Pope Eugene IV (born Gabriele Condulmer; Latin: Eugenius IV; Italian: Eugenio IV; 1383 – 23 February 1447) was head of the Catholic Church and leader of the Papal States from 11 March 1431 to his death in February 1447. Condulmer was a Venetian and a nephew of Pope Gregory XII. In 1431, he was elected pope. He is the most recent pope to take the pontifical name "Eugene".
His tenure was marked by conflict: first with the Colonna, relatives of his predecessor Pope Martin V; and later with the Conciliar movement. In 1434, after a complaint by bishop of the Canary Islands Fernando Calvetos, Eugene IV issued the bull "Creator Omnium", rescinding any recognition of Portugal's right to conquer the islands, and rescinding any right to Christianize their native populations. Eugene also resisted slavery: he excommunicated anyone who had enslaved newly-converted Christians, such penalty to remain in place until the enslaved were restored to their liberty and possessions.
Eugene initially sought to protect the Jews, and was quite active against a rampant societal anti-semitism—he issued decrees protecting their rights, opposing forced baptisms, and permitting wider economic activity. In 1442, however, he promulgated the bull Dudum ad nostram audientiam, which was later used as the legal basis for the creation of Jewish ghettos in Europe. In 1443, Eugene decided to take a neutral position on territorial disputes between Castile and Portugal and regarding rights claimed along the coast of Africa.
Condulmer was born in Venice to a rich merchant family. His father was Angelo Condulmer, who founded the Ospizio di Sant'Agnesina for orphaned girls in 1383 and his mother was Bariola Correr. He had a sister, Polissena, mother of the future Pope Paul II. Gabriel is said to have received his earliest education under the supervision of his maternal uncle, Angelo Correr, Bishop of Castello (1380–1390). He and several friends established an Augustianian community of Canons Regular of San Giorgio in Alga in his native city in 1400, and received papal approval in November 1404.
On 30 December 1407, at the age of twenty-four, Gabriel was appointed Bishop of Siena by his maternal uncle, Pope Gregory XII. He was below the minimum age for consecration as a bishop, and therefore his uncle granted him a dispensation; next day, he was granted possession of the diocese, even before the necessary bulls had been prepared. In Siena, the political leaders objected to a bishop who was not only young but also a foreigner. Therefore, in 1408 he resigned the appointment, becoming instead a cleric of the Apostolic Camera (Treasury) and a protonotary apostolic. He was named a cardinal by Pope Gregory XII in the consistory of 9 May 1408, and appointed Cardinal Priest of the titular church of San Clemente.
On 7 February 1420, Condulmer was named papal legate at Picenum in the March of Ancona. He was transferred to Bologna in August 1423. Pope Martin V named him Cardinal Priest of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere in 1427.
Pope Martin V (Colonna) died of an apoplectic stroke on 20 February 1431. The conclave to elect his successor was held at the church and convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and began on 1 March 1431. Fourteen cardinals, led by Giordano Orsini, Bishop of Albano, participated. Condulmer was unanimously elected on 3 March, and was crowned as Eugenius IV on 11 March 1431, on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica by Cardinal Alfonso Carrillo de Albornoz.
By a written agreement made before his election, and ratified on 12 March 1431 as pope, Eugene pledged to distribute to the cardinals one-half of all the revenues of the Church and promised to consult with them on all questions of importance, both spiritual and temporal.
Pope Eugene made his first appointments of cardinals on 19 September 1431. They were his nephew, the Venetian Francesco Condulmer, who was granted the titular church of San Clemente; and the Roman Angelotto Fusco, the bishop of Cava and longtime friend of Eugene, who was granted the title of San Marco.
He was described as tall, thin, with a winning countenance, although many of his troubles were owing to his own want of tact, which tended to alienate others. Upon assuming the papal chair, Eugene IV took violent measures against the numerous Colonna relatives of his predecessor Martin V (who had rewarded them with castles and lands). This at once involved him in a serious contest with the powerful house of Colonna that nominally supported the local rights of Rome against the interests of the Papacy. A truce was soon arranged.
By far the most important feature of Eugene IV's pontificate was the great struggle between the Pope and the Council of Basel (1431–1439), the final embodiment of the Conciliar movement. On 23 July 1431, his legate Giuliano Cesarini opened the council, which had been convoked by Martin V. Canon Beaupère of Besançon, who had been sent from Basel to Rome, gave the pope an unfavourable and exaggerated account of the temper of the people of Basel and its environs. Distrustful of its purposes and emboldened by the small attendance, the Pope issued a bull on 18 December 1431 that dissolved the council and called a new one to meet in eighteen months at Bologna. He gave as his reason that it would be easier for the delegates from the eastern churches to assemble there with the European prelates. The council resisted this expression of papal prerogative. Eugene IV's action gave some weight to the contention that the Curia was opposed to any authentic measures of reform. The council refused to dissolve; instead they renewed the resolutions by which the Council of Constance had declared a council superior to the Pope and ordered Eugene IV to appear at Basel. A compromise was arranged by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, who had been crowned emperor at Rome on 31 May 1433. The first version of Eugene's recognition of the legitimacy of the council was signed on 1 August 1433, and subscribed by three cardinals. By its terms, the Pope recalled his bull of dissolution, and, reserving all the rights of the Holy See, acknowledged the council as ecumenical. In the amended version, signed on 15 December 1433, he withheld his approval of the initial decrees of the Council which had contained canons exalting conciliar authority above that of the pope.
Problems in the Papal States and Rome
These concessions also were due to the invasion of the Papal States by the former Papal condottiero Niccolò Fortebraccio and the troops of Filippo Maria Visconti led by Niccolò Piccinino in retaliation for Eugene's support of Florence and Venice against Milan (see also Wars in Lombardy). This situation led also to establishment of an insurrectionary republic at Rome controlled by the Colonna family. On 4 June 1434, disguised in the robes of a Benedictine monk, Eugene was rowed down the center of the Tiber, pelted by stones from either bank, to a Florentine vessel waiting to receive him at Ostia. Ferdinand Gregorovius remarks that Eugene IV, "having lost the authority of the State by his own ineptitude, resolved[,] like so many of his predecessors, on flight." On 12 June, his ship reached Pisa, and in October he reached Florence.
The city of Rome was restored to obedience by Giovanni Vitelleschi, the militant Bishop of Recanati, in October 1434. In August 1435 a peace treaty was signed at Ferrara by the various belligerents. Pope Eugenius made Vitelleschi archbishop of Florence on 12 October 1435. Vitelleschi held the post until Eugenius made him a cardinal on 9 August 1437.
The people of Rome sent a delegation to Florence in January 1436, begging the pope and the curia to return to Rome, and promising obedience and quiet. The Pope, however, rejected their overture. On 25 March 1436, Pope Eugenius consecrated the cathedral of Florence, and then, in April 1436, moved to Bologna, which had recently been conquered for the papacy. His condottieri Francesco I Sforza and Vitelleschi in the meantime reconquered much of the Papal States with extreme violence and destructive force. Traditional Papal enemies such as the Prefetti di Vico were destroyed, while the Colonna were reduced to obedience after the destruction of their stronghold in Palestrina in 1437. The massive fortress was preserved, however, until Lorenzo Colonna attempted to return in 1438, when it too was destroyed on orders from Vitelleschi.