St. Catherine had realized her desire, the return of the Pope to Rome, only, we see, to find it fail in achieving the purpose for which she had prayed and planned. The Popes of the fourteenth century were men of the age in which they lived, not great souls like the saint of Siena herself, who called them to a task of which they were spiritually incapable. With her death her ideal faded, and another gradually took shape in the minds of men, namely, ‘an appeal from the Vicar of Christ on earth to Christ Himself, residing in the whole body of the Church’. Christendom remembered that in the early days of her history it had been Councils of the Fathers, sitting at Nicea and elsewhere, that had defined the Faith and made laws for the Catholic Church. Now it was suggested that once more a large world-council should be called from every Catholic nation, composed of Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, the Heads of the Friars and of the Monastic and Military Orders, together with Doctors of Theology and Law. This council was to be given power by the whole of Christendom to end the schism, condemn heresy, and reform the Church. The person who was chiefly responsible for the summoning of this council, that met at Constance in 1414, was Sigismund, King of the Romans, a son of the Emperor Charles IV, and brother and heir to the Emperor Wenzel, a drunken sot, who was also King of Bohemia, but quite incapable of playing an intelligent part in public affairs. Sigismund was King of Hungary by election and through his marriage with a daughter of Louis the Great[47]; but his subjects had little respect for his ability, and were usually in a state of chronic rebellion. In spite of the fact that he had no money and had been decisively and ingloriously defeated in battle by the Turks, he continued to hold high ambitions, desiring above all things to appear as the arbiter of European destinies who would reform both Church and State. The Council of Constance gave him his opportunity, and certainly no other man worked as hard to make it a success. Sometimes he presided in person at the meetings, which dragged out their weary discussions for about four years: at other times he would visit the courts of Europe, trying to persuade rival Popes to resign, or, if they were obstinate, civil sovereigns to refuse them patronage and protection. He even tried, though in vain, to act as mediator in the Hundred Years’ War, in order that the political quarrels of French and English might not bring friction to the council board. [Sidenote: John Huss]