Ep. 166: The Great Western Schism (1378-1417) - Popes and antipopes from Urban VI-John XXIII

If you are a longstanding listener to the History of the Germans, you will already know that sometime in the late 14th century the catholic church broke apart into 2 and then 3 different obediences, three popes residing in different places and being recognised by different nations.
But what you may not know is how exactly this had happened. Why did the exact self-same cardinals elect one pope in April 1378 and another one 4 months later? Who was taking the lead in attempts to resolve the crisis and why did all these attempts fail for 40 years? How far did they go in forcing the various papal contenders to come to the negotiation table. How ridiculous were the popes’ attempts to wiggle out of that…
All that we will look into this week in part 1 of the story of the Great Western Schism.
The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (or some claim it as BWV 1031 Johann Sebastian Bach) performed and arranged by Michel Rondeau (windrep.org/Michel_Rondeau) under Common Creative Licence 3.0 (imslp.org/wiki/Flute_Sonata_in_E-flat_major%2C…).
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