Ailly And The Council Of Constance Analysis

As the Church worked to continue preserving the tradition through its authority questions of supremacy of councils and papacy arose. While the papacy was gaining authority slowly throughout the medieval period, Peter of Ailly and the Council of Constance made arguments for conciliar superiority. Through the writings of Ailly and the Council of Constance the importance and authority of councils because the councils are a source of unity and have inherent authority over the papacy. In his writings about how to heal the schism which caused a rift between the faithful of the Church, Peter of Ailly uses the image of the Mystical Body of the Christ to show that the Church was inherently called to be in union with another. The schism has caused the Body to become divided, and thus, Ailly uses the imagery of the
This unity is founded in Christ, not the Pope, and thus makes the claim of conciliar superiority. Ailly goes on to argue the papacy, although the Vicar of Christ, does not hold alone the authority to unite the Church because Christ gave his Body “originally and immediately…its power and authority…to conserve its own unity” (3) and the pope is only part of the Body (3). Thus, the Church, actually any faithful, has the authority to call a general assembly in the name of Christ as long as the council is “done in his (Jesus’) name,… in the faith of Christ and for the safety of his own Church” (3). While Christ gives the faithful Body the power to call councils, also “common natural law” (4) gives the Body this power because it is only natural that a body “resists its own division and partition” (4). This natural membership of the Body grants the Church it the ability to gather its parts and unite them since it is only with all its parts that the Body is whole. Since the pope is only part of whole universal Church, the supremacy is given to the