One minute you're complaining about us giving an analysis that isn't in the words of the people alive at the time, and the next you're giving your own which the people's own actions directly contradict?
Fact of the matter is, when a pope excommunicates someone, they're out of the Church. So any follower of Pope Urban VI must've believed that Pope Clement VIII was outside of the Church, and so on, provided they were an educated Catholic. Therefore, by choosing a pope to follow, you are making an implicit statement on where the Church is. You are saying that Pope X is in the Church, and indeed leads it, and Pope Y is not. That the laws of Pope X are the laws of the Church, but those of Pope Y are not, etc. And we see people's understanding of this by their actions at the time, refusing to be under the hierarchy of who they viewed as the false pope, etc.
So it's obvious that people were making a decision as to where the Church was when they picked a pope, by virtue of the facts that the pope leads the Church and that excommunication renders one outside it. On the other hand, nowhere do we see evidence that people thought the Papal See was empty - that's just your own hypocritical conjecture.
Even the term "schism" makes it obvious that it was a matter of the Church being divided. Not totally divided, sure, but it's not called the "Great Western Vacancy" for a reason.
The books say that it was not a schism, even though they refer to it as that.
You wrote,
"by choosing a pope to follow, you are making an implicit statement on where the Church is"I am always suspicious when a claim is made about something in Catholic history from hundreds of years ago that approved Catholic books since then have not already claimed. I've seen no evidence that people living back then had an issue with "where the Catholic Church was". Of course, there is nothing new under the sun, but I am talking about a widespread public mentality notable for history.
You wrote,
"nowhere do we see evidence that people thought the Papal See was empty - that's just your own hypocritical conjecture"It was the mentality after many years went by and they finally realized that Christendom as a whole needed to be on the same page as to who the true pope was.
The
Catholic Encyclopedia article on the
Council of Constance mentions:
"It had come about that, whichever of the three claimants of the papacy was the legitimate successor of Peter, there reigned throughout the Church a universal uncertainty and an intolerable confusion, so that saints and scholars and upright souls were to be found in all three obediences. On the principle that a doubtful pope is no pope, the Apostolic See appeared really vacant, and under the circuмstances could not possibly be otherwise filled than by the action of a general council."
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