The Council of Constance (Latin: Concilium Constantiense;[1]German: Konzil von Konstanz) 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. This was the first time that an ecumenical council was convened in Holy Roman Empire. 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.
The council is also important for its role in the debates over ecclesial conciliarism and papal supremacy. Constance issued two particularly significant decrees regarding the constitution of the Catholic Church: Haec sancta (1415), which asserted the superiority of ecumenical councils over popes in at least certain situations, and Frequens (1417), which provided for councils to be held automatically every ten years. The status of these decrees proved controversial in the centuries after the council, and Frequens was never put into practice. Though Haec sancta, at least, continued to be accepted as binding by much of the church up to the 19th century, present-day Catholic theologians generally regard these decrees as either invalid or as practical responses to a particular situation without wider implications.
The council's main purpose was to end the Papal schism which had resulted from the confusion following the Avignon Papacy. Pope Gregory XI's return to Rome in 1377, followed by his death (in 1378) and the controversial election of his successor, Pope Urban VI, resulted in the defection of a number of cardinals and the election of a rival pope based at Avignon in 1378. After thirty years of schism, the rival courts convened the Council of Pisa seeking to resolve the situation by deposing the two claimant popes and electing a new one.[2] The council claimed that in such a situation, a council of bishops had greater authority than just one bishop, even if he were the bishop of Rome. Though the elected Antipope Alexander V and his successor, Antipope John XXIII (not to be confused with the 20th-century Pope John XXIII), gained widespread support, especially at the cost of the Avignon antipope, the schism remained, now involving not two but three claimants: Gregory XII at Rome, Benedict XIII at Avignon, and John XXIII.
Therefore, many voices, including Sigismund, King of the Romans and of Hungary (and later Holy Roman Emperor), pressed for another council to resolve the issue. That council was called by John XXIII and was held from 16 November 1414 to 22 April 1418 in Constance, Germany. The council was attended by roughly 29 cardinals, 100 "learned doctors of law and divinity", 134 abbots, and 183 bishops and archbishops.[3]
Participants
Sigismund arrived on Christmas Eve 1414 and exercised a profound and continuous influence on the course of the council in his capacity of imperial protector of the church. An innovation at the council was that instead of voting as individuals, the bishops voted in national blocs. The vote by nations was in great measure the initiative of the English, German, and French members. The legality of this measure, in imitation of the "nations" of the universities, was more than questionable,[according to whom?] but during February 1415 it carried and thenceforth was accepted in practice, though never authorized by any formal decree of the council. The four "nations" consisted of England, France, Italy, and Germany, with Poles, Hungarians, Danes, and Scandinavians counted with the Germans. While the Italian representatives made up half of those in attendance, they were equal in influence to the English, who sent twenty deputies and three bishops. The Spanish deputies (from Portugal, Castile, Navarre and Aragon), initially absent, joined the council at the twenty-first session, constituting upon arrival the fifth nation.[4]
Decrees and doctrinal status
Bishops debating with the pope at the Council of Constance
Many members of the new assembly (comparatively few bishops, but many doctors of theology and of canon and civil law, procurators of bishops, deputies of universities, cathedral chapters, provosts, etc., agents and representatives of princes, etc.) strongly favored the voluntary abdication of all three popes, as did King Sigismund.[4]
Although the Italian bishops who had accompanied John XXIII in large numbers supported his legitimacy, he grew increasingly more suspicious of the council. Partly in response to a fierce anonymous attack on his character from an Italian source, on 2 March 1415 he promised to resign. However, on 20 March he secretly fled the city and took refuge at Schaffhausen in territory of his friend Frederick, Duke of Austria-Tyrol.[4]
The famous decree Haec sancta synodus, which gave primacy to the authority of the council and thus became a source for ecclesial conciliarism, was promulgated in the fifth session, 6 April 1415:
Legitimately assembled in the holy Spirit, constituting a general council and representing the Catholic church militant, it has power immediately from Christ; and everyone of whatever state or dignity, even papal, is bound to obey it in those matters which pertain to the faith, the eradication of the said schism, and the general reform of the said church of God in head and members.
Haec sancta synodus marks the high-water mark of the Conciliar movement of reform.[lower-alpha 1][5]
The acts of the council were not made public until 1442, at the behest of the Council of Basel; they were printed in 1500. The creation of a book on how to die was ordered by the council, and thus written in 1415 under the title Ars moriendi.
