Almain and Major

Conciliar Theory on the Eve of the Reformation

Bibliographic Data

ID23164249
AuthorsFrancis Oakley (corresponding author)
Year1965
Volume70
Issue3
Pages673
Publication date1965-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1845937
OpenAlexW2084708066
LanguageEN
Citations received56

THE return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome, the disputed papal election of I378, the subsequent protracted schism and the failure of repeated attempts to end it-these are the events that ensured the rise to prominence of that particular form of ecclesiastical constitutionalism that has come to be known as Conciliar theory. At the heart of this theory lay the belief that the pope was not an absolute but rather a constitutional monarch, that he possessed a merely ministerial authority delegated to him for the good of the Church, and that the final authority in the Church lay, therefore, not with the pope but with the whole body of the faithful or with their representatives gathered together in a general council. It was in response to this belief that the Councils of Pisa (I409) and Constance (I4I4-I4I8) assembled to put an end to the schism, and that the conciliarists at the Council of Basel (I43I-I449) defied the authority of a pontiff, the validity of whose title to office was uncontested. TI'he failure of the conciliarists at Basel to make good their claims against the Pope and the subsequent condemnation of conciliar theory by Pius II led to a decline in its fortunes. But for two centuries or more the memory of these three councils continued to disturb the ecclesiastical consciousness of Europe, as also did the two great decrees promulgated at Constance-Sacrosancta, which asserted that general councils, acting alone, are superior in authority to the pope, and Frequens, which provided for the assembly of such councils at frequent and regular intervals. In the last few years, stimulated perhaps by the quatercentenary of the Council of Trent and the convocation of the Second Vatican Council, there has been a notable quickening of interest in the conciliar movement, a growing realization of its importance both in the history of constitutional and political thinking and in the more arcane realm of ecclesiological speculation. This interest has focused largely, however, if not exclusively, upon

Constitutionalism · Democracy · Political science · Politics · Schism · Theology · Historical Studies of British Isles · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Theology and Canon Law Studies

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