The Council of Pisa was the fruit of a long period of gestation. Intermittently over centuries canonists had discussed where in various contingencies the supreme authority in the Church lay—with the pope, the cardinals, the universitas fidelium in a general council. Twice in the fourteenth century theory was nearly tested by practice, when Philip the Fair opposed Boniface VIII and when Louis of Bavaria faced John XXII. The final challenge was given by the Great Schism. Begun in 1378 it dragged on for decades, causing irreparable damage to Christian Europe. Neither of the rival ‘popes’ showed any genuine goodwill to end it. So others, particularly in France, lent a hand. When Benedict XIII in Avignon refused the via cessionis (abdication) and paid only lip-service to the via discussionis, the court of Paris withdrew its obedience and the theologians of the French universities justified the royal action. Canonists like Conrad of Gelnhausen and Henry of Langenstein wrote treatises to uphold the superiority of the universitas fidelium, i.e. a general council, over pope and cardinals. But who could summon a council? And who could best represent the universitas fidelium?

It had been the cardinals who had started the schism when, confident that they were the chief power in the Church, they declared Urban VT's election invalid. They were the prime movers in the summoning of the Council of Pisa and in its running. In Constance, four years later, those same cardinals were fighting to retain a semblance of their previous importance, and bishops in the four or five ‘Nations’ were the chief authority representing the universitas fidelium.