Alpha Book

But
early in the fifteenth century a movement was inaugurated by certain
Catholic bishops and scholars in favor of making the councils superior
to the pope and a regular source of supreme legislation for the Church.
In this way, the councils of Constance (1414-1418) and Basel (1431 ff.)
had endeavored to introduce representative, if not democratic,
government into the Church. The popes, however, objected to this
conciliar movement and managed to have it condemned by the Council of
Ferrara-Florence (1438-1442). By the year 1512 the papal theory had
triumphed and Catholics generally recognized again that the government
of the Church was essentially monarchical. The laws of the Catholic
Church were known as canons, and, of several codes of canon law which
had been prepared, that of a monk named Gratian, compiled in the
twelfth century, was the most widely used.
[Sidenote: The Pope and his Powers]
We are now in a position to summarize the claims and prerogatives of
the bishop of Rome or pope.


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