4 - A BREATHING SPACE

Summary

In contrast with the debates, divisions and conflicts of the opening years of the schism, the second half of the 1380s was a period of comparative peace, almost of anticlimax. The territorial boundaries of the rival obediences were now reasonably firmly defined, and both sides seem to have retreated to within their own frontiers. However, there was, naturally enough, a certain amount of continued skirmishing in the border regions, and neither party was prepared to accept the existence of its rival without question. The Urbanist branch of the Augustinian order continued to nominate lectors at the Clementist universities and studia, in preparation for their eventual submission to Urban VI – but cautiously ensured that the nominees were actually given posts at Romanist institutions. The Clementists also occasionally gave vent to outbursts of optimism: an anonymous author in 1394 proudly asserted that the obedience had suffered no reduction in size since the start of the dispute – not even in Portugal.

Within the universities the late 1380s and early 1390s were years of considerably diminished debate. Very few tracts survive from this period, almost the only ones worth mentioning being the surviving fragments of Adalbertus Rankonis de Ericinio's Tractatus de schismate, produced within the University of Prague, and Marsilius of Inghen's Rationes cur Urbano pontifici electo adhaerendum, written at Heidelberg. Both these works were little more than restatements of the arguments about allegiance. The most striking silence throughout this period is that of the French universities.