Episode 20 – The Great Schism, 1356–1414 AD

Amid the anarchy of marauding mercenary armies, the papacy at Avignon systematised its hold on the ecclesiastical structure of Latin Christendom, raising taxes from all over Europe to fund its wars to reassert its authority over the Papal States and return to Rome.
A botched papal election produced two anti-popes. Immediately warfare broke out and the entire Latin church descended into a 40-year Schism.
The Great Schism was a standing scandal that opened the way for individual university doctors to mount frontal assaults on medieval religious assumptions generally. The result, in Bohemia, was a terrible religious Hussite wars, a harbinger of the long-term future.