## The Council of Florence The Seventeenth Ecumenical Council was, correctly speaking, the continuation of the Council of Ferrara, transferred to the Tuscan capital because of the pest; or, indeed, a continuation of the Council of Basle, which was convoked in 1431 by [[Martin V]]. In the end the last-named assembly became a revolutionary conciliabulum, and is to be judged variously, according as we consider the manner of its convocation, its membership, or its results. Generally, however, it is ranked as an ecumenical council until the decree of dissolution in 1437. After its transfer to Ferrara, the first session of the council was held 10 Jan., 1438. [[Eugene IV]] proclaimed it the regular continuation of the Council of Basle, and hence its ecumenical character is admitted by all. The Council of Constance (1414-18) had seen the growth of a fatal theory, based on the writings of William Durandus (Guillaume Durant), John of Paris, Marsiglio of Padua, and [[William of Occam]], i.e. the conciliar theory that proclaimed the superiority of the council over the pope. It was the outcome of much previous conflict and embitterment; was hastily voted in a time of angry confusion by an incompetent body; and, besides leading eventually to the deplorable articles of the "Declaratio Cleri Gallicani" (see GALLICANISM), almost provoked at the time new schisms. Influenced by this theory, the members of the Council of Constance promulgated in the thirty-fifth general session (9 October, 1417) five decrees, the first being the famous decree known as "Frequens", according to which an ecumenical council should be held every ten years. In other words, the council was henceforth to be a permanent, indispensable institution, that is, a kind of religious parliament meeting at regular intervals, and including amongst its members the ambassadors of Catholic sovereigns; hence the ancient papal monarchy, elective but absolute, was to give way to a constitutional oligarchy.