Haec sancta is today generally considered invalid by the Catholic Church, on the basis that Gregory XII was the legitimate pope at the time and the decree was passed by the council in a session before his confirmation. On this reading, the first sessions of the Council of Constance represented an invalid and illicit assembly of bishops, gathered under the authority of an antipope. This historiography is of much later provenance than the council itself, however: the Pisan line represented by John XXIII had been considered legitimate not just by most of the Latin church at the time of the council, but also subsequently by Pope Martin V, who referred to John as "our predecessor" in contrast to the other two claimants, who were merely "popes so-called in their obediences". The specific argument distinguishing two parts in the council was seemingly first made by the 17th-century Sorbonne theologian André Duval, and remained a fringe view for some time before its vindication within the Catholic Church under the influence of 19th-century ultramontanism.[6]
Imperia, erected in 1993 to commemorate the Council
With the support of King Sigismund, enthroned before the high altar of the cathedral of Constance, the Council of Constance recommended that all three papal claimants abdicate, and that another be chosen. In part because of the constant presence of the King, other rulers demanded that they have a say in who would be pope.[7]
Gregory XII then sent representatives to Constance, whom he granted full powers to summon, open, and preside over an Ecumenical Council; he also empowered them to present his resignation of the papacy. This would pave the way for the end of the Western Schism.
The legates were received by King Sigismund and by the assembled Bishops, and the King yielded the presidency of the proceedings to the papal legates, Cardinal Giovanni Dominici of Ragusa and Prince Carlo Malatesta. On 4 July 1415 the Bull of Gregory XII which appointed Dominici and Malatesta as his proxies at the council was formally read before the assembled Bishops. The cardinal then read a decree of Gregory XII which convoked the council and authorized its succeeding acts. Thereupon, the Bishops voted to accept the summons. Prince Malatesta immediately informed the council that he was empowered by a commission from Pope Gregory XII to resign the Papal Throne on the Pontiff's behalf. He asked the council whether they would prefer to receive the abdication at that point or at a later date. The Bishops voted to receive the Papal abdication immediately. Thereupon the commission by Gregory XII authorizing his proxy to resign the Papacy on his behalf was read and Malatesta, acting in the name of Gregory XII, pronounced the resignation of the papacy by Gregory XII and handed a written copy of the resignation to the assembly.
Former Pope Gregory XII was then created titular Cardinal Bishop of Porto and Santa Ruffina by the council, with rank immediately below the Pope (which made him the highest-ranking person in the church, since, due to his abdication, the See of Peter in Rome was vacant). Gregory XII's cardinals were accepted as true cardinals by the council, but the members of the council delayed electing a new pope for fear that a new pope would restrict further discussion of pressing issues in the church.
By the time the anti-popes were all deposed and the new Pope, Martin V, was elected, two years had passed since Gregory XII's abdication, and Gregory was already dead. The council took great care to protect the legitimacy of the succession, ratified all his acts, and a new pontiff was chosen. The new pope, Martin V, elected November 1417, soon asserted the absolute authority of the papal office.
A second goal of the council was to continue the reforms begun at the Council of Pisa (1409). The reforms were largely directed against John Wycliffe, mentioned in the opening session and condemned in the eighth on 4 May 1415, and Jan Hus, along with their followers. Hus, summoned to Constance under a letter of safe conduct, was found guilty of heresy by the council and turned over to the secular court. "This holy synod of Constance, seeing that God's church has nothing more that it can do, relinquishes Jan Hus to the judgment of the secular authority and decrees that he is to be relinquished to the secular court." (Council of Constance Session 15 – 6 July 1415). The secular court sentenced him to be burned to death at the stake.
Jerome of Prague, a supporter of Hus, came to Constance to offer assistance but was similarly arrested, judged, found guilty of heresy and turned over to the same secular court, with the same outcome as Hus. Poggio Bracciolini attended the council and related the unfairness of the process against Jerome.[8]
Paweł Włodkowic and the other Polish representatives to the Council of Constance publicly defended Hus.
