What happened at the Great Schism?

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I always thought that the Western Schism occured because Gregory XI sought to re-establish the papacy in Rome, causing both French and Roman cardinals to elect a new pope and each one ex-communicating the other, but according to this article from Wikipedia (which is the EXACT SAME PLACE I got this information before,) I’m wrong:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism
So what happened at the Western Schism? 🤷
 
The Western Schism and the Great Schism are two different things. The Great Schism is the break between the Eastern and Western Churches.
 
There have been volumes written on the topic! This is because it wasn’t a single event, but a kind of building of events over dozens (if not hundreds!) of years. In addition, there are at least 2 sides to the story. For those reasons, I’d recommend trying to find a good book on the topic if you really want to know. Wiki would be a good first source though.
 
MrZetterlund said:
I always thought that the Western Schism occured because Gregory XI sought to re-establish the papacy in Rome, causing both French and Roman cardinals to elect a new pope and each one ex-communicating the other, but according to this article from Wikipedia (which is the EXACT SAME PLACE I got this information before,) I’m wrong:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism
So what happened at the Western Schism? 🤷
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The Cardinals elected a man who seemed to be not what they had hoped for, in fact they feared him and thought of him as unqualified (for a few different reasons), so they fled the city and elected another.

Bishop of Rome #1 responded by naming a whole new set of cardinals.
 
Hesychios said:
The Cardinals elected a man who seemed to be not what they had hoped for, in fact they feared him and thought of him as unqualified (for a few different reasons), so they fled the city and elected another.

Bishop of Rome #1 responded by naming a whole new set of cardinals.
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Wasn’t it over whether a Pope held higher authority then a council? One group claimed yes, one claimed no?
 
Garyjohn2 said:
There have been volumes written on the topic! This is because it wasn’t a single event, but a kind of building of events over dozens (if not hundreds!) of years. In addition, there are at least 2 sides to the story. For those reasons, I’d recommend trying to find a good book on the topic if you really want to know. Wiki would be a good first source though.
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What book(s) would you recommend?
 
MrZetterlund said:
What book(s) would you recommend?
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I…don’t…know! I’ve haven’t had time to read up on it myself…but I have a list of recommended reading at home I can try to find. Still, I know its a topic you can really delve in to.

Here’s a great source that will be several magnitudes better than a wiki source. It’s a Q&A type webpage run by Fr. Richard Simon (he jokingly calls himself “Rev. Know-it-all”). He’s a fantastic priest and historian. Someone asked him to expound upon the great schism and supply some history surrounding it. He offers great perspective. Check it out!

rev-know-it-all.com/2008/2008—05-18.html

He starts off:
You ask a great question that has an extremely complicated answer. Let us set the Way Back Machine to AD 60 and learn some history…
 
jam070406 said:
Wasn’t it over whether a Pope held higher authority then a council? One group claimed yes, one claimed no?
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No, actually.

The issue had never come up before in this particular way.

There had been (I think) two cases where Popes had been removed in the past, but I would be hard pressed to find references to that now.

Since the Cardinals (not a Council) had the authority to appoint the Pope (a man who usually came from among their ranks), they resorted to this extreme measure out of desperation and took it upon themselves to deal with it. From some recountings the new pope Urban seems to have been acting like a lunatic.

I am not qualified to say (and probably should not) but I suppose he might have been having manic episodes. No one in those days understood this kind of disorder (or most others of the type) at the time. Such problems didn’t start to be recognized and treated as medical problems until the 20th century, I think.

One result of this whole fiasco was that the schism would not be healed and it took the intervention of a council to straighten the mess out. That is probably what you are thinking of, but it happened much later.
 
I am not sure why the Schism occurred but I know when 1054. The issues with the Popes started in 1305 so I doubt that it was because of the Popes.
 
Dirt said:
for a quick read try here:
oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Western_Schism

and here:
oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Eastern_Schism
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Just a quick note. It is off topic in this thread (and perhaps even this forum) to discuss the eastern schism. However I should point out that the OCE is notoriously bad source for information on the eastern churches in general, and the schism as well.

This thread is about the Great Western Schism, which I presume is not as problematic for the OCE.
 
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