Council of Basle

The Concile of Basle (1431 - 1449) is convened by the pope Martin V pursuant to a decree of the Concile of Constancy (the decree Frequens , which envisages the periodic behavior of a council).

The temptation of the conciliarism

The fathers of the council, still traumatized by the memory of the Schism of Occident however already regulated by the recent council of Constancy, will lean in majority for the superiority of the council on the Pope (Conciliarisme), ecclesiologic innovation deduced from an erroneous interpretation of the council of Constancy, during which it acted, urgently, to finish of it with the Great Schism of Occident. But the pope Eugene IV, in front of the drift of the hard core of Basle towards an unrestrained conciliarism more and more in contradiction with the Tradition of the Church, transfers the council from Basle to Ferrare in 1438, and condemns the conciliarists remained in rebellion to Basle (this core will disaggregate in 1449).
Influenced by the emperor, the council of Basle, during its still catholic time, takes measures against the heresy of Jean Hus, tries a bringing together with the orthodoxe Greeks (what Eugene IV will carry out when it transfers the council to Florence to satisfy the Greeks and to better support the union with the Eastern ones) and milked reform of the Church.

The council, where the cardinal Louis Aleman often plays a decisive part but where the Masters of the Université S make large assemblies, thus tries to reorganize the Church against the Pope, then claims to deposit Eugene IV the February 25th 1439 after this one had transferred the assembly to Ferrare in 1438, and elects in its place a antipape, the duke of Savoy Amédée VIII under the name of Felix V, that few princes recognize and who must finally give up and submit himself to the pope Nicolas V, successor of Eugene IV.

The council (known as " conciliabule" for all its period after 1438), condemned by Eugene IV, discredited by his excesses, reduced to a core conciliarist, on April 25th, 1449 disperses.

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