CONCILIARISM (HISTORY OF)

Conciliarism is a doctrine asserting that a general council constitutes the supreme authority in the Church. The word is used especially to designate a complex of medieval ideas that grew up in the 13th and 14th centuries and found wide acceptance at the time of the Western Schism (1378–1417).

Sources. These theories had many different sources. Most fundamental of all was a conviction that the Church, the whole Christian people, formed one body sustained by the Holy Spirit, and that it was proper for this corporate nature to find some appropriate expression in the institutional structure of Church government. With the exception of Marsilius of Padua, however, all the greater medieval conciliarists believed wholeheartedly

also in the doctrine that the pope, as successor to St. Peter, was the divinely willed head of the Church. The "conciliar theory" was an attempt to reconcile these fundamental insights. Some of its characteristic propositions began to be formulated in the works of the canonists of the age of innocent iii (1198–1216), a pope who exercised with unusual vigor all the judicial and legislative powers of his office. The canonists in general warmly approved of his activity and themselves contributed much to a growing theory of papal "plenitude of power." But these same lawyers who, in some contexts, exalted the authority of the papal office in the most extreme language showed themselves deeply concerned also over the grievous harm that might befall the Church if all the power that the popes were coming to exercise fell into evil hands. Their great collection of canon law, Gratian's Decretum, told of popes who had sinned and erred in the past (see gratian, decretum of). The circumstances in which a pope's pronouncements could be regarded as infallible had been neither defined nor much discussed. It was generally accepted that a pope could err in faith and it seemed intolerable that the whole Church should be thrown into confusion as a result. There was a need then to find norms that might set proper limits to the powers even of a pope. In seeking such norms the canonists turned to the general councils of the past and it became commonplace around 1200 to assert that the pope was bound by the canons of councils "in matters touching the faith and the general state of the Church."

This raised the problem of how to deal with a pope who offended against such canons. The most eminent canonist of the age, huguccio, discussed the problem at length. He concluded that a pope who publicly professed his adherence to a known heresy could be deposed by the Church and, further, that a pope who contumaciously persisted in notorious crime could likewise be deposed since "to scandalize the Church is like committing heresy." Huguccio also considered the question of how the possibility of a pope erring in faith, which he admitted, could be reconciled with the ancient doctrine that the true faith would always live on in the Roman Church. His answer was based on a distinction between the local Roman Church and the universal Roman Church. "The Roman Church is said to have never erred in faith… but I say that the whole Catholic Church which has never erred in toto is called the Roman Church." And again, "Wherever there are good faithful men there is the Roman Church." This distinction between the proneness to error of a pope and the indefectibility of the whole Church became a most important element in later conciliar theories.

Huguccio's views were repeated with various modifications by the canonists of the early 13th century. Some taught that a pope could be condemned only for heresy, not for notorious crimes in general. Others held that he could be deposed for professing a new heresy and not for only adhering to an old one. All agreed that a doctrinal definition of a general council, that is of pope and bishops acting together, possessed a higher authority than the bare word of a pope alone. A few accepted the more radical view that a decision of the fathers of a council acting in concert against the pope should be preferred to the pope's decision. Sometimes the language employed was ambiguous, and perhaps deliberately so. The Glossa Ordinaria to the Decretum of joannes teutonicus, a work used as a standard text in canon law schools throughout the Middle Ages, declared simply, "Where a matter of faith is involved a council is greater than a pope."

The 13th and 14th Centuries. All this argumentation in the years around 1200 was essentially academic, a preoccupation of intellectuals in the schools. Two developments during the course of the next century gave it a more practical significance. In the first place, the increasing centralization of authority in the Roman Curia— the growing burden of papal taxation and the growing number of papal provisions to benefices—stimulated protests among diocesan bishops and some of them began to look to general councils as a means of permanently limiting papal power. William duranti the younger developed a whole conciliar theory on this basis in 1310. He suggested that general councils should meet every ten years and that all legislation for the universal Church and all general taxation should be approved by the councils.

The second major factor influencing the growth of conciliar thought was a persistent friction between Church and State during the 13th and 14th centuries. Already in 1239 the emperor frederick ii appealed in vague terms to a general council against Pope gregory ix. In the conflict between philip iv of France and boni face viii (1294–1303) the supporters of the French king quite explicitly demanded that the pope be put on trial before a general council and they drew up a whole list of charges against him including one of heresy. From this time onward conciliar ideas were expressed not only in isolated legal glosses and in polemical royal letters but also in substantial treatises on political theory. The most important such work produced c. 1300 was that of the Dominican john (quidort) of paris. He described the pope as a dispensator or steward appointed to administer the property of the Church and to guard its faith. The papal office was established by God, he held, but the designation of the person who was to fill the office was left to human choice. The cardinals acted on behalf of the whole Christian people in electing a pope and, just as consent of the Church was effective in establishing a pope, so too the withdrawal of consent could have the effect of deposing him if he had proved an unjust steward. According to John, bishops, like the pope, held their authority "from God immediately and from the people who elect or consent" and, diffused among them, there was an authority "equal to or greater than" that concentrated in the papacy.

Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham. The most radical conciliar theories of the Middle Ages were developed a little later by marsilius of padua and wil liam of ockham, writing as partisans of the emperor Louis IV the Bavarian during his struggle with Pope john xxii. Marsilius asserted that all power, ecclesiastical and civil, was vested primarily in the whole community and secondarily in governors appointed by the community. He maintained that clerics were fully subject to the jurisdiction of the State and themselves disqualified from exercising coercive jurisdiction. He denied that the papacy was of divine origin and regarded such little authority as he conceded to it as being dependent solely on the continuing consent of the people. He held that the highest authority in matters of faith was that of a council in which laity as well as clergy were represented.

