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The Battle for Christendom: The Council of Constance, the East-West Conflict, and the Dawn of Modern Europe
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.
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.
372 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 15, 2019
The 14th century in Europe was a crazy period of history in which stuff happened and then more stuff happened to the point where it is very hard to say much except that. This book is a pleasing piece of investigation, teasing out the details of a few very confusing situations and making them memorable. It places them in the context of a wider history - requiring a blur of names and incidents which are instantly forgettable – but for its chosen topics it shines a bright torchlight into the darkness. Best of all, it places Hungary and Bohemia (Czechoslovakia) at the heart of Europe, facing east towards the Islamic world, with faraway places like England, France and Portugal at the margins of the story, minor countries distracted with their own parochial squabbles from the truly important events of the period.
The major storyline concerns the attempted resolution of a great schism in the Catholic Church. Western Christianity was entirely Catholic then, a single faith imposed by force on the entire population, with religious dissent punished severely, continually expanding through the device of crusades and the military agency of fanatical orders of religious knights. To the east, vast territories had been lost to Islam, which was still expanding into European territories, ultimately consuming the Eastern (Byzantine) Roman Empire in its entirety, but the major crusades in this period (and a great many trivial ones) were actually fought within Europe, whereas securing an effective, united front against Islam was proving impossibly difficult. Hungary in the event served as the front line behind which Western Christianity would survive and for some deccades its impressive king, Sigismund, played a huge role in trying to resolve European differences with a view to securing better support.
The real threat to the survival of Western Christianity was self inflicted. Over centuries, the church had acquired immense wealth – in Bohemia, for instance, Europe’s wealthiest country, owning over half of all the land – and its corruption was a general scandal. Movements for reform were sporadic and largely fruitless. At the start of the period of this book, the papacy was not important to the Church, but was a minor bishopric in a city that had long lost its status. Rome was a ruined city, difficult to govern and its only real asset was the possession of valuable relics and graves. The book describes the emergence of a strengthened papacy, to some degree serving the needs of emerging nation states, especially France, but for that reason subject to politically driven schisms which resulted, ultimately, in the existence of three rival popes, each with the allegiance of its own group of nation states. This reinforced the implacable rivalries amongst European rulers, and indeed only England and Portugal actually enjoyed stable national borders.
At the Council of Constance, Sigismund achieved the remarkable diplomatic feat of removing all three popes and establishing one replacement who was generally accepted. The book gives great detail of the events surrounding this achievement. Sigismund was less interested in matters of religion and theology, however, and while arrangements were put in place to clarify the roles and rights of secular rulers in each country, and the Church’s ability to tax the people was restrained, though by no means eliminated, the papacy itself remained incorrigibly corrupt and venal, and the need for religious renewal was not addressed. As a result, scope remained for religious dissent and occasionally fanaticism, and the first place in which this was manifested was in Bohemia.
The Council had taken the step of condemning a perfectly orthodox catholic dissident, Hus, as a heretic, and his execution had the unsurprising effect of creating a martyr and a religious movement in his home country that also coincided with the emergence of a national movement of Czech patriotism, in opposition to German and other influences. Attempts to suppress this movement for religious reasons – through no less than five successive crusades – and for secular reasons – to affirm Sigismund’s right to rule this wealthy kingdom – all failed by virtue of the Hussites’ remarkable military methods, and the book gives a lively account of the Hussite wars and the ingenious war-wagons that enabled an army of peasants to triumph over the best armed professional armies of the day. Unable to defeat them, Sigismund achieved – again – a diplomatic rather than military solution which secured his throne but left in place a non-conforming branch of the catholic religion (repeatedly condemned by popes as heretical) that became the basis for a protestant reformation a century later.
The major storyline concerns the attempted resolution of a great schism in the Catholic Church. Western Christianity was entirely Catholic then, a single faith imposed by force on the entire population, with religious dissent punished severely, continually expanding through the device of crusades and the military agency of fanatical orders of religious knights. To the east, vast territories had been lost to Islam, which was still expanding into European territories, ultimately consuming the Eastern (Byzantine) Roman Empire in its entirety, but the major crusades in this period (and a great many trivial ones) were actually fought within Europe, whereas securing an effective, united front against Islam was proving impossibly difficult. Hungary in the event served as the front line behind which Western Christianity would survive and for some deccades its impressive king, Sigismund, played a huge role in trying to resolve European differences with a view to securing better support.
The real threat to the survival of Western Christianity was self inflicted. Over centuries, the church had acquired immense wealth – in Bohemia, for instance, Europe’s wealthiest country, owning over half of all the land – and its corruption was a general scandal. Movements for reform were sporadic and largely fruitless. At the start of the period of this book, the papacy was not important to the Church, but was a minor bishopric in a city that had long lost its status. Rome was a ruined city, difficult to govern and its only real asset was the possession of valuable relics and graves. The book describes the emergence of a strengthened papacy, to some degree serving the needs of emerging nation states, especially France, but for that reason subject to politically driven schisms which resulted, ultimately, in the existence of three rival popes, each with the allegiance of its own group of nation states. This reinforced the implacable rivalries amongst European rulers, and indeed only England and Portugal actually enjoyed stable national borders.
At the Council of Constance, Sigismund achieved the remarkable diplomatic feat of removing all three popes and establishing one replacement who was generally accepted. The book gives great detail of the events surrounding this achievement. Sigismund was less interested in matters of religion and theology, however, and while arrangements were put in place to clarify the roles and rights of secular rulers in each country, and the Church’s ability to tax the people was restrained, though by no means eliminated, the papacy itself remained incorrigibly corrupt and venal, and the need for religious renewal was not addressed. As a result, scope remained for religious dissent and occasionally fanaticism, and the first place in which this was manifested was in Bohemia.
