Coluccio Salutati e il Grande Scisma d'Occidente

This paper deals with Coluccio Salutati’s interpretation of the causes which led to the outbreak of the Great Western Schism and his efforts to put an end to a terrible scandal that was tearing Christendom. It reconstructs the famous humanist’s intense activity in this regard, from the letter he addressed in the name of all the faithful to the French cardinals gathered at Fondi in the autumn of 1378, soon after the election of Urban VI in the spring of that year, to the “Libri de scismate”, a selection of his writings on the Schism that he collected in 1406 at the end of his life. The work is based on published sources as well as on material from the Florentine State Archives and the Colombina Library of Seville, besides an extensive bibliography.