Professor Gabriel Le Bras, a great pioneer in the field of historical sociology, has spoken of the early medieval Church in a bizarre but effective metaphor as ‘a dismembered body striving to reunite itself’. The essential task of the hierarchy within each national Church was one of coordination—by means of law, doctrine, and the standardization of worship. In the fragmented world of the barbarian kingdoms, the distinctive feature of each episcopate was its ideology of cohesion, the more ardently propounded when social crisis was particularly acute, as in the seventh-century Visigothic kingdom, or the war-torn West Francia of the 830s and 840s. This ideology was, moreover, often intimately associated with movements of monastic reform. Its influence penetrated down into the rural base of society through episcopal visitations, preaching, and provincial councils. To trace all the elements in these complex processes of interaction and change would encompass that much-needed sociology of the early medieval Church which Max Weber did not live to write and no scholar has yet produced. In this paper, as its title implies, my very limited objective is to isolate and examine certain recurrent phenomena and to point to some hitherto unnoticed connections.

For he called pope Leo IX not pontifex but pompifex and pulpifex; the Roman Church a council of vanity, the church of the malignant; and the Apostolic See the seat of Satan.’ This hostile epitaph, and more in the same vein, was written in 1088, the year that Berengar died. They are perhaps unequal crimes: to call even a scion of the German aristocracy ‘not pope but a maker of pomp’ or (worse still) ‘pulp’, and to reject the entire Roman Church as an institution. The charges are based on Lanfranc’s indictment of twenty-five years before: that Berengar had ignored the judgements of pope and council and despised the testimony of the faithful throughout the ages, saying that in himself and his followers only was the true Church to be found on earth.

It is commonly asserted that in the early years of the twelfth century the medieval papacy was suddenly afflicted with a bad attack of apostolic poverty. The consensus of historical opinion accepts that a pope, Paschal II, who had already distinguished himself by launching crusades against both eastern and western Roman emperors, acted so much out of character that, when forced to deal directly with Henry V over the question of episcopal investiture, he abruptly and to the astonishment of contemporaries ‘decreed the poverty of the whole Church’. It was as if St Peter had hiccoughed, and for a brief instant the Roman church was assailed by self-doubt, tacitly admitting that centuries of criticism of ecclesiastical secularity were justified. The attempt by Paschal to renounce the regalian rights of bishops in February IIII has become regarded by many as the turning point in a process described as weaning the papacy away from strict Gregorian principles, permitting the introduction of a spirit of moderation and compromise which would eventually lead to the Concordat of Worms and ‘the end of the Investiture Contest’.

Any discussion of the conciliar assemblies and decisions of the Church is likely to consider things from the centre—to enumerate those present, to distinguish the issues, arguments, and protagonists, and to emphasize the final decisions. Perhaps, indeed, to over-emphasize them, for there is a tendency to assume that what was decreed at Rome was rapidly implemented in the provinces. Often, of course, this was the case, and the speed with which the decisions of the Third Lateran Council were disseminated is striking testimony to the ability of the twelfth-century Papacy to publicize its policies. The Papacy developed rapidly, however, in the middle years of the twelfth century, and it is dangerous to assume that what was true of the pontificate of Alexander III can also be applied to that of Innocent II. It may therefore be useful to look closely at a major provincial dispute from the first half of the twelfth century, and to attempt to determine how decisively regional practice was affected by papal decrees in one particular instance.

In 1228 Gregory IX dispatched as his legate to the Spanish Peninsula the Paris theologian and Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, John of Abbeville: the first legate sent there since before the Fourth Lateran Council and the last to come during the entire thirteenth century in the cause of ecclesiastical reform. During his stay, which lasted for some fifteen months, he held at least three councils, but of only one of these—the Lérida Council of March 1229—have the statutes come down to us intact. Though he visited Portugal as well as Castile and Aragon, this brief communication is concerned only with John’s impact on the Castilian and Aragonese Churches during the central years of the century, and with a summary consideration of the quite different reception which John’s reform programme received in each place.

On Friday 6 July 1274 the reunion of the Greek and Roman Churches was solemnly proclaimed at the Second Council of Lyons. It was a great occasion, and an occasion of great rejoicing for Pope Gregory X who had convened the assembly. In some ways the Greeks, or the Byzantines, had responded to his invitation rather more satisfactorily than his own people. For of the thirteen crowned heads of western Europe who had been invited to attend only one had found it possible to accept. But the Byzantine Emperor from distant Constantinople had sent his own representative in the person of his Grand Logothete George Akropolites; and with him had come a former Patriarch of Constantinople, Germanos, and the Metropolitan of Nicaea, Theophanes. The Council had opened at Lyons in May 1274. But the Byzantine legates had been delayed by shipwreck on their long journey, and it was not until 24 June that they reached their destination. They were welcomed with the kiss of peace by the Pope and all his cardinals and presented the sealed documents that they had brought with them from the Emperor Michael Palaiologos and from the Byzantine clergy.

Now that the statutes formerly ascribed to Winchelsey and Reynolds have been shown to derive from other sources, those of John Stratford, issued after the Second Council of London (1342), are seen to stand out as the most significant body of provincial legislation in the later Middle Ages. Their relative importance is enhanced by the paucity of such legislation in this period in comparison with the considerable volume produced in the course of the thirteenth century.

