The Council of Constance was an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church that was held from 1414 to 1418 in the Bishopric of Constance (Konstanz) in present-day Germany. The council ended the Western Schism by deposing or accepting the resignation of the remaining papal claimants and by electing Pope Martin V. It was the last papal election to take place outside of Italy.
Ultramontanism is a clerical political conception within the Catholic Church that places strong emphasis on the prerogatives and powers of the Pope. It contrasts with Gallicanism, the belief that popular civil authority—often represented by the monarch's or state's authority—over the Church is comparable to that of the Pope.
The Council of Florence is the seventeenth ecumenical council recognized by the Catholic Church, held between 1431 and 1449. It was convoked as the Council of Basel by Pope Martin V shortly before his death in February 1431 and took place in the context of the Hussite Wars in Bohemia and the rise of the Ottoman Empire. At stake was the greater conflict between the conciliar movement and the principle of papal supremacy.
Nicholas of Cusa, also referred to as Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus, was a German Catholic cardinal and polymath active as a philosopher, theologian, jurist, mathematician and astronomer. One of the first German proponents of Renaissance humanism, he made spiritual and political contributions in European history. A notable example of this is his mystical or spiritual writings on "learned ignorance," as well as his participation in power struggles between Rome and the German states of the Holy Roman Empire.
Gallicanism is the belief that popular civil authority—often represented by the monarch's or the state's authority—over the Catholic Church is comparable to that of the pope. Gallicanism is a rejection of ultramontanism; it has something in common with Anglicanism, but is nuanced, in that it plays down the authority of the Pope in church without denying that there are some authoritative elements to the office associated with being primus inter pares. Other terms for the same or similar doctrines include Erastianism, Febronianism, and Josephinism.
The magisterium of the Catholic Church is the church's authority or office to give authentic interpretation of the word of God, "whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition". According to the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, the task of interpretation is vested uniquely in the Pope and the bishops, though the concept has a complex history of development. Scripture and Tradition "make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church", and the magisterium is not independent of this, since "all that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is derived from this single deposit of faith".
The Western Schism, also known as the Papal Schism, the Great Occidental Schism, or the Schism of 1378, was a split within the Catholic Church lasting from 1378 to 1417 in which bishops residing in Rome and Avignon both claimed to be the true pope, and were joined by a third line of Pisan claimants in 1409. The schism was driven by personalities and political allegiances, with the Avignon Papacy being closely associated with the French monarchy.
Juan de Torquemada O.P., Spanish ecclesiastic, defender of Jewish conversos, has been described as the most articulate papal apologist of the fifteenth century. He was an uncle of Tomás de Torquemada, afterwards notorious as the persecuting Grand Inquisitor.
The infallibility of the Church is the belief that the Holy Spirit preserves the Christian Church from errors that would contradict its essential doctrines. It is related to, but not the same as, indefectibility, that is, "she remains and will remain the Institution of Salvation, founded by Christ, until the end of the world." The doctrine of infallibility is premised on the authority Jesus granted to the apostles to "bind and loose" and in particular the promises to Peter in regard to papal infallibility.
Jacques Almain was a French professor of arts and theology at the University of Paris who died at an early age. Born in the diocese of Sens, he studied Arts at the Collège de Montaigu of the University of Paris. He served as Rector of the University from December 1507 to March 1508.
A dogma of the Catholic Church is defined as "a truth revealed by God, which the magisterium of the Church declared as binding". The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
The Church's Magisterium asserts that it exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a form obliging Catholics to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these.
According to the Catholic Church, a Church Council is ecumenical ("world-wide"), if it is "a solemn congregation of the Catholic bishops of the world at the invitation of the Pope to decide on matters of the Church with him". The wider term "ecumenical council" relates to Church councils recognised by both Eastern and Western Christianity.
Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, in virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope when he speaks ex cathedra is preserved from the possibility of error on doctrine "initially given to the apostolic Church and handed down in Scripture and tradition". It does not mean that the pope cannot sin or otherwise err in most situations. This doctrine, defined dogmatically at the First Vatican Council of 1869–1870 in the document Pastor aeternus, is claimed to have existed in medieval theology and to have been the majority opinion at the time of the Counter-Reformation.
Peter of Candia, also known as Peter Phillarges, named as Alexander V, was an antipope elected by the Council of Pisa during the Western Schism (1378–1417). He reigned briefly from 26 June 1409, to his death in 1410, in opposition to the Roman pope Gregory XII and the Avignon antipope Benedict XIII. In the 20th century, the Catholic Church reinterpreted the Western Schism by recognising the Roman popes, as legitimate. Gregory XII's reign was extended to 1415, and Alexander V is now regarded as an antipope.
Brian Tierney was an English historian and medievalist. He was a member of the faculty of the Catholic University of America for eight years until becoming a professor of medieval history at Cornell University in 1959, where he was later appointed as the Goldwin Smith Professor of Medieval History in 1969 and the first Bowmar Professor of Humanistic Studies in 1977.
Marsilius of Padua was an Italian scholar, trained in medicine, who practiced a variety of professions. He was also an important 14th-century political figure. His political treatise Defensor pacis, an attempt to refute papal claims to a "plenitude of power" in affairs of both church and state, is seen by some scholars as the most revolutionary political treatise written in the later Middle Ages. It is one of the first examples of a trenchant critique of caesaropapism in Western Europe. Marsilius is sometimes seen as a forerunner of the Protestant reformation, because many of his beliefs were later adopted by Calvin and Luther.
Execrabilis is a papal bull issued by Pope Pius II on 18 January 1460 condemning conciliarism. The bull received its name from the opening word of its Latin text, which labelled as "execrable" all efforts to appeal an authoritative ruling of a Pope to a council.
In the Roman Catholic Church, collegiality refers to "the Pope governing the Church in collaboration with the bishops of the local Churches, respecting their proper autonomy." In the early church the popes sometimes exercised moral authority rather than administrative power, and that authority was not exercised extremely often; regional churches elected their own bishops, resolved disputes in local synods, and only felt the need to appeal to the Pope under special circumstances.
The decree Haec sancta synodus, also called Haec sancta, was promulgated by the fifth session of the Council of Constance on April 6, 1415. It contains a section on the question of whether the Pope is above an ecumenical council or, conversely, such a council is above the Pope. The question is related to papal primacy, papal supremacy and conciliarism.
In the Middle Ages, hierocracy or papalism was a current of Latin legal and political thought that argued that the pope held supreme authority over not just spiritual, but also temporal affairs. In its full, late medieval form, hierocratic theory posited that since Christ was lord of the universe and both king and priest, and the pope was his earthly vicar, the pope must also possess both spiritual and temporal authority over everybody in the world. Papalist writers at the turn of the 14th century such as Augustinus Triumphus and Giles of Rome depicted secular government as a product of human sinfulness that originated, by necessity, in tyrannical usurpation, and could be redeemed only by submission to the superior spiritual sovereignty of the pope. At the head of the Catholic Church, responsible to no other jurisdiction except God, the pope, they argued, was the monarch of a universal kingdom whose power extended to Christians and non-Christians alike.
