Conciliarism

CONCILIARISM. - An ecclesiological error, according to which the ecumenical council is superior to the pope. The remote origin of conciliarism is found in the juridical principle (Decretum of Gratian, dist. XL, c. 6) according to which the pope can be judged by the Church in the case of heresy. This maxim, which is encountered throughout the Middle Ages, spread the idea that there were cases in which the pope could be subject to the judgment of his subjects. When at the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th the struggles of Boniface VIII with Philip the Fair and of John XXII with Louis the Bavarian shook in the minds of many the authority and prestige of the Roman pontiff, the old principle was invoked and enriched with amplifications: not only in the case of heresy, but also when in the exercise of his power he [the pope] is diminished, the pope can be called back to order: precisely at that time appeals to a council became frequent.

In such a climate was born the Defensor pacis of Marsilius of Padua (v.), according to which Jesus Christ did not establish on earth any vicar of his who would be the head of the Church, since all the ministers of religion have equal powers; the papacy is a creation of the emperor, who can correct and depose the wearers of the tiara; the supreme organ of the ecclesiastical regime is not the papacy, but the ecumenical council, convoked by imperial authority and constituted not only of bishops and priests, but also of laymen; its decrees come immediately after Scripture and before the pontifical decretals and have full application by force of the imperial power. If the ecumenical council preserves for the pope the directive power, which through a complex of circumstances was entrusted in the past to the bishop of Rome, this does not mean that such a mandate cannot be revoked.

Despite the condemnation of John XXIII, these errors, patronized and amplified (for example, the denial of infallibility) by the rebellious Minorite William of Ockham (v.), spread widely, especially in Bavaria. When the Western Schism (1378-1417) afflicted the Church, many, even well-intentioned, found in these theories the way out of so many evils. Precisely at the beginning of the schism, two German doctors of the University of Paris reduced the conciliar doctrine to a system: Conrad of Gelnhausen and Henry of Langenstein. The first published in 1386 an Epistola concordiae, the other in 1379 an Epistola pacis, in which the necessity of an ecumenical council is urged and a vast plan of reform is proposed; but while Conrad attributes the supreme power to the assembled bishops, Henry sees its origin in the collectivity of the faithful. These theories would have their further development in Pierre d'Ailly (1350-1420), a brilliant doctor and chancellor of the University of Paris. A convinced Ockhamist in several doctrinal points, from 1380 he became the spokesman of the doubts which, amid so many upheavals, had troubled the best minds. It is implausible, he says, that the Lord founded the firmitas Ecclesiae in Petri infirmitate, since Peter and his successors have so many times erred; one must therefore hold that the Church is founded on Jesus Christ and that the pope is not essential to it; consequently every power descends directly from God to the bishops and priests, who assembled in council constitute the supreme authority of the Church, and therefore superior to the pope. The latter can be called head of the Church only ministerialiter exercens and administrative dispensans, and since he can err, and even fall into heresy, in such a case he must be corrected and even deposed. Only the universal Church is infallible, in the sense that even if the entire clergy fell into error, there will always be some simple soul and some pious layman who will know how to guard the deposit of Revelation. Such were the ideas of the able chancellor, who soon became archbishop of Cambrai (1397) and Avignon cardinal (1411) and one of the presidents of the Council of Constance. His disciple was Gerson (v.), who went further than his master. While in fact Pierre d'Ailly, developing the ideas of Conrad of Gelnhausen, conceived the Church as an episcopal aristocracy, Gerson, following the line traced by Henry of Langenstein, became the champion first of a tempered democracy (parish priests have a definitive vote in the council like bishops, since both the one and the other are of divine origin), then fell into multitudinarianism, teaching that the whole mystical body of the faithful has equal rights in ecclesiastical government, which it nevertheless transmits to the bishops and the pope. Hence the logical deduction that the ecumenical council, but also the entire community, can call the pope back to duty and, if necessary, depose him.

Gerson, a truly pious man, was in his conduct better than his ideas. In the meantime, however, these, under the aegis of so great a man, spread and were practically applied in the Councils of Constance and Basel, and while they penetrated the minds of many writers, they favored the development of contemporary heresies (Wyclif and Hus) and subsequent ones (Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism), to take refuge, after the Council of Trent, among those French Catholics who, in the name of Gallican liberties (v. GALLICANESIMO), opposed for centuries the free exercise of pontifical authority. The error entered alive still into the Vatican Council, in which however it received the death blow (Denz-U, 1830).

Antonio Piolanti