178 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
duce reforms into tlie Church. Like Martin V., he was fond of art, a taste he cultivated during his exile in Florence. He succeeded in perpetuating the mediaeval view of the papacy, and in delaying the reformation of the Church which, when it came, involved the schism in Western Christendom which continues to this day.
The Basel council continued to drag on a tedious and uneventful existence. It was no longer in tlie stream of noticeable events. It stultified itself by granting Felix a tenth. In June, 1448, it adjourned to Lausanne. Reduced to a handful of adherents, and weary of being a synonym for innocuous failure, it voted to accept Nicolas V., Eugenius^successor, as legitimate pope, and then quietly breathed its last, April 25, 1449. After courteously revoking his bulls anathematizing Eugenius and Nicolas, Felix alxlicatt'd. He was not allowed to suffer, much less obliged to do penance, for his presumption in exercising papal functions. He was made cardinal-bishop of Sabina, and Apostolic yicar in Savoy and other regions which had recognized his "obedience." Three of his cardinals were admitted to the curia, and d'Aleman forgiven. Fglix died in Gerieyai_1451j^
The Roman Church has not since had an anti-pope,. The Council of Basel concluded the series of the three councils, which had for their chief aims the healing of the papal schism and the reformation of Church abuses. They opened with great promise at Pisa, where a freedom of discussion prevailed unheard of before, and where the universities and their learned representatives appeared as a new element in the deliberations of the Church, ^le healing of the schism was accomplished, but the abuses in the Church went on, and ui^ler the last popes of the fifteenth century became more infamous than they had been at any time before. And yet even in this respect these councils were not in vain, for they afforded a warning to the Protestant reformers not to put their trust
1 In his bull Ut pads, 1449, recognizing the Lausanne act in his favor, Nicolas V. called Ainadeus " his venerable and most beloved brother," and spoke of the Basel-Lausanne synod as being held under the name of an CBCumenical council, suh nomine generalis concilii, Labbseus, XII. 663, 666.
§ 18. THE COUNCIL OF FERRARA-FLORENCE. 179
even in ecclesiastical assemblies. _As_ior the theory of the _supremac^ of general councils which they had maintained with such dignity, it was proudly ^t a,side by later popes in their practice and declared fallacious by the Fifth Lateran in 1516^^ and by the dogma of papal infallibility announced a^^ the Council of the Vatican, 187^.
§ 18. TTie Council of Ferrara-Florence. 1438-1445.
The council of Ferrara witnessed the submission of the Greeks to the Roman see. It did not attempt to go into the subject of ecclesiastical reforms, and thus vie with the synod at Basel. After sixteen sessions held at Ferrara, Eugenius transferred the council, February, 1439, to Florence.^ The reason given was the unhealthy conditions in Ferrara, but the real grounds were the offer of the Florentines to aid Eugenius in the support of his guests from the East and, by getting away from the seaside, to lessen the chances of the Greeks going home before the conclusion of the union. In 1442 the council was transferred to Rome, where it held two sessions in the Lateran. The sessions at Ferrara, Florence, and Rome are listed with the first twenty-five sessions of the council of Basel, and together they are counted as the seventeenth oecumenical council.^
The schism between the East and theWestj dating from the middle of the ninth century, while Nicolas I. ajid rhotius were patriar^J^s respectively of Rome and Constantinople, was widened by the crusades and the conquest of Constantinople, 1204. The interest in a reunion of the two branches of the Church was shown by the discussion at Bari, 1098, when Anselm was appointed to set forth the differences with Greeks, and by the treatments of Thomas Aquinas and other theologians. XhaoJiLy notable. attempt at reunion )vas^
1 Sess. XI. romanum pontificem tanquam super omnia concilia auctoritatem habentem, conciliorum indicendonim trnnsferendorum ac dissolvendorum plenum jus et potestatem habere. This council at the same time pronounced the Council of Basel a "little council," conciliabulum, "or rather a conventicle," conventicula. Mansi, XXXII. 967.
2 Hefele-Kuopfler, Kirchengesch., p. 477.