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Councils and Synods

The Council of Basel

Councils and Synods

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The Council of Basel opened in 1431 as a continuation of the conciliarist project begun at Constance, the view that a general council held authority superior to the pope, particularly in matters of church reform. It met, with a break and a relocation to Ferrara and then Florence for part of its later sessions, until 1449, and its history is really the history of a rupture: Pope Eugene IV attempted to dissolve it in 1431 and again to transfer it in 1437, the council refused both times, and the two bodies split, with a rump council at Basel eventually electing its own antipope, Felix V, in 1439, while the pope's own transferred council at Ferrara-Florence pursued reunion with the Eastern church instead. The schism marked the practical end of conciliarism as a serious rival to papal authority in the Latin church.

Facts
The Event
Convened or Ordered By
Formally convened under Pope Martin V shortly before his death in 1431, continuing the conciliarist program begun at the Council of Constance (1414-1418). 1
When It Happened
1431 to 1449, with its later, pope-recognized sessions relocated to Ferrara in 1438 and Florence in 1439. 1
Where It Happened
Basel, in the Swiss Confederacy, part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time. 1
Principal Parties
Pope Eugene IV, who twice attempted to dissolve or relocate the council; the rump assembly remaining at Basel, which elected antipope Felix V in 1439; the pope's own transferred council at Ferrara and then Florence, which pursued union with the Eastern church. 1
Consequences
Lasting Consequence
The Basel-Eugene schism ended with Felix V's resignation in 1449 and the Basel rump's dissolution, and the failure of conciliarism to sustain itself against a reasserting papacy is generally treated by historians as marking the practical end of conciliar theory as a serious governing rival to papal authority, though its arguments resurfaced in later Reformation debate. 1
Scholarship
How Firmly It Is Attested
Attested 1
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A Council That Outlasted Its Own Authority

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Council of Basel began as the logical next step after Constance, which had ended the Western Schism and asserted, in doing so, that a general council could sit in judgment above a pope when the church's unity was at stake. Basel was meant to keep building on that claim. Instead it became the event that broke it.

Pope Eugene IV tried to dissolve the council within months of its opening, then tried again in 1437 to move it to Ferrara, closer to his own control and to negotiations with the Eastern church he hoped to reunite with Rome. Both times, a majority at Basel refused to leave. What had been one council became two: a pope-recognized body that relocated to Ferrara and then Florence and did, eventually, produce a short-lived reunion agreement with the Byzantine church, and a rump assembly that stayed at Basel, kept insisting a council outranked a pope, and in 1439 elected its own pope, Felix V, to prove it.

Felix's resignation a decade later, in 1449, effectively ended the argument by attrition rather than by anyone conceding it. Conciliarism, the idea Basel had been built to defend, never again mounted a serious institutional challenge to papal authority in the way it had for over a century leading up to this council. Its arguments did not disappear, though. They resurfaced within a hundred years in Reformation debates over where church authority actually resides, made by reformers who had read the same Basel-era texts and drawn a very different conclusion about where that argument should have ended.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Basel, Cities

This source names Basel directly: "The Council of Basel opened in 1431 as a continuation of the conciliarist project begun at Constance, the view that a general council held authority superior to the pope, particularly in matters of..."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Constance, Cities

This source names Constance directly: "of the conciliarist project begun at Constance, the view that a general council held authority superior to the pope, particularly in matters of church reform."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Florence, Cities

This source names Florence directly: "It met, with a break and a relocation to Ferrara and then Florence for part of its later sessions, until 1449, and its history is really the history of a rupture: Pope Eugene IV attempted to..."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Belongs to Tradition

Roman Catholicism, Denominations
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source
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