that, under the pressing difficulties
of the case, benefices were known to have been sold, many times in
succession, to different claimants in one week. Late applicants might
obtain a preference for appointments on making a cash payment of
twenty-five florins; an increased preference might be had for fifty. It
became, at last, no unusual thing to write to kings and prelates for
subsidies--a proof how greatly the papacy had been weakened by the
events of the times.

[Sidenote: Indignation of religious Europe.] But religious Europe
could not bear with such increasing scandals. The rival popes were
incessantly accusing each other of falsehood and all manner of
wickedness. At length the public sentiment found its expression
in the Council of Pisa, called by the cardinals on their own
responsibility. This council summoned the two popes--Benedict XIII.
and Gregory XII.--before it; declared the crimes and excesses
imputed to them to be true, and deposed them both, appointing
in their stead Alexander V. [Sidenote: Three popes.] There were
now, therefore, three popes. But, besides thus rendering the position
of things worse than it was before in this respect, the council had
taken the still more extraordinary step of overthrowing the autocracy
of the pope. It had been compelled by the force of circumstances to
destroy the very foundation of Latin Christianity by assuming the
position of superiority over the vicar of Christ. Now might be
discerned by men of reflexion the purely human nature of the papacy.
It had broken down. Out of the theological disputes of preceding years
a political principle was obviously emerging; the democratic spirit
was developing itself, and the hierarchy was in rebellion against its
sovereign.

Nor was this great movement limited to the clergy. In every direction
the laity participated in it, pecuniary questions being in very many
instances the incentive. Things had come to such a condition that it
seemed to be of little moment what might be the personal character of
the pontiff; the necessities of the position irresistibly drove him to
replenish the treasury by shameful means. [Sidenote: Balthazar Cossa
made pope.] Thus, on Alexander's death, Balthazar Cossa, an evil but an
able man, who succeeded as John XXIII., was not only compelled to extend
the existing simoniacal practices of the ecclesiastical brokers'
offices, but actually to derive revenue from the licensing of
prostitutes, gambling-houses