Toward the close of this unlucky fourteenth century a marked religious revival extended over Europe. Perhaps men's sufferings had caused it. Many sects of reformers appeared, protesting sometimes against the discipline, sometimes the doctrines, of the Church. In Germany Nicholas of Basel established the "Friends of God." In England Wycliffe wrote the earliest translation of the Bible into any of our modern tongues.[25] The Avignon popes shook off their long submission to France and returned to Italy, to a Rome so desolate that they tell us not ten thousand people remained to dwell amid its stupendous ruins. Unfortunately this return only led the papacy into still deeper troubles. Several of the cardinals refused to recognize the Roman Pope and elected another, who returned to Avignon. This was the beginning of the "Great Schism" in the Church.[26] For forty years there were two, sometimes three, claimants to the papal chair. The effect of their struggles was naturally to lessen still further that solemn veneration with which men had once looked up to the accepted vicegerent of God on earth. Hitherto the revolt against the popes had only assailed their political supremacy; but now heresies that included complete denial of the religious authority of the Church began everywhere to arise. In England Wycliffe's preachings and pamphlets grew more and more opposed to Roman doctrine. In Bohemia John Huss not only said, as all men did, that the Church needed reform, but, going further, he refused obedience to papal commands.[27] In short, the reformers, finding themselves unable to purify the Roman Church according to their views, began to deny its sacredness and defy its power. At length an unusually energetic though not oversuccessful emperor, Sigismund, the same whom the Turks had defeated at Nicopolis, persuaded the leaders of the Church to unite with him in calling a grand council at Constance.[28] This council ended the great schism and restored order to the Church by securing the rule of a single pope. It also burned John Huss as a heretic, and thereby left on Sigismund's hands a fierce rebellion among the reformer's Bohemian followers. The war lasted for a generation, and during its course all the armies of Germany were repeatedly defeated by the fanatic Hussites.[29]