Pope Eugene IV
Pope|English name=Eugene IV|image=
|birth_name=Gabriele Condulmer|term_start=
3 March,
1431|term_end=
23 February,
1447|predecessor=
Martin V|successor=
Nicholas V|birth_date=
1383|birthplace=
Venice,
Italy |dead=dead|death_date=
23 February,
1447|deathplace=
Rome|other=Eugene}}
Pope Eugene IV (
1383 –
February 23 1447), born
Gabriele Condulmer, was
Pope from
March 3,
1431 to his death.
He was born in
Venice to a rich merchant family, a
Correr on his mother's side. Condulmer entered the
Augustinian order at the monastery of St. George in his native city. At the age of twenty-four he was appointed by his uncle
Pope Gregory XII (1406–15), as Bishop of
Siena, and came into prominence. In Siena, the political class objected to a 24-year old bishop who was a foreigner. So the issue was not pressed and he resigned the appointment, becoming instead his uncle's papal treasurer,
protonotary,
Cardinal Priest of
St Marco and
St Clemente, and later Cardinal Priest of
Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere.
He made himself useful to
Pope Martin V (1417–31) and was quickly elected to succeed him, and was crowned as Eugene IV at
St. Peter's,
March 11, 1431. By a written agreement made before his election he agreed with the cardinals to distribute to them one-half of all the revenues of the Church and promised to consult with them on all questions of importance, both spiritual and temporal. Upon taking the Papal Chair, Eugene IV's violent measures against the numerous
Colonna relations of his predecessor, Pope Martin V (Otto di Colonna), who had rewarded his numerous clan with castles and lands, at once involved him in a serious contest with the powerful house of Colonna that nominally supported the local rights of
Rome against the interests of the Papacy. A truce was soon arranged.
But by far the most important feature of Eugene IV's pontificate was the great struggle between the Pope and the
Council of Basel, commonly referred to as the Council of Florence, (1431–39), part of the historic
Conciliar movement. On
July 23, 1431, his legate,
Ambrogio Traversari, opened the council, which had been convoked by Martin V, but, distrustful of its purposes and emboldened by the small attendance, the pope issued a bull on
December 18, 1431, dissolving the council and calling a new one to meet in eighteen months at
Bologna. The council resisted this premature expression of papal prerogative, as it appeared to the majority of them. Eugene IV's action gave some weight to the contention that the
Curia was opposed to any authentic measures of reform. The council refused to dissolve; instead they renewed the revolutionary resolutions by which the
Council of Constance had declared a council superior to the Pope, and cited Eugene IV to appear at Basel. A compromise was arranged by
Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, who had been crowned emperor at Rome on
May 31,
1433. By its terms the Pope recalled his
bull of dissolution, and, reserving all the rights of the
Holy See, acknowledged the council as
ecumenical (
December 15, 1433).
The establishment of an insurrectionary
republic at Rome drove him into exile in May
1434. Disguised in the robes of a
monk, he was rowed down the center of the
Tiber, pelted by stones from either bank, to a
Florentine vessel waiting to pick him up at
Ostia. Although the city was restored to obedience by
Giovanni Vitelleschi, the militant Bishop of
Recanati, in the following October, the Pope remained at Florence and Bologna.
Meanwhile the struggle with the council sitting at Basel broke out anew. Eugene IV at length convened a rival council at
Ferrara on
January 8,
1438, and
excommunicated the
prelates assembled at Basel. The result was that the Council of Basel suspended him on
January 24, 1438, then formally deposed him as a
heretic on
June 25,
1439, and in the following November elected the ambitious
Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy (1416–40),
antipope under the title of
Felix V (1439–39). The conduct of
France and
Germany seemed to warrant this action, for
Charles VII of France (1422–61) had introduced the decrees of the council of Basel, with slight changes, into France through the
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (
July 7, 1438), and the
Diet of Mainz had deprived the Pope of most of his rights in the Empire (
March 26, 1439).
At Florence, where the council of Ferrara had been transferred on account of an outbreak of the plague, was effected in July 1439 a union with the
Eastern Orthodox Church, which, as the result of political necessities, proved but a temporary bolster to the papacy's prestige.
This union was followed by others of even less stability. Eugene IV signed an agreement with the
Armenians on
November 22, 1439, and with a part of the
Jacobites in
1443, and in
1445 he received the
Nestorians and
Maronites. He did his best to stem the
Turkish advance, pledging one-fifth of the papal income to the
crusade which set out in 1443, but which met with overwhelming defeat.
His rival, Felix V, meanwhile, obtained small recognition, and the latter's ablest adviser, the humanist Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who was later to be
Pope Pius II (1458–64), made peace with Eugene IV in
1442. The Pope's recognition of the claims to
Naples of King
Alfonso V of Aragon (1416–58) withdrew the last important support from the divided council of Basel, and enabled Eugene IV to make a victorious entry into Rome on the 28th of September 1443, after an exile of nearly ten years.
His protests against the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges were ineffectual, but by means of the
Concordat of the Princes, negotiated by Piccolomini with the electors in February 1447, the whole of
Germany declared against the antipope.
Although his pontificate had been so stormy and unhappy that he is said to have regretted on his deathbed that he ever left his
monastery, nevertheless Eugene IV's victory over the council of Basel and his efforts on behalf of church unity contributed greatly to break down the conciliar movement and restore the papacy to the dominant position it had held before the
Western Schism (1378–1417).
Eugene IV was dignified in demeanour, but inexperienced and vacillating in action and excitable in temper. Bitter in his hatred of
heresy, he nevertheless displayed great kindness to the poor. He laboured to reform the
monastic orders, especially the
Franciscan, and was never guilty of
nepotism. Although austere in his private life, he was a sincere friend of
art and learning, and in 1431 he re-established the
university at Rome.
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Pope Eugene IV in the Catholic Encyclopaedia
