This schism lasted fully ten years, although the antipope found hardly any adherents outside of his own hereditary states, those of Alphonso of Aragon, of the Swiss confederation and certain universities. Germany remained neutral; Charles VII. of France confined himself to securing to his kingdom by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, which became law on the 13th of July 1438, the benefit of a great number of the reforms decreed a t Basel; England and Italy remained faithful to Eugenius IV. Finally, in 1447 Frederick III., king of the Romans, after negotiations with Eugenius, commanded the burgomaster of Basel not to allow the presence of the council any longer in the imperial city. In June 1448 the rump of the council migrated to Lausanne. The antipope, at the instance of France, ended by abdicating (7th April 1449). Eugenius IV. died on the 23rd of February 1 447, and the fathers of Lausanne, to save appearances, gave their support to his successor, Nicholas V., who had already been governing the Church for two years. Trustworthy evidence, they said, proved to them that this pontiff accepted the dogma of the superiority of the council as it had been defined at Constance and at Basel. In reality, the struggle which they had carried on in defence of this principle for seventeen years, with a good faith which it is impossible to ignore, ended in a defeat. The papacy, which had been so fundamentally shaken by the great schism of the West, came through this trial victorious. The era of the great councils of the 15th century was closed; the constitution of the Church remained monarchical.
Authorities. - Mansi, vol. xxix.-xxxi.; Aeneas Sylvius, De rebus
Basileae gestis (Fermo, 1903); Hefele,
Conciliengeschichte, vol. vii. (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1874);
O. Richter, Die Organisation and Geschciftsordnung des Baseler
Konzils (Leipzig, 1877); Monumenta Conciliorum generalium
seculi xv., Scriptorum, vol. i., ii. and iii. (Vienna,
1857-1895); J. Haller, Concilium Basiliense, vol. i. - v.
(Basel, 1896-1904); G. Perouse, Le Cardinal Louis Aleman,
president du concile de Bole (Paris, 1904). Much useful material
will also be found in J. C. L. Gieseler's Ecclesiastical History,
vol. iv. p. 312, &c., notes (Eng. trans., Edinburgh, 1853). (N. V.)
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