Marsilius's theory, if implemented, might have led to a secularist absolutism. William of Ockham's ideas tended more to mere anarchy. In his voluminous Dialogus he presented every conceivable argument against papal power and, although Ockham did not explicitly endorse all the ideas that he publicized, his subtle and skeptical mind exploited with corrosive effect the widely accepted opinion that the pope could err in faith and that only the whole Church was indefectible. According to Ockham, Christ's promise that his Church would never fail meant only that somewhere within the Church the true faith would live on—perhaps in an idiot or a child. He refused to admit that a general council could represent the Church so perfectly as to be endowed with the Church's indefectibility.

Conciliar Movement. The early 15th century saw a serious attempt to put earlier conciliar theories into practice, that is to assert for the general council a dominant role in the government of the Church. The immediate cause of this conciliar movement was the western schism. After 1378 there were two contending lines of popes and, from 1409 onward, three. As the schism became inveterate it seemed that it could never be ended if the doctrine of absolute papal sovereignty were adhered to with its corollary that the pope (whoever he was) was immune from all human judgment. In these circumstances many moderate thinkers turned to the alternative theory that ultimate authority rested with a general council. As early as 1380 the theologian conrad of geln hausen argued that, if a council could be assembled by any means, it would be empowered to judge between the rival popes. To refute the objection that a legitimate council had to be convoked by the pope in the first place, he appealed to equity and the principle that "necessity knows no law." Subsequently, eminent leaders of the Church in many lands put forward similar proposals, among them the Frenchmen peter of ailly (Alliaco) and Jean gerson, the German Dietrich of nieheim (Niem) and the Italian Francesco zabarella. The conciliarists differed in the details of their systems of thought but they all agreed that the universal Church possessed a more ample authority than the local Roman Church and that, in the circumstances then existing, a general council could wield all the Church's power. The most impressive statement of conciliar ideas was the De concordantia catholica of nicholas of cusa, a subtle and harmonious work in which the principles of representation and consent were interwoven with the basic doctrine of the indefectibility of the whole Christian people in such a fashion as to produce a detailed theory of constitutional government for the Church. There has been much discussion concerning the influence of Marsilius and Ockham on the 15th-century theories. The conciliarists did indeed borrow many arguments from these two formidable predecessors but did not typically adopt their more extreme positions, e.g., Marsilius's denial of the divine origin of papal power or Ockham's skepticism about the ability of a general council truly to represent the Church.

In 1415 a council met at constance and it succeeded in ending the schism by deposing two of the rival popes and accepting the abdication of the third. It also enacted a decree (Sacrosancta ) declaring that a general council held its authority directly from Christ and that every one, even the pope, was bound to obey its decrees. The fathers further laid down the norm that in future general councils were to meet frequently to ensure the good government of the Church. The enactment of these decrees was the high-water mark of the conciliar movement. In 1418 Pope martin v refused to countenance an appeal from the pope to a future general council and such appeals were formally prohibited by Pope pius ii in 1460. Considered as a practical program aiming to control the central machinery of Church government, conciliarism petered out with the disintegration of the faction-ridden Council of basel. As a theory it lived on and continued to attract the support of some leading canonists and theologians in the late 15th and 16th centuries. Its theses influenced the subsequent development of gallicanism and febronianism.

Judgment. Different aspects of the conciliar theory call forth different judgments from modern scholars. Later developments in theology and canon law seem to have provided no adequate alternative answer to the central problem that the conciliarists faced—how the intrinsic authority of the Church can be exercised during a prolonged vacancy or quasi vacancy in the Apostolic See. The demand that councils should play a regular part in the government of the Church may have been a reasonable reaction against excessive centralization in a bureaucratic Roman Curia. Insofar as the conciliar theory asserted the supremacy of an assembly of bishops over a certainly legitimate pope it seems out of accord with Catholic tradition. But the more moderate view that pope and bishops together constitute the highest authority in the Church would be accepted by many modern theologians.

See Also: bishop (in the church); conciliarism (theological aspect); councils, general (ecumenical), theology of.

Bibliography: f. bliemetzrieder, Das Generalkonzil im grossen abendländischen Schisma (Paderborn 1904). j. n. figgis, Studies of Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius (2d ed. Cambridge, Eng. 1916). h. heimpel, Dietrich von Niem (Münster 1932). g. hofmann, Papato, conciliarismo, patriarcato, 1438–1439 (Rome 1940). j. leclercq, Jean de Paris (Paris 1942). Marsilius of Padua, ed. and tr. a. gewirth, 2 v. (New York 1951–56). h. jedin, History of the Council of Trent, tr. e. graf, v. 1–3 (St. Louis 1957–80); Geschichte des Konzils von Trient, 2 v. (Freiburg 1949–57; v. 1, 2d ed. 1951). b. tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (Cambridge, Eng. 1955). p. de vooght, "Le Conciliarisme aux Conciles de Constance et de Bâle," Le Concile et les conciles (Paris 1960) 143–181. j. b. morrall, Gerson and the Great Schism (Manchester, Eng. 1960). e. f. jacob, Essays in the Conciliar Epoch (rev. ed. Notre Dame, Ind. 1963). p. e. sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, Mass. 1963).

[b. tierney]