took the name of Alexander V. (June 26, 1409). The question of reform was adroitly postponed for the consideration of a new council which was to meet in 1412, and the Council of Pisa was dissolved on August 7, 1409. The Council broke up under the impression that it had accomplished at any rate the most important part of its programme. But it was soon evident that the schism was as far from an end as ever. Neither Gregory nor Benedict would acknowledge the legality of the Council and its proceedings: and indeed it was not hard to question [Sidenote: The triple schism.] the legality of proceedings that were undoubtedly revolutionary and without precedent. The Council had no coercive power to enforce its edicts, and as long as the Popes could find any princes interested in supporting them, so long they would cling to their titles. The only difference that the Council had made was that, whereas before there had been two rival Popes, there were now three. The pontificate of [Sidenote: Alexander V.] Alexander V. only lasted ten months. During that period he succeeded in recovering Rome from Ladislas, but only by reviving civil war by the recognition of Louis of Anjou’s claim to Naples. His only ecclesiastical measure was a bull which endeavoured to settle an old quarrel in favour of the mendicant orders. Alexander himself was a Franciscan, and he recognised the full rights of the friars to receive confession and to administer the sacraments. The bull provoked a storm of opposition from the parish clergy, whose rights were infringed by the intruding friars, and from the University of Paris, always at war with the Franciscans. The University, which had so recently welcomed the Pope’s election, now expelled all mendicants, and demanded that they should renounce the privileges conferred upon them by the bull. In the midst of this general disapproval, Alexander V. died (May 8, 1410), and the cardinals elected as his successor the clerical _condottiere_, Baldassare [Sidenote: Election of John XXIII.] Cossa, who took the name of John XXIII. The new Pope had rendered great services in the protection of the Council and the recovery of Rome, and he seemed to be the only man who could be trusted to resist the threatening power of Ladislas of Naples. But he had no pretensions to piety, or even to respectability, and the elevation of a licentious soldier to the highest ecclesiastical dignity was in itself a scandal to Christendom almost as great as the schism itself.