Pope Boniface IX (Latin: Bonifatius IX; Italian: Bonifacio IX; c. 1350 – 1 October 1404, born Pietro Tomacelli Cybo) was head of the Catholic Church from 2 November 1389 to his death, in October 1404. He was the second Roman pope during the Western Schism. In this time, the Avignon claimants, Clement VII and Benedict XIII, maintained the Roman Curia in Avignon, under the protection of the French monarchy. He is the last pope to date to take on the pontifical name "Boniface".
The Patriarch of Lisbon (Latin: Patriarcha Olisiponensis, Portuguese: Patriarca de Lisboa), also called the Cardinal-Patriarch of Lisbon once he has been made cardinal, is the ordinary bishop of the Archdiocese of Lisbon. He is one of the few patriarchs in the Latin Church of the Catholic Church, along with the Patriarchs of Venice, the East Indies, and Jerusalem.
The diocese of Lisbon was created in the 4th century, but it lay vacant after 716 when the city was captured by the Moors; the diocese was restored when the city was captured by king Afonso I of Portugal during the Second Crusade in 1147. In 1393, Lisbon was raised to the dignity of a metropolitan archdiocese by Pope Boniface IX with the papal bull In eminentissimae dignitatis. In 1716, at the request of King John V, Pope Clement XI issued the bull In Supremo Apostolatus Solio granting the rank of Patriarch to the King's Chaplain, who had since been made Archbishop of West Lisbon.
The Western Schism, also known as the Great Divide, the Great Occidental Schism, the Schism of 1378, or the Great Western Schism (Latin: Magnum schisma occidentale, Ecclesiae occidentalis schisma), was a split within the Catholic Church lasting from 20 September 1378 to 11 November 1417, in which bishops residing in Rome and Avignon simultaneously claimed to be the true pope, and were eventually joined by a line of Pisan claimants in 1409. The event was driven by international rivalries, personalities and political allegiances, with the Avignon Papacy in particular being closely tied to the French monarchy.
The papacy had resided in Avignon since 1309, but Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome in 1377. The Catholic Church split in September 1378, when, following Gregory XI's death and Urban VI's subsequent election, a group of French cardinals declared his election invalid due to intimidation and violence and, in the presence of three Italian cardinals, elected Clement VII, who claimed to be the true pope. As Roman claimant, Urban VI was succeeded by Boniface IX, Innocent VII and Gregory XII. Clement VII was succeeded as Avignon claimant by Benedict XIII.
The House of Beaufort (/ˈboʊfərt/ BOH-fərt) is an English noble family which originated in the fourteenth century as the legitimated issue of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, by Katherine Swynford. Gaunt and Swynford had four children: John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset (1373–1410); Cardinal Henry Beaufort (1375–1447), Bishop of Winchester; Thomas Beaufort, 1st Duke of Exeter (1377–1426) and Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmorland (1379–1440). When Gaunt finally married Swynford as his third wife in 1396, the Beauforts were legitimised by Pope Boniface IX and by royal proclamation of the reigning monarch King Richard II the following year.
John of Gaunt’s eldest legitimate son by his first wife Blanche of Lancaster was Henry Bolingbroke, who would eventually take the throne from Richard II as King Henry IV in 1399, the year of Gaunt’s death. Henry would be the first of the House of Lancaster (the main line descending from John of Gaunt) to rule England, and would eventually be succeeded by his son Henry V and grandson Henry VI. The Beauforts, as a junior branch of the House of Lancaster, would play an important role during the Wars of the Roses during the reign of the incompetent Henry VI. The eventual heiress of the Beaufort family was Lady Margaret Beaufort, only daughter of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, who married Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond and became the mother of King Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch of England.