Conciliarism
A reform movement in the Western church of the fifteenth century arising from the Great Schism (1378-1417), during which first two and then three popes contended for the loyalty of Christendom. Such a scandalous situation effectively weakened the papacy as an institution, and led thinkers such as Jean Gerson, Pierre d'Ailly, and Francesco Zarabella to affirm, following William of Ockham and others, that, though God had indeed given the church final authority in matters of faith and morals, this authority was vested, not in the pope, but in the church as a whole, and that it should thus be exercised by a general council. These ideas led to the conciliarist movement, which reached the peak of its influence in the Council of Constance (1414-18). This council not only ended the schism by deposing all three popes, but also affirmed the authority of general councils over the pope. These decrees, which would have completely changed the authority structure of the church, were accepted at that critical moment. But they began to be disregarded as soon as another pope was elected, and were finally overturned by Pius II in his bull Execrabilis in 1460. This marked the end of conciliarism as a movement, though its ideas remained influential for some time.
From a Protestant point of view conciliarism,
though a step in the right direction in its rejection of papal authority, was
not sufficiently; it failed to see that, while the church does have authority
(Matt. 16:19; 18:18), this is a relative authority, since it is controlled and
limited by the inspired Word of God and the Holy Spirit!