The Council had taken the step of condemning a perfectly orthodox catholic dissident, Hus, as a heretic, and his execution had the unsurprising effect of creating a martyr and a religious movement in his home country that also coincided with the emergence of a national movement of Czech patriotism, in opposition to German and other influences. Attempts to suppress this movement for religious reasons – through no less than five successive crusades – and for secular reasons – to affirm Sigismund’s right to rule this wealthy kingdom – all failed by virtue of the Hussites’ remarkable military methods, and the book gives a lively account of the Hussite wars and the ingenious war-wagons that enabled an army of peasants to triumph over the best armed professional armies of the day. Unable to defeat them, Sigismund achieved – again – a diplomatic rather than military solution which secured his throne but left in place a non-conforming branch of the catholic religion (repeatedly condemned by popes as heretical) that became the basis for a protestant reformation a century later.
September 19, 2015
1st half of the 1400s saw an emperor try and sort the 3 pope problem that was breaking christendom...then after bumping off Huss creating another problem that planted the seeds for the reformation that ended up actually breaking christendom.
Interesting read.
Shows Hungary as a major player at the time.
Early use of tanks in the wars in Bohemia which I found surprising...and all the usual civil war/religious war carnage with no quarter and atrocities.
The trigger for reading this was The Swerve: How The Renaissance Began, which mentioned the council of Constance. Then this was the trigger that had me reading The Raven King: Matthias Corvinus and the Fate of His Lost Library with it's focus on Hungary in the later 1400s.
Interesting read.
Shows Hungary as a major player at the time.
Early use of tanks in the wars in Bohemia which I found surprising...and all the usual civil war/religious war carnage with no quarter and atrocities.
The trigger for reading this was The Swerve: How The Renaissance Began, which mentioned the council of Constance. Then this was the trigger that had me reading The Raven King: Matthias Corvinus and the Fate of His Lost Library with it's focus on Hungary in the later 1400s.
March 13, 2013
It is my belief that the primary reason this book received such low ratings is because it is a hard book to read. There is so much information contained in each chapter that you have to read, digest the information and then read again. If you prefer to read popular fiction that doesn't teach you anything then this is not the book for you. If however you wish to read a book that teaches you something about the world and causes you to reflect on what you have just read, then this is a fabulous book.
February 11, 2013
I took a while to finish this. It's dense with detail, reflecting the crazy hodgepodge in allegiance and belief about a century before Martin Luther. Keeping track of all the kings, princes, popes., antipopes et al. was rough, but necessary as a background to the Council of Constance. I'm glad I read it, but I hesitate to recommend it because I don't think that many people would be as dogged as I was. Woof!
November 17, 2022
If you were going to study religion and history, throughout the fifteenth century, this is the book you need. It keeps both the political and religious interplay, well balanced as it moves throughout the century, illuminating and developing the critical characters who made such a difference. In both history, and the church. It is rare for an author to make so many circumstances, details, and facts enjoyable. And so easy to read, study and understand. My understanding is much clearer now.
November 24, 2022
It's not that complicated of a book, if one has a degree of familiarity, not necessarily huge, with this era.
However, the subtitle is hugely misleading. Even once one corrects for that, it's no more than "decent to decent plus." I'm giving it 3 stars, as a slight bump above my 2.75 here.
However, the subtitle is hugely misleading. Even once one corrects for that, it's no more than "decent to decent plus." I'm giving it 3 stars, as a slight bump above my 2.75 here.
June 8, 2020
schism 3 popes Bohemia war wagons Jon Hus - religious toleration sale of indulgences crusades
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October 10, 2008Historian Frank Welsh's new book offers a remarkable retelling of European history at the dawn of the fifteenth century in The Battle of Christendom, now available in bookstores everywhere. Early reviews have been very strong:
“A well-intended overview of one of Europe's most turbulent eras, defined by religious schism and the advent of an Islamic enemy. Historian Welsh faces an immediate challenge in attempting to distill a century and a half of late-medieval events into his short study. Welsh does does a good job of showing how the religious and political rivalries of old anticipated later crises in world history. – Kirkus Reviews
“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 Emperor through 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. The book offers a useful portrait of Sigismund, a little-known but important figure in church history.”- Publishers Weekly
“The Battle for Christendom claims to be the first popular account of the Council of Constance. This is a subject which may be new to many interested in the medieval period. However, the author sets the scene well and explains the events which led up to the calling of the Council. The scope of this study is wide ranging, and Welsh shows great skill in describing epic events which affected a whole continent, whilst also including small and vital details. This is an interesting and lively account of a key event, which had a big part in shaping modern-day Europe.” – Suite 101
“A well-intended overview of one of Europe's most turbulent eras, defined by religious schism and the advent of an Islamic enemy. Historian Welsh faces an immediate challenge in attempting to distill a century and a half of late-medieval events into his short study. Welsh does does a good job of showing how the religious and political rivalries of old anticipated later crises in world history. – Kirkus Reviews
“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 Emperor through 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. The book offers a useful portrait of Sigismund, a little-known but important figure in church history.”- Publishers Weekly
“The Battle for Christendom claims to be the first popular account of the Council of Constance. This is a subject which may be new to many interested in the medieval period. However, the author sets the scene well and explains the events which led up to the calling of the Council. The scope of this study is wide ranging, and Welsh shows great skill in describing epic events which affected a whole continent, whilst also including small and vital details. This is an interesting and lively account of a key event, which had a big part in shaping modern-day Europe.” – Suite 101
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews