The Papal State Under Martin V

When Oddo Colonna was elected Pope at the Council of Constance in 1417, taking as his name Martin V, he was elevated to a Papacy which was in many ways in critical condition. The Council had ended a schism, deposing the antipope John XXIII (whose name and number would much later finally be supplanted by a great twentiethcentury reformer Pope), but the work of restoring the power and prestige of the Holy See still had to be undertaken. The Avignon exile and the schism had weakened the standing of the Papacy. Broad social and economic changes had stripped it of much of the revenue from Christendom in general which it had enjoyed in the Middle Ages, while the other critical source of papal revenue  the temporal Papal States in Italy  had been reduced to chaos during the Schism.

Moreover, while the Council had set reform in motion, it had in many ways created for the Papacy potential problems as great as those which it solved.

The council of Constance had resembled in some respects

a Congress of the European powers, and in others a

Parliament of the whole ecclesiastical estate. It had

created Martin Pope by a new conciliar procedure, and,

as long as the Council continued, he was bound to find

himself to some extent subordinate to the body which

(p. 42)

. . .
had beeen one of the main concerns of the Popes for some centuries, but it now became more than ever urgent. Failure might expose the Popes to the most extreme claims of the conciliar party, and since reform in one sense depended on the financial stability of the Roman Court, indefinitely postpone the reform of the Church. (p. 193) This view fundamentally shapes the nature of this book  indeed, is the essential justification for writing this particular book about the pontificate of Martin V, rather than examining his role in Church history from some other perspective. As a result, Partner never answers or even fully addresses some crucial concerns which will occur to the reader who approaches the question of Martin V in terms of Church history as a whole. The modern reader inevitably approaches the fifteenthcentury Papacy with twentytwenty hindsight. We know, as Martin obviously could not, that not quite a hundred years after he was elected Pope at Constance, a monk named Martin Luther would nail a statement of ninetynine theses to a German church door. And knowing that, we must note that the financial operations of the Renaissance Pop
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Oddo Colonna, Pope Constance, Papal Martin's, Roman Court, Papal Schism, Chapter II, IV Martin's, Church Partner, Ages Papal, Peter Partner's, church history, papal government, family alliances, papal martin, elected pope, peter partner papal, partner papal, account organization, italian signori, primary sources, partner papal martin, renaissance italy,
Approximate Word count = 1650
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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