The scandals in Bohemia and the quarrels among the Luxemburg princes seem to have convinced the western princes that Wenzel was as little to be feared as respected. He had given them a new grievance in 1395 by granting the title of Duke of Milan and thus raising to princely rank the aggressive Ghibelline leader in northern Italy, Gian Galeazzo Visconti. And three years later he gave them a pretext for throwing off their allegiance by his action with regard to the [Sidenote: France and the schism.] schism in the Church. From the first the University of Paris, then by far the most influential university in Europe, had set itself against a schism which the French government had done much to bring about. At first the king had silenced the university, but gradually he had come to share its views. France found it extremely expensive to support a schismatic Pope who had little but French contributions to look to for the maintenance of himself and his court. Popular sympathy was cooled when a Spaniard, Peter de Luna, was chosen to succeed the French Pope Clement VII. Under the guidance of the university leaders, Pierre d’Ailly and Jean Gerson, Charles VI. and his ministers determined to end the schism by ‘the way of neutrality,’ _i.e._ by withdrawing allegiance from the two rival Popes, and thus forcing them to abdicate, when a new election could restore unity to Christendom. To give effect to this scheme, it was necessary to secure simultaneous action on the part of the supporters of the Roman Pope Boniface IX., and of these the most exalted was the King of the Romans. Wenzel seems to have inherited some of the traditional attachment to France of the Luxemburg [Sidenote: Meeting of Wenzel and Charles VI.] dynasty, and he had quarrelled with Boniface about the appointment of an Archbishop of Mainz. The two kings, the one a confirmed drunkard and the other subject to fits of insanity, met at Rheims in 1398 to discuss the most pressing problem of the age. Their personal intercourse cannot have been very edifying. On one occasion Wenzel was invited to a banquet with the French king, and when the Dukes of Burgundy and Berri came to escort the guest, they found that he had already dined, and was lying under the table in a drunken sleep. But the interview resulted in a more or less formal agreement that France should extort the resignation of Benedict, while Wenzel was to do the same by Boniface.