Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/629

 THE PAPACY AND ITS OPPONENTS 573 tical benefices, financial exactions, and the drawing of law- suits to Rome. Instead of reducing his own powers in these respects, Martin V gave his attention to the recovery of the Papal States in Italy. When, however, the failure of the crusades against the Hussites necessitated the calling of the Council of Basel, public opinion was again insisting upon a real Eugenius IV reform in the Church in order to prevent the Council of further spread of heresy. The pope was now Basel Eugenius IV (1431-1447). Instead of attending the coun- cil, he tried first to postpone it for eighteen months and then to have it meet in Italy at Bologna. But the council re- fused to disband and reaffirmed the declaration made at Constance of its superiority even to the pope. It then pro- ceeded not only to arrange the compromise with the Utra- quists, but to pass various decrees for the reformation of the Church. In 1433 the pope was forced to make his peace with the council, which was supported by most of the European governments. But when the council continued to pass re- form measures which were directed especially against the Papacy, Eugenius IV broke with it again and held a rival assembly in 1438-39, first at Ferrara and then at Florence, which arranged a fleeting union with the Eastern Church. Meanwhile the Council of Basel had deposed Eugenius; and it continued its sessions until 1449. By that time Eu- rope had grown rather weary of the council and most rulers had decided in favor of Eugenius, who usually in return promised to observe more or less of the reform decrees of Basel, or to share his powers of appointing to ecclesiastical benefices with the local secular rulers. Finally the Council of Basel recognized Eugenius's successor, Nicholas V, as pope and disbanded, and the conciliar movement was over. No further attempt by the Church as a whole to reform itself was made until after the Protestant revolt. Charles VII, however, by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, in 1438, had assured to the French churches free- dom to fill their own church positions by election, and had strictly limited the papal income and appeals to the papal