On investigation, Stratford’s constitutions appear significant in the corpus of medieval ‘administrative’ canon law. Not only do they show signs of the friction existing between the lay and ecclesiastical jurisdictions and experienced both by Pecham and Winchelsey, but also of the recurring clerical concerns, frailties of conduct, and malpractices of church courts and officials alike. Provincial legislation springs partly from local imperfections, and partly from more general circumstances. Political considerations may have been critical in the decision to issue constitutions. There is justification, therefore, for first examining the political context in which these constitutions arose.

Provincial and diocesan legislation provided a coherent system of religious education at a time when opportunities for study were few. It is true that in content little was new, but there was much in the way of reiteration, development and expansion, with particular attention to the practical details of implementation.

Mediaeval education is often discussed in terms of clerical education on the one hand, and of lay education on the other. In this context they are one. The priest had first to learn before he could teach, and what was taught can roughly be summed up as faith, morals, and knowledge of the Church’s law. It remains true that some things were more appropriate for the clerical than the lay ear.

The Council of Pisa was the fruit of a long period of gestation. Intermittently over centuries canonists had discussed where in various contingencies the supreme authority in the Church lay—with the pope, the cardinals, the universitas fidelium in a general council. Twice in the fourteenth century theory was nearly tested by practice, when Philip the Fair opposed Boniface VIII and when Louis of Bavaria faced John XXII. The final challenge was given by the Great Schism. Begun in 1378 it dragged on for decades, causing irreparable damage to Christian Europe. Neither of the rival ‘popes’ showed any genuine goodwill to end it. So others, particularly in France, lent a hand. When Benedict XIII in Avignon refused the via cessionis (abdication) and paid only lip-service to the via discussionis, the court of Paris withdrew its obedience and the theologians of the French universities justified the royal action.

In November 1408 Henry IV finally decided that England would support the Council of Pisa, called by the cardinals in defiance of the rival popes in the Great Schism. The decision seems to have met little opposition, but it must have involved at least some readjustment of ideas for Englishmen. There were of course good traditional arguments in favour of the Council, and we know now that the Government had not always taken a rigidly pro-Roman stand in moves to end the Schism, but Henry’s English ecclesiastical contemporaries at least had been used to a policy which supported the Roman pope and which insisted that if a Council were called, only their pope (Gregory XII) could call it. In accepting Pisa they were accepting a Council which would proceed whether or not he supported it, and a policy knowingly designed to secure his removal, with or without his consent.

The Council of Constance was perhaps the most dramatic of all the ecumenical councils of the Church. Called under stress by an anti-pope whom it proceeded to depose, it was the scene of the fire that burned John Hus and the arena for the debate of the most potent political theories of the time. It was fitting that it should be an occasion for the condemnation of the works of John Wyclif, the firebrand heretic of the preceding century.

Consideration of Wyclif’s condemnation at Constance is usually overshadowed by the condemnation of John Hus, of which process the action concerning Wyclif was a part. However, for the purposes of this paper, the focus will be placed on the total condemnation process of the two men specifically insofar as it concerns Wyclif. When this is done, an interesting succession of events at the Council emerges from the general mass of its records.

In several papers already published I have attempted to provide an account of English relations with the Council of Basle and of the English role within the Council; in the course of these studies I have also tried to identify as many as possible of the Englishmen who can be traced at Basle during this period. There is room, however, for a few further observations, and I trust that these will prove a useful supplement to my earlier work.

Of the two delegations that went to the Council from England, the first arrived early in 1433 and stayed only a few months, the second went in 1434 and was present for about a year until mid-1435. Both were despatched from England as the result of missions from the Council to this country led by Gerardo Landriani, the Bishop of Lodi. On each occasion the king’s council resolved to send representatives to Basle and the Convocation of Canterbury then decided likewise.

Many will have noticed how the renewal of the Church in modern times has drawn together strands of thought and behaviour that were in the past considered discordant. Thus the Second Vatican Council, it seems, in continuing the work of the First, would be likely to draw on that part of the Church’s heritage which had previously been in apparent conflict with the doctrine of papal supremacy: namely, the notion of the supremacy of the Church as a body and of the council or the episcopate. In some ways there is a remarkable degree of continuity between the thought of the Council of Basle (1431–49) and of the Second Vatican Council.

Ranke, whose judgments always deserve respect, said of the Colloquy of Regensburg:

While it is true that the ‘might-have-beens’ of history are unprofitable speculations, yet the possibilities behind that Colloquy of Regensburg have been too much neglected.

King James I was not, in the commonly accepted view, a reconciler of religious differences. Yet there is considerable evidence from the first years of his reign in England—the very period of the Hampton Court Conference, which established for him a reputation of intolerance—that James was actively interested in reconciling religious differences. Surviving documents reveal, moreover, that he had a plan for attaining this objective, the essential feature of which was a proposal that an ecumenical council be convened, representing both Rome and the major Reformation traditions.

On 24 April 1619 the Synod of Dort sat for the 154th, and last, time. Ostensibly summoned to resolve differences between Dutch Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants within a context of Calvinist theology, in reality it pronounced predetermined decrees on unconditional election, a limited atonement, man’s total depravity, the irresistibility of grace, and the perseverance of the elect.

The Synod was national (sometimes, decidedly ‘local’) in nature; yet, because other states—Great Britain, France, Hesse, and the Palatinate among them—sent delegates, it assumed in the eyes of such men as James I and Du Plessis-Mornay an importance equal to that of Trent.