The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300-1870

This book is about the fundamental constitution of the Catholic Church. In 1870 the First Vatican Council vindicated the old Roman vision of an essentially unlimited monarchical authority residing in the pope. That vision had competed for the allegiance of Catholics worldwide with an even older, conciliar, essentially constitutionalist ideal of church governance. Francis Oakley here reconstructs the half-millennial history of that rival and now largely forgotten tradition.