Pope Eugenius IV and the Concordat of Vienna (1448) — An Interpretation

Abstract

The Concordat of Vienna (1448) was one of the most suggestive historical phenomena of the fifteenth century. Drafted in the midst of a century characterized by diplomatic intrigue and institutional flux, and ratified amid the pageantry of traditional ceremony, it implicitly suggested the restoration of order and stability. The agreement appeared to signify the re-establishment of papal supremacy, the destruction of conciliarism, and even the partial restoration of the medieval Christian Commonwealth by virtue of the submission of the Empire to Rome. Contemporary notions relating to the Concordat of Vienna are invariably drawn from the works of the papal historians Ludwig Pastor and Mandell Creighton. Both viewed it as a papal victory and a defeat of the Council of Basel. F. X. Seppelt took a more cautious position and suggested that the eventual implementation of the agreement brought many concessions to the territorial princes. Joseph Gill in his recent biography of Pope Eugenius almost entirely bypassed this phase of the pontiff's activity. Only Bertram's monograph on the concordats of the later middle ages devoted some space to the 1448 pact. While presenting some interesting conclusions, he failed to adequately interpret any one concordat in the light of its own peculiar political background.

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