Pope Eugenius IV Elected

1431

A Venetian ascetic with a gift for ecclesiastical infighting took the throne of Peter and immediately clashed with the Council of Basel over reform. His pontificate would be spent fighting councils, hosting an attempted union with the Greeks, and scraping together funds to keep Rome from collapsing into ruin. His flight from Rome in 1434, disguised as a monk under a hail of stones, became one of the era's most vivid papal humiliations.