Poland's relations with the apostolic see during schisms following rival papal elections from the age of the early Piasts until the council of Pisa

The main object of this article is, first, to review Poland's relations with the Papacy during periods of schism following rival elections of a pope and an anti-pope, and, second, to find out whether Poland shifted her allegiance from the popes whose legitimacy has since been confirmed by the Catholic tradition. The article, divided into five parts, reaches from the 11th until the early 15th century (with the Council of Pisa as a terminus ad quern). The following decades with the Councils of Constance and Basle, which made the issues even more complex and which have attracted a vast critical literature, must remain outside the scope of this study. Its first part goes back to the 11th-13th centuries, when the papacy was locked in a bitter struggle over dominium mundi with the German emperors. Poland under Władysław Herman (1079-1102) was almost certainly on the side of Rome. It seems that this did not change in the early 1130s, during the reign of Boleslaw the Wrymouth, even though Pope Innocent II endorsed the Archbishop of Magdeburg's renewed claim to ascendancy over the Polish Church. The earliest evidence of Poland and the Polish Church's shift to the obedience of an anti-pope comes from the 1160s-1170s. For instance, representatives of the Polish Church are known to have taken part in the synods of Pavia and Lodia (1160-1161) convened by anti-pope Victor IV. Poland probably relumed to the Roman obedience as a consequence of a peace accord between Emperor Frederick I and Pope Alexander III in Venice in 1177. Part Two deals with the 14th-century crisis at the heart of Latin Christendom, the so-called Avignon captivity of the popes (1309-1377), and the successful restoration and consolidation of the Polish state under the last royal Piasts (Władysław Łokietek, 1320-1333, and his son Casimir the Great, 1333-1370). Part Three looks at the origins of the Great Schism, which began with the election of the French-backed anti-pope Clement Vll in 1378, and examines the way in which it was handled by Poland's two greatest chroniclers of the late Middle Ages. Jan of Czarnków (died c. 1380) pits Poland in opposition to the Avignon popes and the French party, while Jan Długosz, though familiar with his predecessor's Chronicle, gives us a more favourable account of them. Part Four reviews Poland's relations with Rome in 1378-1408, ie. during the last years of Louis of Anjou, the short reign of Jadwiga (Hedwig) and the first half of the reign of her husband Władysław Jagiełło. During that time Poland's monarchs knew how to exploit Rome's weakened position. Their requests were never turned down for fear that a frustrated Poland may slip into the rival obedience. Nonetheless the old allegiance showed no signs of strain. Even though the Avignon popes repeatedly tried to make Poland change sides, it stood firm by the legitimate Roman popes. Part Five focuses on the early phases of the Council of Pisa, which met from March to August 1409. The Polish delegation headed by Piotr Wysz, Bishop of Cracow, participated in the debates and in the election of Pope Alexander V, who was to replace the two existing popes. When Władysław Jagiełło and the Polish clergy accepted the authority of the new pope, it meant severing relations with Gregory XII, the legitimate Roman pope. John XXIII, Alexander Vs successor and the last of the Pisan popes, inherited Poland's allegiance. He was remarkably well-disposed towards Władysław Jagiełło, which was a great asset in Poland's escalating conflict with the Teutonic Order. Of all the periods when Poland belonged to the obedience of an anti-pope the period 1409-1415 is the most abundantly documented. In the last great medieval schism (1439-1449) the Kingdom of Poland remained officially neutral, although the top church dignitaries gave their backing to Felix V, elected at the Council of Basle in defiance of Pope Eugenius IV of Rome