Poets, saints, and visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378-1417

by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski

For almost forty years, from 1378 to 1417, the Western Church was divided into rival camps headed by two -- and eventually three -- competing popes. The so-called Schism provoked a profound and long-lasting anxiety throughout Europe -- an anxiety that reverberated throughout clerical circles and among the ordinary faithful. In Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski looks beyond the political and ecclesiastical storm and finds an outpouring of artistic, literary, and visionary responses to one of the great calamities of the late Middle Ages. Modern historians have analyzed the Great Schism mostly from the perspective of church politics. Blumenfeld-Kosinski shifts our attention to several groups that have not before been considered together: saintly men and women (such as Catherine of Siena, Pedro of Aragon, Vincent Ferrer, and Constance de Rabastens), politically aware and committed poets (such as Philippe de Mézières and Christine de Pizan), and