Council of Constance

The Council of Constance met from 1414 to 1418 to resolve the Western Schism, address reform and deal with questions of heresy. It brought together rulers, churchmen, diplomats, envoys and competing papal claimants in one of the largest political-religious gatherings of the period.

The council mattered because it treated the schism as a European crisis that diplomacy had to solve. Its debates linked theology with royal policy, diplomacy, travel, intelligence and the prestige of competing powers.

A Knight and a Spy 1414 uses the council as a setting for embassy work, secrecy and danger before Henry V’s French war. The context suits fiction about church diplomacy, spies, heresy trials, ambassadors, conciliar politics and the end of the papal schism.