Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/285

 of a French rival drew away from Rome all the cardinals who were of French origin, and Urban immediately created twenty-six more. He is said to have offered the hat to Bishop Courtenay amongst others; but Courtenay probably remembered the fate of Archbishop Langham twenty years ago, and preferred the reversion of the English primacy to a forced residence at Rome.

The long and lamentable story of the papal Schism, of the bloodshed and abominations of various kinds to which it gave birth, and of the effect which it produced on the Western Churches, has often been written. It is necessary to a good understanding of any epoch of ecclesiastical history, at any rate within fifty years of the fatal dissension, that the reader should see each particular event in the strong relief created by this pontifical rivalry, as against the lurid and glaring background of a coarsely painted picture. The battles of the Popes and the recriminations of their supporters were daily present in the minds and ears of all men, dominating everything which they thought and said and did. Foxe cites in his own language a passage from one of the many histories which had even then been written on the subject: "As touching the pestilent and most miserable Schisme, it would require heere another Iliade to comprehend in order all the circumstances and tragic all parts thereof, what trouble in the whole Church, what parts taken in every countrey, what apprehending and imprisoning of priests and prelates, taken by land and sea, what shedding of blood did follow thereof. . . what cardinals were racked and