Council of Constance
- When
- 1414–1418 AD
- Where
- Constance
- Kind
- Council
Ended the Western Schism and burned Jan Hus, who had come under an imperial safe-conduct.
The council did what nothing else had managed: it removed three rival popes and elected one, restoring a single papacy after forty years. It also decreed, in Haec sancta, that a general council holds authority directly from Christ and that even a pope must obey it in matters of faith and reform — a claim later popes rejected and which Vatican I settled the other way. And it tried Jan Hus, who had travelled to Constance on a safe-conduct from the Emperor Sigismund, condemned him, and burned him in 1415; Jerome of Prague followed in 1416. The council held that no faith need be kept with a heretic. Bohemia did not accept that reasoning and went to war over it.
Bodies it bears on
Began here
Party to it
Who stands here
- John Wycliffe
c. 1328–1384
Condemned by it thirty years dead; his body was exhumed and burned
- Jan Hus
c. 1372–1415
Tried and burned, having come under an imperial safe-conduct
Either side of it
The whole timeline, from the apostolic communities to the present.