conciliarism

Theory of Catholic Church government developed in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, during and after the Great Schism (1378–1417, when rival popes had seats in Rome and Avignon), claiming that ultimate authority should lie with the General Councils of the Church. Conciliarism provided justification for the increasingly radical acts of the Councils, in particular that at Basel (1431–49).

Attempts, theoretical and practical, to limit the power of the papacy were nothing new; to mention only the most recent example, an early 14th-century dispute between pope and claimant to the Holy Roman Empire had inspired antipapal writings by Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham. It was, indeed, a commonplace of canon law that, in certain circumstances, a pope could be deposed by a General Council. However, the beginning of the Great Schism, made the issue of conciliar power topical. In the immediate wake of the election of an antipope, some writers, for example Pierre d'Ailly, argued that the only legitimate method of ending the crisis was through a General Council. In the early 15th century, when General Councils were the means used to heal the Schism, clerics such as Jean Gerson and Francesco Zabarella developed theories to explain why a General Council should have authority not only in exceptional circumstances but also as a matter of course. Their writings were backed up by the decrees of the Council of Constance (1414–18), with the decree Frequens (1417) demanding that General Councils should be frequently held. At Basel, the claims of conciliar theory were stretched further: some of this generation, including Nicholas of Cusa, Juan de Segovia, and Panormitanus, argued that General Councils could convene themselves and could take over functions which, as they put it, had been delegated to the papacy.

Conciliarism, however, was not a single worked-out doctrine; there were differences between the various theorists on issues such as the source of ecclesiastical authority and the balance of authority between pope and council. This was, in part, a natural consequence of the continually changing political circumstances which created the intellectual debate. It had the effect, though, that as some theorists became more radical, more moderate opinion became alienated and a General Council which claimed to represent the whole church found it was losing support to the papacy.

Though some conciliarists drew parallels with secular authority in constructing their arguments and though their arguments were potentially applicable beyond the confines of Church government, 15th-century conciliarism remained an ecclesiastical issue. And it was one which lost its topicality in the second half of that century; but this did not mean that the writings were merely filed away and lost from view. There was a brief revival of conciliarism in the early 16th century, in particular, in the writings of the Scottish theologian and historian John Mair (c. 1470–1550). More influentially, however, the store of ideas first created in discussions of Catholic Church government were deployed in a rather different context – by proponents of Calvinist resistance theory.