(1345-1423). Archbishop and cardinal. The son of a petty seigneur from the Limousin, Simon de Cramaud became one of the most influential French prelates of the later Middle Ages. Educated in law at Orleans, he began teaching canon law at Paris when he was about thirty years old. A member of the royal household and council in the late 1370s, he entered the service of John, duke of Berry, after Charles V died in 1380. He served as bishop of Agen (1382-83), Beziers (1383-85), and Poitiers (1385-91, 1413-23). He became patriarch of Alexandria (1391-1409) and archbishop of Reims (1409-13) and was named a cardinal in 1413. He was Berry’s chancellor for five years (1386-91) and spent many years on the council of Charles VI. Politically, he followed his patron in supporting the duke of Burgundy against the Marmousets and Orleanists at court, but when John the Fearless succeeded his father as duke of Burgundy in 1404, Berry (and therefore Cramaud) shifted to the Orleanist party. Soon, Cramaud was on a list of counselors whom Burgundy considered his enemies.
Because the duke of Berry was the French prince most committed to ending the papal Schism, Simon de Cramaud assumed a leading role in the unionist policies of the French crown. More than any other person in Europe, he succeeded in articulating, over a fifteen-year period, the via cessionis that called for the abdication of both popes. A skillful politician, he presided over several major councils of the Gallican church and over the Council of Pisa in 1409-10, as well as performing important diplomatic missions on behalf of church union. His influential treatise De subtraccione obediencie (1397) was a crucial document in the campaign to persuade the princes of Europe to endorse the via cessionis and the sanctions to enforce it.
John Bell Henneman, Jr.
[See also: JOHN, DUKE OF BERRY; MARMOUSETS: SUBTRACTION OF OBEDIENCE]
Auber, Charles-Auguste. “Recherches sur la vie de Simon de Cramaud.” Memoires de la societe des antiquaires deI’ouest7(1840):249-380.
Kaminsky, Howard. “Cession, Subtraction, Deposition: Simon de Cramaud’s Formulation of the French Solution to the Schism.” Studia Gratiana 15(1972):295-317.
--. Simon de Cramaud and the Great Schism. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1983.
World History
