The Council of Constance, convened in 1414 under the sponsorship of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, addressed the gravest crisis in late medieval Catholicism: the Western Schism, during which three rival claimants simultaneously claimed the papal throne. The Council ultimately deposed or accepted the resignation of all three claimants and elected Martin V in 1417, restoring a single papacy. It also condemned and executed the Czech reformer Jan Hus in 1415, igniting the Hussite Wars. The Council was one of the most politically charged religious assemblies of the Middle Ages, drawing ecclesiastical and secular leaders from across Europe and generating intense literary and polemical activity.

The trial and execution of Jan Hus at Constance catalyzed a tradition of Czech vernacular writing that expressed religious dissent and national identity through poetry, hymns, and polemical verse. Hus himself was a prolific writer in both Latin and Czech, and his martyrdom made him a literary as much as a theological symbol. The Council's proceedings also stimulated an outpouring of conciliarist political writing that influenced how educated Europeans — including poets and humanists — thought about authority, conscience, and reform, themes that would resonate through to the Protestant Reformation.