John T. McNeill maintained that all major Christian traditions hanker after conciliarism, by which he meant that to some degree the fundamentals of conciliar thought characterize all Christian bodies that are governed by synods, parish councils, or other assemblies. Yet this observation has not helped the reputation of the Council of Basel (1431–1449). Set between its sisters, Constance and Trent, Basel is Cinderella—before going to the ball. It negotiated with declared heretics (the Hussites), deposed a sitting pope (Eugene IV) and even declared a decree on the superiority of conciliar over papal authority (Haec sancta) to be a veritas of the faith. And if Aeneas Sylvius (the future Pope Pius II) is to be believed, Basel was a raucous assembly filled with cooks and grooms bent on bringing down the papacy.
In very general terms, one might say that Protestants take little interest in Basel and the conciliar epoch on the assumption that anything before Luther's reform must have been an unreformed dark age, while Catholics tend to see a threat to the established order of the Church. Yet the critical issue raised by Basel and such luminaries as Giuliano Cesarini and Nicholas of Cusa continues to haunt us: what force does Haec sancta (or its implied principle) have when the Church is not in schism, as at Constance, but honored a single, undoubted pope?
Michiel Decaluwe has given us perhaps the most important study in this field since a productive period in the 1970s and 1980s when a major contribution was to connect the council's self-definition with a new understanding of conciliar theory pioneered by Brian Tierney. Decaluwe maintains, however, that the picture of conciliarism will be empty until we examine the conflict over authority from the perspective of papal politics, and proposes to provide a more balanced picture that illustrates what he deems a turning point in this politics.
To guide his way through this long and complex assembly he argues that Constance offered not one “standard” interpretation of Haec sancta, but three. Members could follow Jean Gerson, Francesco Zabarella, or the traditional papal advocates. When in the first of three distinct periods (1431–1434/35) the decree was “re-discovered” at Basel, it had lost its context and was applied more broadly to a council's general supremacy in the Church. The use of the new Haec sancta as a weapon against papal power was an event of major importance since the pope was no longer fighting only a reprobate council but a serious, long-standing, and canonical claim to authority.
In the following period (1434/1435–1439), misunderstanding on both sides led to extreme positions and an all-out power struggle. The College of Cardinals began to rally around Eugene, however, and in an important shift in political strategy the pope tempered his position. In 1436 he went on the offensive with a Libellus apologeticus, an extended lament in which, rather than meet the question of authority head on, he portrayed the conflict as a struggle for the preservation of a divinely instituted monarchy.
The council, on the other hand, showed increasing signs of division during debates over accepting new papal presidents in 1434 and abolishing annates in 1435. Two groups, each asserting its own distinctive brand of conciliarism, now vied for leadership. One party, the “power-centralizing conciliarists,” sought to maximize conciliar authority and curtail papal power. The other, the “power-sharing conciliarists,” wanted to balance council and pope. The former gradually gained the upper hand and refused to submit when the pope, in “a tactical masterstroke,” proposed an ecumenical council to negotiate union with the Greeks at Ferrara.
Since neither pope nor council could solve the dispute on its own, the third period (1439–1449) witnessed attempts to enlist some outside muscle. In the wake of Eugene's summons to a union council, Basel opened judicial proceedings against the pope and adopted the Tres veritates in May 1439, asserting that the general superiority of a council over a pope was dogma. It then deposed Eugene and elected a new pope, Felix V.
Eugene, on his part, entered into an agreement with Alfonso of Naples to stabilize the Papal States and, through the judicious use of concessions to French and German sovereigns, brought about a withdrawal of support until Felix resigned and the council closed. In short, the popes survived by clinging to the Papal States and by presenting themselves as colleagues of the European sovereigns. The conciliar claim to authority represented a far greater danger to Eugene than either the council or the sovereigns.
Hubert Jedin once remarked that the winner in the conflict between the pope and the council was neither the pope nor the council but the nation-states. Up to the fourteenth century, the issue was papal authority over the temporal sword. Now the issue became papal authority over the Church. Decaluwe's thesis, nevertheless, is that Eugene succeeded in bringing about the demise of the council, despite defeat in his struggle against the conciliar claim to authority, and thus achieved a “successful defeat.” Yet, bringing an end to the council was one thing; defeating its claim to authority was another. Although First Vatican Council finally formulated a response—the pope holds ultimate authority in the Church—Second Vatican re-opened the debate. Thus Eugene's conflict with the Council of Basel and its claim to authority “has not yet been wholly resolved” (362).
The book is strong on analysis, but it also offers an even-handed critique of recent literature, a rich bibliography (but no index), and enough narrative framework to suggest that this may become a standard text for the next generation. One can also hope that it will prompt another all-too-infrequent spurt in studies of this Cinderella among councils.
