Constantine I the Great 193church, surrounded by a crowd of clerics and LAITY.
Among these bishops, abbots, and scholars from the uni-
versity, there were ardent defenders of the doctrine of
conciliarism or limiting papal power. On the council’s
agenda, along with ending the schism, were the defense
of the faith against the heresy of John WYCLIFFEand John
HUSand the badly needed reform of the church.
John XXIII considered himself the legitimate pontiff,
and came quickly into conflict with the assembly, in par-
ticular with Cardinal Pierre d’AILLY. Voting by national
groups for the decree Haec sanctain 1415, the council
affirmed its sovereign authority, to which even the pope
had to submit. The Council of Constance deposed Pope
John XXIII in May 1415 as well as the AVIGNONpope,
Benedict XIII (r. 1394–1417, d. 1423), and accepted the
abdication of the Roman pontiff Gregory XII (r. 1406–15,
d. 1417) in July 1415. The council thus restored the
church’s unity, at least in terms of the papacy.
The council was actually dominated by moderates,
among them the canonist Francesco ZABARELLAand the
chancellor of the University of PARIS, John GERSON.They
believed the pope and council should govern the church
in a complementary association. A decree was passed in
October 1417 for conciliar meetings at regular and fixed
intervals to ensure the continuation of the plan to limit
the powers of the pope.
The council then decided to hold a conclave in
which six members of each nation would elect a new
pope. On November 11, 1417, the choice fell on Oddo
Colonna, who took the name MARTINV, finally ending
the Great Schism. Martin closed the assembly on April
22, 1418. Despite having condemned 45 propositions of
John WYCLIFFEand burned two heretics, Jan HUSin 1415
and Jerome of PRAGUE (ca. 1365–1416) in 1416, the
Council of Constance failed to carry out a great moral
reform of the church or change the control of church
government from a papal monarchy to a wider base. It
ended on April 22, 1418.
Further reading:Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of
the Ecumenical Councils, (London: Sheed and Ward,
1990), 1.403–451; Christopher M. D. Crowder, Unity,
Heresy, and Reform, 1378–1460: The Conciliar Response to
the Great Schism(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977);
Louise Ropes Loomis, The Council of Constance, the Unifi-
cation of the Church,ed. and annotated by John Hine
Mundy and Kennerly M. Woody (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1961).
Constance of Hauteville(1154–1198) daughter of
Roger II, king of Sicily; wife of Emperor Henry VI
Constance was born in 1154. After the death of her
nephew WILLIAMII THEGOODin 1189, she helped her
husband, Henry VI (1190–97), the HOHENSTAUFEN
emperor, whom she had married in 1186, to assert their
rights over the kingdom of SICILY. The rule there was
contested by Tancred of Lecce (d. 1194), who even took
her prisoner in 1191. After the death of Tancred and on
the day after her husband’s coronation as king in 1194, she
became, in a more or less public way, the mother at age 41
of the future FREDERICKII at Iesi on December 26, 1194.
On Henry’s death on September 28, 1197, she kept the title
of empress but was interested solely in Sicily. She died on
November 27–28, 1198, before concluding an agreement
with Pope INNOCENTIII to clarify Sicily’s dependence on
the Holy See, but she had had time to gain the pope’s pro-
tection of the rights of her young son. There was a long
period of chaos until Frederick reached his majority in- She was buried in the cathedral at Palermo.
Further reading: David Abulafia, Frederick II: A
Medieval Emperor(London: Penguin, 1988); Jane Sayers,
Innocent III: Leader of Europe, 1198–1216 (New York:
Longman, 1994); Mary Taylor Simeti, Travels with a
Medieval Queen: The Journey of a Sicilian Princess(Lon-
don: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002).
Constantine I the Great(Flavius Valerius) (ca. 280–
337)first Christian emperor of the Roman Empire
Born about 280 in the Roman province of Moesia, Con-
stantine was the son of the emperor Constantius I
Chlorus (ca. 250–306) and Helena (ca. 250–ca. 330), the
daughter of a Christian innkeeper. After growing up
mostly in Britain, at the death of his father, he took com-
mand of a Roman army there in 306. On July 15, 306, he
was given the title Caesar and became one of the four
imperial rulers of the empire, the tetrarchy. In 312 he
defeated one rival, Maxentius (r. 307–312), in a battle at
the Milvian Bridge over the Tiber River in Rome. This
was a decisive point in his political career and an impor-
tant event in the history of Christianity.EMPEROR
His biographer, Bishop EUSEBIOSof Caesarea, related the
story that at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constan-
tine’s whole army had a vision of a cross in the sky and a
voice declared, “With this sign, you shall conquer.” Con-
stantine then ordered that the sign be put on the soldiers’
shields and he won the battle. Some of his army had
already adopted Christianity, which he had tolerated in
the regions he controlled, but he himself still adhered to
the cult of the Sun. In 313 he issued the Edict of Milan,
which made Christianity a legal religion within the
empire. Whether sincere about Christianity himself, he
exploited his Christian sympathies to win the support of
the large Christian population in the eastern provinces of
the empire; that support enabled him to defeat his last
rival, Licinius (r. 308–324), his onetime ally and the
coemperor in the East. Constantine was now the sole
emperor. He consolidated this power further by making
Christian bishops imperial officials. Christianity became
an ardent pillar of his regime that helped him keep track