The Political Ideas of Conciliarism and Papalism, 1430–1450

Abstract

Until comparatively recently, it was tacitly assumed that the supporters of the Council of Basle (1431–49) and of pope Eugenius IV (1431–47) had little to contribute to ecclesiology, and (with the exception of Nicholas of Cusa) virtually nothing to political thought. The Council of Constance has generally been taken as the climax of medieval ecclesiastical constitutionalism; and it seemed that the subject of papal sovereignty had been thoroughly exhausted in the previous centuries.