The Battle for Christendom
The Council of Constance, the East-West Conflict, and the Dawn of Modern Europe
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The fifteenth century Council of Constance ends the Catholic Church’s papal schism and sets Europe on its path to the Renaissance in this in-depth history.
At the dawn of the fifteenth century, the Ottoman Empire posed an existential threat to Christian Europe. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church was in chaos, with three Popes claiming the Chair of Saint Peter and dangerous stirrings of reform. In an attempt to save the Christian world, Emperor Sigismund of the Holy Roman Empire called the nations of Europe together for a conference at Constance, beside the Rhine.
In The Battle for Christendom, historian Frank Welsh demonstrates that the 1414 Council of Constance was one of the most pivotal events in European history. The last event of the medieval world, the months of fierce debate and political maneuvering heralded the dawn of the Renaissance and the rise of humanism. Yet it would also bring about darker events, as the first moments of the Protestant Reformation began with the burning of the Czech divine, Jan Hus.
The story rises to a climax on the battlements of Constantinople in 1453 where, despite all of Sigismund’s attempts to repel the Ottomans, the East rose up once more. In Welsh’s lively retelling, The Battle for Christendom is an enthralling history that holds lessons for our own times of international turmoil.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the beginning of the 15th century, Christendom was in full decline, attacked from the outside by Islam and disrupted from within by schism regarding the office of the Pope. Until the Council of Constance (1414 1418), three popes Gregory XII in Rome, Benedict XIII in Avignon and John XXIII in Germany ruled Christendom, provoking schism. In 1387, Sigismund, already the king of Czechoslovakia, became the Holy Roman Emperorthrough his political savvy and military acumen, and with the help of John XXIII convoked the Council of Constance. The council not only ended the schism but also returned the papacy to Rome for good electing Martin V as pope and condemned the heresies of reformers John Wycliffe and Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake for his positions on the Eucharist. Although the book offers a useful portrait of Sigismund, a little-known but important figure in church history, it has a plodding, workmanlike style and offers little new insight into the work of the council itself.
