Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T21:05:58.418Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Council and Pope: The Modern Relevance of Conciliarism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Antony Black
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Late-medieval conciliarism provides one theoretical model for the structure of the church, and in particular for its decision-making processes. The development of councils as a means of settling disputes which could not be settled at the local, episcopal level, and of making decisions binding on the church as a whole, in particular of defining the true faith, remains, so far as I am aware, still clouded in our fragmentary knowledge of the early church. But we may guess that the use of councils developed steadily and ‘organically’, as did the priesthood and episcopate, as the church developed its own (in many ways) unique structure in response to the needs of the time. The same appears to be true of the development of the Roman primacy. The notion that the Roman church was the final court of appeal in theological and ecclesiastical disputes, and the corresponding notion that it was incapable of error, were first developed (though I do not know how widely they were accepted in the East) in the late 4th and 5th centuries. Some, such as St Athanasius, regarded the consent of Rome as the touchstone of a true council. ‘Infallibility’ as applied to the Roman see in this sense was thus a very ancient doctrine, and some have found it as early as I Clement (96 AD.). But it was quite a different matter to say that the Roman see (or even the pope in person) could pronounce a final, binding decision on a matter of faith without an oecumenical council. As Professor Tierney has recently shown, papal ‘infallibility’ in this ‘strong’ sense was a product of disputes between the friars and the French episcopate in the late 13th Century, and it was accepted by very few prior to the Council of Florence (1439), and not all that widely thereafter. The normal view of medieval canon-lawyers was that the pope was supreme in jurisdiction, i.e. his word was law in settling disputes, but that as regards defining faith a council was required; indeed, in matters of faith, he was both fallible and impeachable.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 56 , Issue 657 , February 1975 , pp. 82 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Tierney, B., Origins of papal infallibility 1150‐1350 (Leiden, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For the historical background see Delaruelle, E. & others, ľéglise au temps du grand schisme et de la crise conciliaire (1378‐1449), 2 vols. (Paris 1960)Google Scholar–vol. xiv of Histoire de ľéglise, edd. Fliche and Martin. Jacob, E. F., Essays in the conciliar epoch, 3rd ed. (Manchester, 1963)Google Scholar; and id., The conciliar movement in recent study in Bull, of the J. Rylands library, xli (1958), 26‐53. Jedin, H., A history of the Council of Trent, i, trans. Graf (London, 1957), 5‐74Google Scholar.

3 J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et ampliss. collectio, xxvii, 590.

4 Küng, H., Structures of the church, trans. Attanasio, (London, 1965), 239‐84Google Scholar, esp. 278‐80. Vooght, P. de, Les pouvoirs du concile et ľaiutorité du pape, Unam sanctam 56 (Paris, 1965).Google Scholar

5 Das Konzil von Konstanz: Beiträge zu seiner Geschichte und Theologie, festschr. H. Schaufele, ed. A. Franzen and Mtiller (Herder, 1964). K. A. Fink, Die welt‐geschichtliche Bedeutung des Konstanzer Konzils, in Savigny Zeitschr. f. Rechts‐gesch., kanon. Abt., li (1965), 1‐23. B. Tiemey, Hermeneutics and history: the problem of Haec Sancta', in Essays in honor of Bertie Wilkinson (Toronto, 1969), 354‐70.

6 Zwölfer, R., Die Reform der Kirchenverfassung auf dem Konzil zu Basel, in Basler Zeitschr. f. Gerch. u. Altertumskunde, xxviii (1929), 144‐247, and xxix (1930), 2‐58Google Scholar.

7 Black, A., Monarchy and community (Cambridge, 1970), 34Google Scholar ff.

8 Lazarus, P., Das Basler Konzil (Berlin, 1912)Google Scholar.

9 Mansi, xxix, 178 ff.

10 Denzinger, Enchiridion, 27th ed. (Barcelona, 1951), 253. Cf. J. Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge, 1958).

11 Rogers, E. F., The correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton, 1947), 498Google Scholar f.

12 Tierney, B., Foundations of conciliar theory (Cambridge, 1955Google Scholar, repr. 1968), esp. 106, ff., 220 ff.

13 Black, 8 ff., 34 ff., 49 ff.

14 Momimenta conciliorum generalium sec. XV, ed. F. Palacky and others (Vienna‐Basel, 1857‐1935), ii, 629 f.

15 Black, 142 f., 148 f.

16 F. Oakley, The political thought of Pierre ?Ailly (Yale, 1964).

17 Brosse, O. de la, Le pape et le concile, Unam sanctam 58 (Paris, 1965), 85 ff., 107Google Scholar ff.

18 Fromherz, U., Johannes von Segovia (Basle, 1960)Google Scholar.

19 Jean Gerson, Oeuvres completes, ed. Glorieux, vi: ľoeuvre ecctésiologique (Tournai, 1965), 115 f.

20 Monumenta, iii, 938.

21 Ibid., 666.

22 Piccolomini, A. S., De gestis concilii Basiliensis, ed. Hay, & Smith, (Oxford, 1967), 145Google Scholar.

23 Hardt, H. v. d., Magnum oecumenicum Constantiense concilium, vi (Leipzig, 1700), 265Google Scholar.

24 Vat. lat. 4039, f. 225 v.

25 There is a remarkable and quite unconscious similarity between the parts of Küng's ‘Structures’ dealing with the theology of the council and the writings of Basle thinkers, especially Segovia–with whom he was clearly not acquainted; e.g. ‘a council is not the sum total of individual votes, but the totality of the consciousness of the church’ (p. 31).