146 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
heed to the action of the Council of Pisa and called a council to meet at Rome, April, 1412. Its sessions were scantily attended, and scarcely a trace of it is left.^ After ordering Wyclif's writings burnt, it adjourned Feb. 10, 1113. John had strengthened the college of cardinals by adding fourteen to its number, among them men of tlie first rank, as D'Ailly, Zabarella of Florence, Robert Hallum, bishop of Salisbury, and Fillastre, dean of Rheims.
Ladislaus,^weary of his treaty with John and ambitious to create a unified Latin kingdom, took Rome, 1413,. giving the city over to sack. The king rode into the Lateran and looked down from his horse on the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul, which he ordered the canons to display. The very^cliurches were j;obbed, and soldiers and their courtesans drank wine out of the sacred chalices. Ladislaus_left Rome, struck with a vicious disease, rumored to be due to poison administered by an apothecary's daughter of Perugia, and died at Naples, August, 1414. He had been one of the most prominent figures in Europe for a quarter of a century and the chief supporter of the Roman line of pontiffs.
Driven from Rome, John was thrown into the hands of Sigismund, who was then in Lombardy. This prince, the grandson of the blind king, John, who was killed at Crecy, had come to the throne of Hungary through marriage with its heiregs. At Ruprecht's death he was elected king of the Romans, 1411. Circumstances and his own energy made him the most prominent sovereign of his age and the chief political figure in the Council of Constance. He lacked high aims and moral purpose, but had some taste for books, and spoke several languages besides his own native German. Many sovereigns liave placed themselves above national statutes, but Sigismund went farther and, according to the story, placed himself above the rules of grammar. In his iirst address at the Council of Constance, so it is said, he treated the Latin word seMsma, schism, as if it were feminine.^ "When Pris-
1 Finke : Forschnnrjen, p. 2 ; Acta cone, p. 108 s(iq.
2 Date nperam, the king said, ut ista nefanda schisma eradicetur. See Wylie, p. 18.
§ 16. THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. 1414-1418. 147
cian and other learned grammarians were quoted to him to show it was neuter, he replied, " Yes ; but I am emperor and above them, and can make a new grammar. " The fact that Sigismund was not yet emperor when the mistake is said to have been made — for he was not crowned till 1133 — seems to prejudice the authenticity of the story, but it is quite likely that he made mistakes in Latin and that the bon-mot was humorously invented with reference to it.
Pressedjby ..the growing troubles in Bohemia over John Huss, Sigismund easily became an active participant in the measures looking towards a new counciL Men distrusted John XXIII,, The only hope of healing the schism seemed to rest with the future emperor. In many documents, and by John himself, he was addressed as " advocate and defender of the Church " ^ — advocatus et defensor ecdesice.'^
JTwo of John's cardinals met Sigismund at Como, Oct. 13, 1413, and discussed the time and place of the new synod. John preferred an Italian city, Sigismund the small Swabian town of Kempten ; Strassburg, Basel, and other places were mentioned, but Constance, on German territory, was at last fixed upon. On Oct. 30 Sigismund announced the approaching council to all the prelates, princes, and doctors of Christendom, and on Dec. 9 John attached his seal to the call. Sigismund and John met at Lodi the last of November, 1413, and again at Cremona early in January, 1414, the pope being accompanied by thirteen cardinals. Thus the two great luminaries of this mundane sphere were again side by side.^ They ascended together the great Torazzo, close to the cathedral of Cremona, accompanied by the lord of the town, who afterwards regretted that he had not seized his opportunity and pitched them both down to the street. Not till the following August was a formal annouucement of the impending
1 See Finke, Forschungen, p. 28. Sigismund gives himself the same title. See his letter to Gregory, Mansi, XXVIII. 3.
- Sigismund, in his letter to Charles VI. of France, announcing the council, had used the mediseval figure of the two lights, d^io luminaria sniper terrain, majus videlicet minus ut in ipsis universalis ecclesica consistere firmamentum in quibiis pontificalis anctoritas et regalis potentin designantur, unaquoe. spiritxialia et altera qua corporalia regerentur. Mansi, XXVIII. 4.