ABSTRACT
If popes were weak, kings were not, and the sovereignty which Boniface had defined became the aim of secular rulers. Doubtless the resilience of parliament must be traced back to the obedience shown by the great barons to the Norman kings. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed throughout western Europe a marked reaction to royal aggrandizement. As for the prevention of schism, the Council took two momentous steps. It laid down that, in the last resort, popes were subject to councils and that councils should meet at regular intervals in future. The kings of England and France, the princes of Germany and Italy, were absorbed in centralizing policies which also preoccupied the great magnates in a contrary sense. The Church could call crusades, but it was morally weaker than ever, and, divided by schism or distracted by councils, it was powerless to concert resistance to the Ottoman Turk.
