For almost forty years, from 1378 to 1417, the Western Church was divided into rival camps headed by two-and eventually three--"competing popes. The so-called Great Schism provoked a profound and long-lasting anxiety throughout Europe--"an anxiety that reverberated throughout clerical circles and among the ordinary faithful. In

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski is Professor of French at the University of Pittsburgh. Her books include Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (1990) and Reading Myth: Classical Mythology and Its Interpretations in Medieval French Literature (1997).