<P> In the Iberian Peninsula there were the Fernandine Wars (Guerras fernandinas) and the 1383--1385 Crisis in Portugal, during which dynastic opponents supported rival claimants to the papal office . </P> <P> Sustained by such national and factional rivalries throughout Catholic Christianity, the schism continued after the deaths of both the Pope and the initial antipope claimant; Pope Boniface IX, crowned at Rome in 1389, and antipope Benedict XIII, who reigned in Avignon from 1394, maintained their rival courts . When Pope Boniface died in 1404, the eight cardinals of the Roman conclave offered to refrain from electing a new pope if Benedict would resign; but when Benedict's legates refused on his behalf, the Roman party then proceeded to elect Pope Innocent VII . </P> <P> In the intense partisanship, characteristic of the Middle Ages, the schism engendered a fanatical hatred noted by Johan Huizinga: when the town of Bruges went over to the "obedience" of Avignon, a great number of people left to follow their trade in a city of Urbanist allegiance; in the 1382 Battle of Roosebeke, the oriflamme, which might only be unfurled in a holy cause, was taken up against the Flemings, because they were Urbanists and thus viewed by the French as schismatics . </P> <P> Efforts were made to end the Schism through force or diplomacy . The French crown even tried to coerce antipope Benedict XIII, whom it nominally supported, into resigning . None of these remedies worked . The suggestion that a church council should resolve the Schism, first made in 1378, was not adopted at first because canon law required that a pope call a council . Eventually theologians like Pierre d'Ailly and Jean Gerson, as well as canon lawyers like Francesco Zabarella, adopted arguments that equity permitted the Church to act for its own welfare in defiance of the letter of the law . </P>

The great schism of 1378 causes and effects