For the acceptance of Martin V as pope to be truly universal, he had to satisfy the qualifications of legitimacy in each of the obediences which had existed prior to his election: not only the areas formerly subject to the Roman and Pisan popes, but also both sections of what had been the Benedictine obedience, the part which accepted the conciliarism of Constance and the smaller group which had remained loyal to the outcast pope of Peñíscola. Only in 1429 did Martin V acquire legitimacy within this last fragment of the church – apart, that is, from the lingering phantom obedience of Benedict ‘XIV’ – when, following the abdication of Clement VIII, he was duly elected pope by Clement's cardinals, thus maintaining the fiction of the legitimate succession derived from the election of Benedict XIII in 1394. However, these later developments were of little immediate importance to the universities as they and the majority of the Roman church had been reunited under one pope since 1418, an achievement which marked the termination of academic involvement in the debates which had encompassed Europe since the double election of 1378.

However, the last years of the division, after the Council of Pisa, cannot help but give an impression of anticlimax in comparison with the hectic activities of the universities in the previous decades.