The Polish-Lithuanian position was defended by Paulus Vladimiri, rector of the Jagiellonian University, who challenged legality of the Teutonic crusade against Lithuania. He argued that a forced conversion was incompatible with free will, which was an essential component of a genuine conversion.[9] Therefore, the Knights could only wage a defensive war if pagans violated natural rights of the Christians. Vladimiri further stipulated that infidels had rights which had to be respected, and neither the Pope nor the Holy Roman Emperor had the authority to violate them. Lithuanians also brought a group of Samogitian representatives to testify to atrocities committed by the Knights.[9]
The Dominican theologian John of Falkenberg proved to be the fiercest opponent of the Poles. In his Liber de doctrina, Falkenberg argued that
the Emperor has the right to slay even peaceful infidels simply because they are pagans.... The Poles deserve death for defending infidels, and should be exterminated even more than the infidels; they should be deprived of their sovereignty and reduced to slavery.[10]
In Satira, he attacked Polish-Lithuanian King Jogaila, calling him a "mad dog" unworthy to be king. Falkenberg was condemned and imprisoned for such libel.[9] Other opponents included Grand Master's proctor Peter Wormditt, Dominic of San Gimignano, John Urbach, Ardecino de Porta of Novara, and Bishop of Ciudad RodrigoAndrew Escobar. They argued that the Knights were perfectly justified in their crusade as it was a sacred duty of Christians to spread the true faith.[9] Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly published an independent opinion that attempted to somewhat balance both Polish and Teutonic positions.[9]
The council established the Diocese of Samogitia, with its seat in Medininkai and subordinated to Lithuanian dioceses, and appointed Matthias of Trakai as the first bishop. Pope Martin V appointed the Lithuanians Jogaila and Vytautas, who were respectively King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, as vicars general in Pskov and Veliky Novgorod in recognition of their Catholicism.[9] After another round of futile negotiations, the Gollub War broke out in 1422. It ended with the Treaty of Melno. Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic wars continued for another hundred years.
Later status
Although Pope Martin V did not directly challenge the decrees of the council, his successor Eugenius IV repudiated an attempt by a faction at the Council of Basel to declare the provisions of Haec sancta and Frequens a matter of faith. His 1439 bull on the matter, Moyses vir Dei, was underwritten by the Council of Florence.[11] In convening the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17), Pope Julius II further pronounced that Frequens had lost its force;[12] Lateran V is sometimes seen as having itself abrogated Haec sancta, though the reading is controversial.[13] Either way, while Rome itself came to reject the provisions made by the council, significant parts of the Church, notably in France, continued to uphold the validity of its decisions long after the event: Haec sancta was reaffirmed in the Gallican Articles of 1682, and even during the First Vatican Council of 1869–70 the French-American bishop of St. Augustine, Florida, Augustin Vérot, attempted to read Haec sancta into the record of deliberations.[14]
Despite the apparently definitive rejection of conciliarism at the First Vatican Council, the debate over the status of Constance was renewed in the 20th century. In the 1960s, in the context of the Second Vatican Council, the reformist Catholic theologian Hans Küng and the historian Paul de Vooght[cs] argued in defense of the dogmatic character of Haec sancta, suggesting that its terms could be reconciled with the definition of papal supremacy at Vatican I.[15] Küng's argument received support from prelates such as Cardinal Franz König.[16] Other Catholic historians adopted different views: Hubert Jedin considered Haec sancta to be an emergency measure with no binding validity beyond its immediate context, while Joseph Gill rejected the validity of the session that passed the decree altogether.[17] The debate over Haec sancta subsided in the 1970s, however, without resolution.[18]
Baldassarre Cossa was Pisan antipope as John XXIII (1410–1415) during the Western Schism. The Catholic Church today regards him as an antipope in opposition to Pope Gregory XII, whom it recognizes as the rightful successor of Saint Peter. John XXIII was also an opponent of Antipope Benedict XIII, who was recognized by the French clergy and monarchy as the legitimate Pontiff.
Jan Hus, sometimes anglicized as John Hus or John Huss, and referred to in historical texts as Iohannes Hus or Johannes Huss, was a Czech theologian and philosopher who became a Church reformer and the inspiration of Hussitism, a key predecessor to Protestantism, and a seminal figure in the Bohemian Reformation. Hus is considered to be the first Church reformer, even though some designate the theorist John Wycliffe. His teachings had a strong influence, most immediately in the approval of a reformed Bohemian religious denomination and, over a century later, on Martin Luther.
Pope Martin V, born OttoColonna, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 11 November 1417 to his death in February 1431. His election effectively ended the Western Schism of 1378–1417. He is the last pope to date to take on the pontifical name "Martin".
Pope Gregory XII, born Angelo Corraro, Corario, or Correr, was head of the Catholic Church from 30 November 1406 to 4 July 1415. Reigning during the Western Schism, he was opposed by the Avignon claimant Benedict XIII and the Pisan claimants Alexander V and John XXIII. Gregory XII wanted to unify the Church and voluntarily resigned in 1415 to end the schism.
