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Cosponsored by the History Department and the Medieval Studies Workshop
In the early fifteenth century, the general council assembled at Constance and, representing the universal Church, put an end to the scandalous schism which for almost forty years had divided the Latin Church between rival lines of claimants to the papal office. It did so by claiming and exercising an authority superior to that of the pope, an authority by virtue of which it could impose constitutional limits on the exercise of his prerogatives, stand in judgment over him, and if need be, depose him for wrongdoing. This lecture will consider the nature and history of the conciliarist tradition of ecclesiastical constitutionalism across the half millennium down to 1870 when Vatican I, by confirming Cardinal Manning’s claim that “ultramontanism is Catholic Christianity”, consigned it to oblivion.
You can read more about Professor Oakley’s book The Conciliarist Tradition HERE.