Concilio e papato nel Rinascimento (1449-1516): Unproblema irrisolto

Abstract

Concilio e papato nel Rinaschnento (1449-1516): Un problema irrisolto. By Aldo Landi. [Studi Storici.] (Turin: Claudiana Editrice. 1997. Pp. 472, with 70 illustrations apart from the text, of which 15 are in full color, and 32 illustrations in the text. Lire 62,000 paperback.) This is a history of the Council of Pisa-Milan-Asti-Lyons (1511-12) and of all that led Lip to it since the time of the previous council. Aldo landi demonstrates that Nicholas V's victory over conciliarism, as registered in the dissolution of the Council of Basel-lausanne (1431-1449), was not complete; Europe did not suddenly convert to papalism. If the popes secured the abolition of Basel's legacy by abrogations of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) and of the Acceptance of Mainz (1439) and their replacement by concordats and political agreements negotiated with French and German rulers, many intellectuals still espoused conciliarist ideas, and rulers throughout Europe continued to appeal to councils when in disputes with the popes. Many canonists and theologians held that power in the Church should be exercised collegially, that the pope's power was limited by that of the cardinals (Andrea Barbazza) or bishops (Juan de Segovia). Civil rulers from across Europe so often ignored the prohibition of Puis II's Execrabilis (1460) against appeals to a council that it is difficult to claim that this decree was received and observed. Papal efforts to reform the Church were so few and ineffective that people looked to councils as the only solution. Scandalous behavior by Renaissance popes, culminating in the bellicose conduct of Julius II (1503-1513), led some reform-minded cardinals supported by the rulers of France and the Empire to convoke a reform council to meet in Pisa in 1511. The first half of Landi's study is a rereading of the history of the Renaissance papacy that highlights conciliarist resistance to its growing power achieved through alliances with princes and leadership of the crusade effort. If Landi's style of presentation is reminiscent of the Annales of Cesare Baronio and Oderico Rainaldi with its year-by-year and European-wide narrative, the content of his account resembles the Aleigdeburg Centuries with its assiduous ass-embling of the criticisms of heretics and any, references to councils. Undi goes beyond the summarizing of the views of conciliarist and papalist theologians and canonists as found in Olivier de la Brosse's Le pape el le concile (1965), Remigius Bdumer's Nacl.u,irkungen des konziliaren Gedankens (1971), and Ulrich Horst's Zwiscben Konziliarismus und Reformation (1985) to include writers ignored by them (e.g., Martino Garati da Lodi, Galgano Borghese, Bernard de Rousicr, Pedro de Osma, Girolamo Massaino, and Vincent Gigault), to look at the views of ordinary lay persons, prophets, and politicians, and to examine carefully the course of events. His perspective is notably Florentine. By lumping together strictly conciliarist ideas with any call for a council, he is able to claim wide support for councils. Given this seemingly remarkable support for a general council, his explanation for the failure of Andrea Zamometizs effort to convene such a council in Basel in 1481 seems inadequate. Did politicians really support a conciliar model of church government, or were calls for a council mostly ploys to extract concessions from the pope? …