CORRADO of GELNHAUSEN. - Theologian and canonist, born in the Palatinate c. 1320 into a middle-class family, died at Heidelberg on 13 April 1390. He enrolled in 1344 in the Faculty of Philosophy at Paris; in 1359 he was canon at Mainz; in 1369 procurator of the German nation and lecturer in canon law at the Studium of Bologna; in 1380 he became provost of the cathedral of Worms, until he returned as master to Paris, where he had been a student.
From 1388 to 1390 he taught at the new University of Heidelberg, of which he was the first chancellor and to which he bequeathed his rich collection of books, the original nucleus of the later famous library, and a substantial sum for the foundation of a college on the model of the Sorbonne. He took an active part in the movement occasioned by the Western Schism, and in Paris in 1380, at the invitation of King Charles V of France, composed the *Tractatus de congregando concilio tempore schismatis*, which, together with the *Epistola concordiae*, brought him fame and made him the exponent of conciliar theory. Driven by circumstances, he departed from the tradition that affirmed the absolute primacy and *plenitudo potestatis* of the pope, successor of Peter, to establish the authority of the Council, above the pope, as the supreme organ of the *Ecclesia fidelium*.
C., together with his prince Rupert I of the Palatinate, sided with Urban VI against the antipope Clement VII. He maintained the thesis that the true head of the Church was Christ, truly and livingly present in the Church, and that therefore the Church could never be considered headless; while only on a secondary and inferior plane did the pope act, and neither he nor the college of cardinals had authority over the faithful, since the *Ecclesia universalis* was represented by the general council, which could even act above the pope when exceptional cases rendered it necessary.
This theory, which had its foundation in the doctrines of William of Ockham, later found among its most fervent supporters another German theologian, Henry of Langenstein.