Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans, Episode 166, The Great Western Schism, Part 1,

which is also episode 3 of Season 9, the Reformation before the Reformation.

Now, if you're a long-standing listener to the history of the Germans, you'll already know

that sometime in the late 14th century the Catholic Church broke apart into two and then

30 years later into three different obediencees, three popes residing in different places

and being recognized by different nations. But what you may not know is how

exactly this had happened. Why did the exact self-same cardinals elect one Pope in 1378 and then

another one only four months later? Who was taking the lead in attempts to resolve the crisis and

why did all of these attempts

fail for nearly 40 years? How far did they go in forcing the various papal contenders to come

to the negotiation table and how ridiculous were the Pope's attempts to wriggle out of that?

All that we will look into this week in part one of the story of the great Western schism.

But before we start, it's the usual big thank you to all our supporters who signed up on

Patreon.com slash History of the Germans or who have made a one-time donation on Historyof the

Germans.com slash support. It is you who keep this show free and clear of ever more

irritating advertising. This show does not expose you to online psychologists, room sharing

apps or crypto exchanges. As anybody actually ever found out where there is an inverse correlation

between the quality of a brand and the ubiquity of its podcast advertising.

Anyway, today we thank Alex G, Bruno P, Diarck A, Charles Y, Daniel N, Cod O and Kai B,

who've already signed up.

And with that, back to the show.

Now, I occasionally choose to split my stories into two parts, one where I talk about what happened

...