last, a compromise permitted enactment of some reforms before a special electoral
college began its conclave. The chief of these decrees, Frequens (1417), mandated
holding a regular series of councils to supervise the papacy. Afterward, the electors chose
Oddo Colonna, who became Martin V (r. 1417–31). Martin negotiated a series of
concordats with the nations present in Constance—English, French, German, Spanish and
Italian—which promised further reforms and other concessions. He followed the dictates
of these pacts and those of the Council of Constance throughout his reign, but he
frustrated the efforts of some present at the Council of Pavia-Siena (1423–24) to further
curb the papacy’s power. An impression that Martin opposed reform and conciliar
authority, which was especially prevalent at the University of Paris, together with
political problems in Italy and the Hussite domination of Bohemia, would cause problems
for his successor, Eugenius IV (r. 1431–47).
Eugenius inherited the most recent unsuccessful crusade against the Hussites and a
council summoned to meet at Basel. The pope wished to transfer the assembly to Italy to
negotiate reunion with the Greeks; but the papal legate, Giuliano Cesarini, thought
negotiations with the Hussites more crucial The assembly resisted transfer or dissolution,
restating Frequens and then Haec sancta as a justification. The council flourished as it
pursued successfully an agreement with the more moderate party among the Hussites.
Eugenius, hard pressed by foes in Italy and a refugee from riots in Rome, was forced to
authorize continuation of the council.
These confrontations led to a flurry of apologetic writing. The most important work
was Nicholas of Cusa’s De concordantia catholica, which balanced hierarchy and
consent through a mechanism for the representation of lower ranks at each higher level of
the ecclesiastical apparatus. The general council, in a spirit of concord, would reform the
church. Nicholas, however, was not interested in any confrontation of pope and council.
Instead, when the assembly debated making Eugenius’s newly appointed presidents take
the oath of incorporation, binding them and their master to obey conciliar decrees, he
sided with Cesarini, who sought a compromise solution of the problem.
The council refused their advice, and the pope soon gave up any effort to be
accommodating. The council’s decision to curtail the curia’s collection of annates
without any compensation only made matters worse. So did Eugenius’s inability to
understand the conciliar viewpoint. The pope found few allies at Basel outside of
Dominicans like Juan de Torquemada, who were confronted with renewed attacks on the
privileges of the friars. A fight over the site of a council of union with the Greeks,
however, drove Cesarini, Nicholas of Cusa, and others into the papal camp. The new
leadership of the council derived largely from France and Savoy; and their justifications,
in purely theological terms, were prepared by John of Segovia, who represented the
theological conciliarism of Gerson. The final break came when the assembly insisted that
the council meet in Avignon or Savoy, over the objections of both Eugenius and the
Greeks.
Eugenius replied by calling a council to meet in Ferrara; and the Greeks, along with
the minority party from Basel, went there. Later, at Florence (1439), the council would
decree a short-lived union between East and West, which acknowledged papal primacy
over the entire church. Basel would respond by declaring conciliar supremacy a dogma,
decreeing the deposition of Eugenius and electing as pope Amadeus VIII of Savoy, who
became Felix V.Eugenius condemned his opponents in the bull Moyses, which dismissed
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