Robert Hallam was an English churchman, Bishop of Salisbury and English representative at the Council of Constance. He was Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1403 to 1405.
The Western Schism, also known as the Papal Schism, the Great Occidental Schism, the Schism of 1378, or the Great Schism, was a split within the Roman Catholic Church lasting from 20 September 1378 to 11 November 1417, in which bishops residing in Rome and Avignon simultaneously claimed to be the true pope, and were eventually joined by a third line of Pisan claimants in 1409. The event was driven by international rivalries, personalities and political allegiances, with the Avignon Papacy in particular being closely tied to the French monarchy.
Conciliarism was a movement in the 14th-, 15th- and 16th-century Catholic Church which held that supreme authority in the Church resided with an ecumenical council, apart from, or even against, the pope.
Pierre d'Ailly was a French theologian, astrologer and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
Francesco Zabarella was an Italian cardinal and canonist.
Pedro Martínez de Luna y Pérez de Gotor, known as el Papa Luna(lit.'the Moon Pope') or Pope Luna, was an Aragonese nobleman who was christened antipope Benedict XIII during the Western Schism.
Mikołaj Trąba, of Trąby coat of arms, was a Polish Roman Catholic priest, Royal Notary from 1390, Deputy Chancellor of the Crown 1403–12, bishop of Halicz 1410–12, archbishop of Gniezno from 1412, and first primate of Poland 1417–22.
Giovanni Dominici, OP was an Italian Catholic prelate and Dominican who became a cardinal. His ideas had a profound influence on the art of Fra Angelico, who entered the Dominicans through him.
Antonio Correr was a Roman Catholic Cardinal who was appointed cardinal by his uncle Pope Gregory XII during the period of the Great Western Schism.
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.
Louis I of Bar was a French bishop of the 15th century and the de jure Duke of Bar from 1415 to 1430, ruling from the 1420s alongside his grand-nephew René of Anjou.
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.
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.
The Council of Pisa was a controversial council held in 1409. It attempted to end the Western Schism by deposing both Benedict XIII (Avignon) and Gregory XII (Rome) for schism and manifest heresy. The College of Cardinals, composed of members from both the Avignon Obedience and the Roman Obedience, who were recognized by each other and by the Council, then elected a third papal claimant, Alexander V, who lived only a few months. He was succeeded by John XXIII.
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.
Frequens (Frequent) is the name for the decree passed at the Council of Constance on October 9, 1417; it was supposed to ensure that the Pope convened councils regularly. With this decree, the council participants determined that church meetings should be held "forever". The title is the incipit of the decree, the first sentence of which runs, "Frequens generalium conciliorum celebratio agri Dominici praecipua cultura est".
References
Notes
↑ For good, brief discussions of the politics of conciliarism at and after Constance, see Black 1998, pp.67–76 and Watts 2009, pp.291–301
Black, Anthony (1998). "Popes and Councils". In Allmand, Christopher (ed.). The New Cambridge Medieval History. Vol.VII c. 1415 – c. 1500. Cambridge: University Press.
Collins, Paul (2000). Upon this Rock: The Popes and Their Changing Role. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. ISBN978-0522848496.
Frenken, Ansgar (2014). "Vom Schisma zur 'verfluchten Dreiheit'" [From the Schism to the 'Accursed Trinity']. Damals (in German). Vol.46, no.2. pp.16–21.
McNally, Robert E. (1970). "Conciliarism and the Papacy". Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society. 25: 13–30.
Oakley, Francis (2003). The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church, 1300–1870. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0199265282.
Stump, Phillip (1994). The Reforms of the Council of Constance (1414–1418). Leiden: E.J. Brill. ISBN90-04-09930-1.
Tierney, Brian (2008). "Afterword: Reflections on a Half Century of Conciliar Studies". In Christianson, Gerald; Izbicki, Thomas M.; Bellitto, Christopher M. (eds.). The Church, the Councils, and Reform: The Legacy of the Fifteenth Century. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. pp.313–28. ISBN978-0813215273.
Watts, John (2009). "Europe 1300–1500". The Making of Polities. Cambridge: University Press.[ISBNmissing]
Welsh, Frank. The Battle for Christendom: The Council of Constance, 1415, and the Struggle to Unite Against Islam. Constable, 2008.
* Ecumenical status disputed within the Eastern Orthodox Church.
↑ Even though the Council was moved to Ferrara in 1438 and later to Florence, some bishops refused to move and remained in a parallel Council at Basel.
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