Council of Constance 1414

Jan Hus’s position is compared to those of Augustine, Bernard and Joachim, on which background questions concerning Hus’s influence on the understanding of the kingdom, the church, its authority and of the apocalyptic themes in the Bohemian Church are examined.

"Crusade or Christianization? The polemic against the Teutonic Knights in light of French travelers’ accounts of the late Middle Ages"

As a continuation of the political unrest opposing the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand-Duchy of Lithuania to the Order of the Teutonic Knights, the conversion of the last Baltic pagans was among the cases debated by the council of Constance (1414–1418). While the Teutonic Knights used to storm Lithuania twice a year, with the help of knights coming from all over Europe, Polish spokesmen intended to prove that no baptism could be achieved this way. The aim of this paper is to use narratives relating the experiences of some French travelers (crusaders or diplomats) who had the opportunity to encounter the Baltic reality. A comparative study of the texts read during the council of Constance
with the writings of Guillaume de Machaut, Philippe de Mézières or Guillebert de Lannoy enable the researcher to see this quarrel in a new light. Looking at these foreign sources leads us to understand that some of the facts used by the Polish and Lithuanian spokesmen in Constance to darken the Teutonic Order’s image were already known by a few people in Western Europe. In particular, Cracovian rector Paulus Vladimiri (Paweł Włodkowic)'s characterization of the Teutonic raids as worldly and disconnected from Christian ideals match the critics formulated by Philippe de Mézières on the noblemen’s crusades. Vladimiri’s questioning of the effectiveness of the Order’s methods to bring baptism to Baltic pagans was also raised in at least two French travelers’ testimonies. However, if the remnant of paganism within the territory held by the Teutonic brothers was noted by some visitors, it was not explicitly disapproved of; for these Frenchmen mostly interested
in chivalric activities and honorable deeds, the conversion of unbelievers was far less important than it was for the Polish and Lithuanian diplomats at Constance. Whilst the same facts were observed by both, their interpretation differed heavily.

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The author analyses the legal action of the Polish delegation against the
Satira by Dominican friar John Falkenberg, which appeared at the Council of Constance (1414–1418). In his work, Falkenberg called for the extermination of the Polish nation as well as the king Wladyslaw Jagiello. He announced that those who would achieve this aim would attain salvation. The Polish delegation, especially Paul Włodkowic and archbishop Nicolas Trąba, made efforts aimed at the recognition of the Dominican’s work as heretical.
Falkenberg was arrested and his work was condemned by the Commission of Faith, however it was not recognized as heretical. The new pope Martin V, in turn, did not want the verdict of the commission to become a resolution of the Council. In response, Poles, despite the threat of anathema, at the last session of the Council, appealed against the Satira to the next council, which undermined the authority of the pope. In the article, the author shows the factors which prevented Poles from achieving complete success in the Falkenberg case. He addresses the question whether the determination of the Polish envoys in the defence of honour of their ruler and state in the final days of the council brought positive results in the years after the council. The author gives consideration to the question whether the actions of Polish diplomacy against ‘Satira’ combined with other steps on the international forum contributed to a certain extent to creating Jagiello’s image as the last apostle of the barbarian Europe.

In this article Ivana Dolejšová (Noble) explores two late medieval concepts of authority, both of which sought to help the Roman Catholic Church out of crisis, but which came into conflict at the Council of Constance in 1415. One preferred the idea of objective rules, granted by agreement of the conciliar fathers, to which the entire church was to be subject; the other subordinated such decisions to the supreme authority of God discernible in the Scriptures and Holy Tradition, and recognisable in human interior life. Thus, a hundred years before Luther the dilemma between what is supreme in the time of crisis, the internal or the external knowledge of the will of God divided the Roman Catholic Church internally. The case of Jan Hus and his opponent Štěpán Páleč is shown as illustrative of the tragedy when obedience to the mediated authority and obedience to the immediate authority of Christ are placed against each other. The article shows that Hus’ accusation of heresy, his martyrdom, and the subsequent protest of the church in Bohemia is underpinned by these competing religious epistemologies, and thus attempts to rehabilitate what was lost.

This is the first book-length study of the influential cultural and
religious exchanges which took place between England and Bohemia
following Richard II’s marriage to Anne of Bohemia in 1382. The
ensuing growth in communication between the two kingdoms initially
enabled new ideas of religion to flourish in both countries but
eventually led the English authorities to suppress heresy. This exciting
project has been made possible by the discovery of new manuscripts
after the opening up of Czech archives over the past twenty years. It is
the only study to analyze the Lollard–Hussite exchange with an eye to
the new opportunities for international travel and correspondence to
which the Great Schism gave rise, and examines how the use of
propaganda and the Council of Constance brought an end to this
communication by securing the condemnation of heretics such as
John Wyclif.

On the 9th of July in 1415, Diego de Moxena, very likely a Castilian Franciscan active in the Council of Constance, wrote a letter to Ferdinand I of Aragon in which he urged him to attend the Council and to reconsider his support to Benedict XIII. Moxena’s missive reveals a particular use of the Liber sine nomine by Petrarch, already noticed by Isaac Vázquez Janeiro, but which calls forth closer attention. The document, being quite an early testimony in the history of Petrarch’s presence in Spain, makes use of the preface and the two first epistles of the Liber sine nomine not as a simple repertoire of maxims but as the very model on which the letter is written; besides, and most extraordinarily, the name of Petrarch is not even once mentioned throughout the text. Apart from that, this paper questions some of the sources put forward by Vázquez Janeiro and offers a new and revised edition of Fray Diego’s letter.

Das Konstanzer Stadtwappen wurde ab 1417 in zwei unterschiedlichen Formen dargestellt - mot und ohne rotes Schildhaupt. Eine formelle "Wappenbesserung" gab es, anders als oft angenommen, nicht. Vielmehr kann in verschiedenen Medien (Münzen, Buchmalerei, Siegel, Architektur) die in und außerhalb von Konstanz entstanden eine allmähliche Durchsetzung der neuen Form beobachtet werden, die zwischenzeit stark von der Abgrenzung zum Stadtherrn motiviert gewesen sein dürfte.