It was thus named to a stage in the history of the Catholic Church, where there was a crisis of a religious nature, in which three bishops disputed the highest authority of the church, a fact that affected the entire Catholic Christian community in the world, is considered one of the saddest episodes in the history of Christianity, it took place between 1378 and 1429 after the death of Pope Gregory XI.
The dispute originates after the death of Pope Gregory XI in 1938, who had made the decision to move the papal headquarters located in Avignon to the city of Rome, after the death the next leader of the the church, resulting as the successor Gregory VI the cardinal of Italian origin Bartolomeo Prignano, who assumed his position as Urban VI, this caused a group of ten cardinals members of the conclaves to oppose the decision since they considered that it had been influenced for popular demonstrations in the city of Rome, then naming Clement VII as pope, who installed the seat of the church again in Avignon, causing a division in the church, since the French opted to accept Clement VII as maximum authority, also Spain and Scotland supported him, while the Italian, English, German and Finnish peoples opted for Urban VI.
Boniface IX was the one who supplanted Urban VI, this between the years 1389 and 1404, later the position was assumed by Gregorio XII. Meanwhile, Clemente's successors were Benedict XIII and later Carlos V.
This whole situation causes great confusion among the faithful, since the true authority was questioned, so the University of Paris devised three ways to reach a solution to the problem, the first was that both leaders should leave His charges, the second, was the creation of a council where an agreement will be reached and the third was the election of an arbitrator where both parties agreed, the decision was made, an agreement was reached to establish a council called the Council of Pisa, which began in the year 1409 and thanks to which both popes were accused and deposed.
For the next papal election, 24 were the participating cardinals who joined the council, the election gave as winner Pedro Philagrés, named as Alejandro V. A, a decision that was not accepted by the two accused popes, adding to the dispute in denominated " Pope of Pisa ”. After the death of Alexander V, Juan XXIII was named as his successor. With the impossibility of reaching an agreement, they turned to the help of the Emperor of Rome Sigismund, who was in charge of organizing a new council established in 1914 in Constance which declared itself as the highest authority over the papacy, which caused a conflict between the emperor. Roman and John XXIII, causing the Pope to end up in prison for 1415, later Gregory XII would resign, disposing of Benedict XIII who was accused of heretic. Finally in 1417 the dispute ended with the election as the sole supreme leader of the Catholic Church to Martin V.
