The Papacy in the Late Middle Ages
Pope Eugenius IV (1431-1447)
A Venetian, Eugenius was pope at a pivotal time in papal history. His predecessor, Martin V, had avoided the conciliarists by a combination of luck and maneuver, but their claims were still in place. The pope was still required to call a council every five years, and the work of reform was still acknowledged to be largely unfinished. In 1431 it was by no means clear that a pope, rather than a council, would rule in Christendom.
By the end of his pontificate, the issue was settled. The Council of Basle had failed, and the rival popes were either gone or neutralized. Eugenius accomplished all this without having to be dictatorial or employ force.
He was born Gabriello Condulmaro, of a wealthy Venetian family. His uncle was Pope Gregory XII. He was sincerely pious. He was no scholar, but he was an accomplished administrator and politician. His great fault was a directness that won him few friends.
The great battle of his pontificate was the one with the Council of Basle. It had actually been called by Martin, so Eugenius could not undo it, but he did everything in his power to undermine it. And when he couldn't undermine it, he ignored it.
He began by dissolving it, just six months after it began. He couldn't get away with no council, so instead he called his own at Bologna for the next year. Bologna was firmly under Eugenius' control, so everyone understood that such a council would merely be a papal pawn. This step only served to make the participants at Basle all the more determined to go forward.
The Council, for its part, was equally obdurate. It proclaimed conciliar supremacy in 1432 and summoned the pope and his cardinals to Basle. With the Emperor clearly on the side of the Council at this point, Eugenius relented. He withdrew his call for a council at Bologna and recognized the one at Basle as legitimate.
Early in 1434, a rebellion broke out in Rome, forcing Eugenius to flee for his life. He was taken under the protection of the Florentines and for some years the papal court was at Florence.
Over the next few years, Basle grew more and more radical. Finally, in 1437, Eugenius transferred it to Ferrara. This was a clever move, as the moderates now left. The most radical remained at Basle, though, which proceeded to issue all sorts of reforms, to depose Eugenius, and even to elect its own pope, Felix V.
Meanwhile, Eugenius now had his own council, firmly under his control. He won a seemingly brilliant victory in 1439 when a delegation from Constantinople recognized the supremacy of the pope. The split in the Church between Roman and Greek was officially healed. Moreover, this union was followed by union with the Armenians, the Jacobites (1443), and the Nestorians (1445). Seemingly, all Christians were now united to opposed the Turks.
It was all illusion. The Greek people utterly refused to accept the Union and there were riots in Constantinople. The other churches were too remote and isolated, and the papacy was in fact too weak, for the union to have any meaning. And Europe was too preoccupied with its own squabbles to make any sort of coherent opposition to the Turks. Still, Eugenius tried. He proclaimed a crusade, but it only resulted in a disastrous defeat at Varna, on the Black Sea, in 1444.
Eugenius spent ten years in Florence, which created even tighter links between that city and Rome. In 1443, the pope finally reached an agreement with Alfonso of Aragon, whom he made King of Naples. With the south finally secure, Eugenius returned to Rome in September 1443.