Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/543

Rh COUNCIL another not merely in its catholicity of spirit and in the abiding interest of the questions discussed, but in the width of area from which its members were drawn, and the extent of territory throughout which its authority was at the time recognized. At the earliest universal councils the represen tatives of the Western Church were a small minority; at Nictea hardly 10 of the 318 (?) bishops were of the Latin- speaking church. The council at Constantinople in 381 was at first only a general synod of the Oriental church; and it was not till the Gth century that it was recognized as oecumenical in the West. Some councils, such as those summoned to Pavia and Siena, were designed to be oecumenical, but led to no such result. The whole Greek Church acknowledges still but seven O3cumenical councils. The English Church after the Reformation practically re cognized the first five. The doctrinal definitions of the first four councils became the common property of the churches of the Reformation, but Protestant authors rarely refer to the later councils save polemically. The Latins even are not entirely agreed amongst themselves. The claims of the council at Sardica in 393 to universal authority have been asserted but seldom conceded. Some Catholics have protested against the cecumenicity of the synod in 1311 at Vienne, generally reckoned the 15th oecumenical. Most Catholics, including some of those most anxious to promote reforms, refused to admit the Gallican claim in favour of the council summoned to Pisa in 1409; and its rank as a universal council has never been allowed by the most approved Catholic theologians. The Gallicans wished to have the Council of Constance recognized as oecumenical throughout ; good Catholics acknowledge only the sittings held after Pope Martin V. was chosen, or such earlier decrees as were afterwards sanctioned by this Pope. Some Gallicans regard the Council of Basel as oecumenical from beginning to end ; most insist on regarding it as legitimate only till it was transferred to Ferrara; many Catholics, amongst others Bellarmine, decline to admit the oecumeni- city of any of its decrees. The Council of Ferrara- Florence, a Papal continuation of that at Basel, was at first protested against by the Gallican party, but is fully accept ed by most Catholic theologians and canonists. The Gallicans were also slow to admit the binding authority of the 5th Lateran synod, the 18th oecumenical council. The question as to the number of councils is naturally of most consequence to the only section of the church that still assumes the right to summon councils and to call them recumenical. The view that prevails in the Roman Catholic Church may best be shown by giving a list of the councils accepted as oecumenical by Hefele (Concttiengeschichte, 2d ed. vol. i. pp. 59, 60). A.D. 1. The Council at Nicaea 325 2. The 1st Council at Constantinople... 381 3. The Council at Ephesus 431 4. The Council at Chalcedon 451 5. The 2d at Constantinople 553 6. The 3d at Constantinople 680 7. The 2d at Nicsea 787 8. The 4th at Constantinople 869 9. The 1st Lateran Council 1123 10. The 2d Lateran Council 1139 11. The 3d Lateran Council 1179 12. The 4th Lateran Council 1215 13. The 1st Council at Lyons 1245 14. The 2d Council at Lyons 1274 15. The Council at Vienne 1311 16. The Council of Constance (partially) 1414-1418 I7a. The Council of Basel (partially) 1431-1438 175. The Council of Ferrara-Florence (a continuation of that at Basel).... 1438-1442 18. The 5th Lateran Council 1512-1517 19. The Council of Trent 1545-1563 20. Vatican Council 1869-1870 These oecumenical councils fall naturally into several groups or series. The first eight, including that at Con stantinople in 869, were summoned by the emperors, all the later ones by the popes, and this though the analogy of the inferior councils seems to demand that the represen tative assemblies of the universal church should be summoned by the head of the church alone. Catholics alv-ays assert that no council can be oecumenical unless called l*y the Pope, or by a temporal prince with and by the Pope s assent obtained before or after ; and Catholic authors have been at pains to attempt a proof that, even at the councils undoubtedly summoned by the emperors, the bishop of Rome stood to the calling of them in a relation different from that of the other patriarchs. In the case of the 3d oecumenical council, for example, Hefele contends that the Pope did not merely, like the other bishops, passively assent, but actively sanctioned the summons. The exclusive right of the popes to preside was&quot; unhesi tatingly admitted at all the later councils ; but at the earlier ones, where manifestly emperors, empresses, or their commissioners were the formal presidents, Catholic canonists have persuaded themselves that such presidency was merely in regard to external matters, and that the true president was always episcopal. Even at the Council of Nicaea, they argue, Hosius and the two Roman presbyters who signed the decrees first must have done so as deputies of the Roman bishop, and as such must have been the true presidents. The first eight councils differed from the rest in that, whereas all others met within the bounds of the Western Church, they were all held in the East. Further, the great majority of those who attended them were Greeks, and spoke Greek alone; and the chief subjects of debate at several turned on distinctions not safely translatable into the Western tongues. The first six of these eight councils were occupied mainly, though by no means exclu sively, with aspects of the great trinitarian and christo- logical controversies, and their decrees are accordingly of high dogmatical interest. Of councils held in the West a well-defined sub-group includes the 9th (the 1st Lateran) to the 15th (at Vienne in 1311). The first of these is significantly enough con cerned with the dispute about the right of investiture ; and though some of this series of seven discussed or defined dogmas, as did the brilliant 4th Lateran Council, they were for the most part busied with matters pertaining to the rights and dignity of the popes and with questions con cerning their election. Indeed several of them have less the aspect of free and independent councils than of assem blies gathered for the official ratification of the proceedings of Pope and Curia. The reasons for the calling of universal synods are of various kinds. When a serious heresy or schism has arisen, when it is doubtful which of two opposing popes is legitimate, when it is proposed to undertake some grand design against the enemies of the church, when the Popo is accused of heresy or other grave fault, when the cardinals will not or cannot elect a Pope, and when a root and branch reformation of the church is in view, councils may or must be summoned. It was the last of these grounds for assembling the universal church that led to the 16th, 17th, and 18th oecumenical councils; and the 19th, that of Trent, though the sufficiency of the reforms agreed to by it was unanimously denied by Protestant reformers, must also be reckoned amongst the reforming councils. The Vatican Council is the last of those claiming to be oecumenical ; and in decreeing the infallibility of the Pope, it has appeared to many that the 20th council has shown cause why, for all essential purposes, there needs never be another. The very institution of councils seems in itself an admission that apart from them there was no source of