1, vol. iii, pp. 255-257. Le P.
Ayroles, _La vierge guerriere_, p. 66.]

This murder was quite recent. And now we have the docile son of Holy
Church appearing eager to discover who is his true spiritual father.
It would seem, however, that his mind was already made up on the
subject and that he already knew the answer to his question. In verity
the long schism, which had rent Christendom asunder, had terminated
twelve years earlier. It had ended when the Conclave, which had
assembled at Constance in the House of the Merchants on the 8th of
November, 1417, on the 11th of that month, Saint Martin's Day,
proclaimed Pope, the Cardinal Deacon Otto Colonna, who assumed the
title of Martin V. In the Eternal City Martin V wore that tiara which
Lorenzo Ghiberti had adorned with eight figures in gold;[1693] and the
wily Roman had contrived to obtain his recognition by England and even
by France, who thenceforward renounced all hope of a French pontiff.
While Charles VII's advisers may not have agreed with Martin V on the
question of a General Council, all the rights of the Pope of Rome in
the Kingdom of France had been restored to him by an edict, in 1425.
Martin V was the one and only pope. Nevertheless, Alphonso of Aragon,
highly incensed because Martin V supported against him the rights of
Louis d'Anjou to the Kingdom of Naples, determined to oppose to the
Pope of Rome a pontiff of his own making. And just ready to hand he
had a canon who called himself pope, and on the following grounds:
the Anti-pope, Benedict XIII, having fled to Peniscola, had on his
death-bed nominated four cardinals, three of whom appointed to succeed
him a canon of Barcelona, one Gil Munoz, who assumed the title of
Clement VIII. Imprisoned in the chateau of Peniscola on a barren neck
of land on three sides washed by the sea, this was the Clement whom
the King of Aragon had chosen to be the rival of Martin V.[1694]

[Footnote 1693: _Annales juris pontificis_ (1872-1875), vii, 385. E.
Muntz, _La tiare pontificale du VIII'e au XVI'e siecle_ in _Mem.
Acad. Inscript. et Belles Lettres_, vol. xxvi, I, pp. 235-324, fig.
_Les arts a la cour des papes pendant les XV'e et XVI'e siecles_,
in _Bibl. des Ecoles francaises d'Athenes et Rome_, vol. iv.]

[Footnote 1694: Baluze, _Vitae paparum Avenionensium_, 1693, I, pp. 1182
_et seq._ Fabricius, _Bibliotheca medii aevi_, 1734, I, p. 1109.]

The Pope excommunicated the King of Aragon and then opened
negotiations w