the painstaking restoration of papal unity, as Gregory XII abdicates and the Council elevates Oddone Colonna as Martin V, only to watch the stubborn Antipope Benedict XIII flee to Spain and die still claiming the throne of Peter. The action then shifts to Basel, where a new Council attempts to reform the Church and suppress the Hussite heresy, only to be thwarted at every turn by the obstinate Pope Eugenius IV. The volume climaxes at Florence, where Eugenius dreams of glory in reuniting the Eastern and Western Churches, while the Greek Emperor Constantine XI cares only about securing military aid against the Turks. The union is signed but collapses the moment the Emperor returns home. Constantinople will fall in 1453, and the Churches will remain divided to this day. Creighton renders this fraught era with scholarly precision, showing a Church too consumed by its own power struggles to recognize the forces that will soon shatter it.