During the late Middle Ages the Catholic Church in Europe faced several extreme conflicts. Among these were the disagreement between the king and the pope, the approach of the Great Western Schism, as well as the rising of new reform ideas. The problems the church was then facing were almost all due to greedy, power hungry leaders, both in the church and in those opposing it, therefore, as history shows, if rulers are given to much power they will eventually abuse that power and become destructive.
Following the great battle between Philip IV and Boniface VIII, in which the king and the pope had a dispute over Papal authority, and the pope excommunicated the king, and the king arrested the pope as well as his subjects, after which, the pope passed away as the stress was too much for him. Following this the Papacy transitioned to France as a result of French popes who wanted to have the Papacy reside in their own country. Before long, it was decided that they needed a man who could rule the church with strength and diligence, and one who was a Greek, as the mob was tired of the Papacy being in France. Therefore, Urban VI was placed in charge, and for a while he kept things in check, but suddenly he started acting very strange and erratic, and this made the papacy think he had gone mad. At this they hired a French pope, Clement II. This would have been fine, had Urban VI not refused to step down, but following this both popes excommunicated the other, and hired their own cardinals. Countries around Europe began to take sides, and Clement II said that Urban was only elected because of the mob, and that he was not the rightful papal ruler. Things got so extreme that they put a suggestion box outside the college of cardinals, and it was advised that they hold a council to decide which was the rightful pope. The Council of Pisa convened in 1409, and after several of these councils, it was decided that both popes should step down and that an entirely new pope be elected, and so, Martin V was elected in 1415, however; neither pope Urban VI nor Clement II would give way to him. However After a long drawn out process, Urban and Clement did step down, but it wasn’t until 1920 when it was announced who the real pope was, and the reason they didn’t state this until the twentieth century was because, at the end of this Schism they just wanted to move on and forget about it, instead of pointing fingers.
The next big issue the Papacy would have to face was the early reform ideas; strangely, these ideas were first founded from within the church. The first to suggest these new reforms was John Wycliff, at that time a priest in the Catholic Church, and he developed and taught concepts that we recognize today as reform theology. Even more surprising was that, unlike later reform teachers such as Martin Luther or John Calvin, John Wycliff did not face much resistance for his teachings, in fact, many of them were embraced by the church and it is thought by historians that had he not lost favor, the reformation would have happened one hundred years earlier. The reason his ideas fell out of favor was because a peasants revolt erupted and he had been preaching about not owning material things, including property, something the peasants were quite serious about keeping, therefore, with this threat, Wycliff’s followers quickly distanced themselves from him because they did not want to be targets of the mob. In the end, John Wycliff’s efforts did not take root, at least not in his age, but in later times, many would take hold of them and finish what he started.
Over all, the late middle ages were a very difficult time for the church; however, most of the problems that the Church, and the entire nation faced at that time had their roots in power hungry leaders within the church, as well as the monarchy, and these leaders were what drove the issues to the point of arresting popes and having such stubborn people in charge that all they cared about was power and money, and those were the people who were supposed be setting an example for their nation. In my opinion the Papacy and the monarchy were meant to work in harmony, and to function in such a way that they would balance one another, but this could not be expected from people who had no interest in serving their nation or God. This was among the things that John Wycliff’s teachings combated and that the entire Protestant Reformation would fight against. Going back to what was said in the beginning, when a ruler has excessive authority, and does not know how to properly manage it, as seen time and time again, he harms those under him, causes social upheaval, not only in his own following, but in an entire community or nation, and finally he eventually destroys himself. 
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