It only remained to get rid of the moribund Council of Basel. A few bishops from Savoy and some clergy of humble [Sidenote: End of the Council of Basel, 1449.] rank were the only members left. Frederick III. sent an order for the dissolution of the Council to the civic magistrates. The exiled members proceeded to Lausanne, and there, by the mediation of France, made terms with the Papacy. Felix V., who had never received the homage of a temporal sovereign, resigned the papal title in exchange for the cardinal’s hat. The Archbishop of Arles returned to his see, where he was universally beloved. He died in 1450, and in the next century was canonised by Clement VII. With the Council of Basel ended the conciliar movement for reform, which had resulted from the scandal of the great [Sidenote: Failure of the Conciliar Movement.] schism. It had failed, not from any lack of honest purpose, or from the blunders of its adherents, but because it was out of harmony with the conditions of the age. A few centuries earlier it might have been possible to reform the Church, and at the same time to retain its unity. But by the fifteenth century such a scheme was too late. Political division had advanced so far as to bring with it ecclesiastical divisions. The sentiment that was recognised in the concordats of Martin V. and asserted in the Pragmatic Sanctions of Bourges and Mainz, was stronger than the theory of the supremacy of a general council over the Pope. The Reformation of the sixteenth century was a series of national revolts against papal domination, and it owed its success to its harmony with political conditions and interests. The failure of the conciliar movement brought with it a revival of papal authority. The reaction which had commenced under Martin V. seemed to be complete under Nicolas V. The great jubilee which was held in Rome in 1450 was a fitting celebration of the papal triumph. But it proved to be only a Pyrrhic victory. The Papacy learned neither wisdom nor toleration from the trials through which it had passed. While continuing to trample on the spirit of individual freedom, the Popes, in their greed for temporal dominion, gave rise to scandals far more glaring from the moral point of view than the senile bickerings of the schism. The Protestant revolution more than avenged the defeat of the Councils of Constance and Basel. CHAPTER XII MILAN AND VENICE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, 1402-1494