The text of Haec Sancta, taken from Mansi 27:585 (click to enlarge):
The decree Haec
Sancta was approved during the council’s rather tumultuous fifth session
(April 4, 1415), after John’s flight but before his deposition and Gregory’s
abdication. A weaker version of the same decree had been approved at the fourth
session a week earlier. A number of the cardinals and the whole French
delegation objected to the stronger version, though some of them were nevertheless
present at the fifth session which approved it. The decree reads as follows:
This holy
synod of Constance, constituting a general council and lawfully assembled to
root out the present schism and bring about the reform of the church in head
and members . . . declares that . . . representing the Catholic church
militant, it holds power immediately from Christ and that anyone of whatsoever
state or dignity, even if it be the papal, is bound to obey it in matters which
pertain to the faith, the rooting out of the said schism, and the general
reform of the church in head and members. Further, it declares that any
person of whatsoever rank, state, or dignity, even if it be the made by the
papal, who contumaciously refuses to obey the mandates, statutes, ordinances, or
instructions made or to be made by this holy synod or by any other general
council lawfully assembled concerning the aforesaid matters or matters
pertaining to them shall, unless he repents, be subjected to fitting
penance and duly punished, recourse being had, if necessary to other sanctions of
the law. (Mansi,
v. 27, col. 585)
The italicized
phrases were approved only at the fifth session and have been the subject of
controversy ever since.
Haec Sancta
never received formal
papal approval, but specific papal approval was hardly necessary. In Inter
Cunctos (February 22, 1418) Martin V gave his general approval to whatever
was done conciliariter at Constance. Moreover, both Martin and his
successor, Eugene IV, were well aware that their own legitimacy depended on the
legitimacy of Constance. Both popes consistently pursued a policy of
undermining conciliarist power without ever attacking any of the decrees
of Constance directly. However, as papal power grew, conciliarist interpretations
of Haec Sancta could be repudiated. Under extreme pressure, Eugene
in Dudum Sacrum (December 15, 1433) recognized the legitimacy of the
Council of Basel—although the council had already reaffirmed Haec Sancta
(February 15, 1432) and was to do so again (June 26, 1434) before Eugene
managed to transfer it to Ferrara (September 18, 1437). When the rump council
remaining behind at Basel later (May 5, 1439) issued the decree Sacrosancta,
proclaiming the doctrine of Haec Sancta a defined dogma of faith, it
lost what little support it had left. Eugene, in Florence, reacted vigorously
branding the conciliabulum as illegitimate in Moyses Vir Dei (September
4, 1439) and its conciliarist interpretation of Haec Sancta as erroneous
in Etsi Non Dubiteumus (April 20, 1441). After the debacle of the
closing years of the Basel conciliabulum, conciliarist power was
definitely broken, and Eugene’s astute successor, Nicholas V, was able to
reestablish traditional papal authority. The episode was ended, though (as
always) the idea lived on. (Cf. Yves Congar, L’eglise de saint Augustine á l’époque
modern, pp. 339 ff.. and 390 ff.)
What is the
contemporary systematic significance of Haec Sancta as it was
approved at Constance (and twice reaffirmed as Basel while that council was
still a legitimate general council)? Very little, I would say, as long as the
decree is not regarded as a strict dogmatic definition. Nevertheless, its systematic
relevance depends to a considerable extent on how one interprets the decree
historically.
There are
three general approaches represented among contemporary historians. One, the “traditional”
Catholic approach, sees no problem at all. Haec Sancta has no dogmatic
force because the Roman pope, Gregory XII, was the legitimate pope in 1415 and
Constance therefore became a legitimate ecumenical council (at the earliest)
only after its convocation by Gregory. Haec Sancta, three months before
this event, is not a legitimate conciliar document. Martin VI’s general approbation
of all that was done conciliariter at Constance can refer only to the
council’s transactions after Gregory’s official convocation. Eugene IV’s approbation
of Basel as a legitimate council did not include any approval of its reaffirmations
of Haec Sancta, as his later condemnation of conciliarism in Etsi Non
Dubitemus proves. Whatever its historical significance, Haec Sancta
can be safely ignored by Catholic dogmatic theologians. (The best-known
representative of this approach is Joseph Gill; cf. “The Fifth Session of the
Council of Constance,” Heythrop Journal 5 [1964] 131-143, and Constance
et Bále-Florence) This interpretation still has some support in Catholic
circles, (Haec Sancta, for instance, is not included even in the latest
editions of Denzinger) but I would predict a rapid decline in that support in
the years to come. The legitimacy of Gregory XII is the cornerstone of this position,
and more and more historians are convinced that there was in 1415 and is today
simply no way of determining which of the contending obediences in the Western
Schism was legitimate. The actual situation was one of three plausible claimants,
none of whom could establish his claim in the universal church, each of whom
had a duty to do ‘whatever was necessary’ to settle the schism (under pain of
losing the very papal office he claimed as equivalently a fide devius if
he persisted in a course of conduct that was destroying the peace and unity of
the church universal). I seriously doubt that the illegitimacy of Constance at
the time of Haec Sancta can be historically established.
A second
approach accepts Haec Sancta as a legitimate decree of a legitimate
council but interprets it as an emergency response to a concrete impasse in
church government. With no pope who could effectively establish his claim in
the universal church, something had to be done, and the council did it. The reaffirmations
of Haec Sancta at Basel (during its legitimate period) add nothing to
the decree of Constance. In other words, the authority ascribed to a general council
in Haec Sancta must be interpreted in terms of a council without a
legitimate pope, not a council against a legitimate pope. Similarly, the
reference to future councils must envisage either a continuation of the same
situation (i.e., another council without a legitimate pope) or mean a council
which includes the pope as head of the college of bishops. Genuinely
conciliarist sentiments lay behind the reference to “reform of the church in
head and members” included in the final text of the decree, but these notions were
never officially endorsed by the majority at either Constance or Basel when
they approved Haec Sancta. Again, whatever its importance as a historical
precedent for emergency procedures in church government, Haec Sancta
does not contradict Vatican I’s definition of papal primacy or jurisdiction
(even in the matter of church reform). The decree does not subordinate a legitimate
pope to the authority of an ecumenical council. I personally believe this interpretation
comes closest to capturing the general intent of the Council of Constance when
it approved Haec Sancta. However, the reform clause and the reference to
future councils are part of the official text, and it is difficult to establish
beyond doubt that they do not represent a limited victory for genuine
conciliarist thought, if not at Constance, at least later on at Basel.
A third
approach interprets Haec Sancta not only as a legitimate decree of a
legitimate council but as a strict dogmatic doctrinal definition, as irreformable
as the dogmas of Vatican I. (Cf., for example, Hans Küng, Structures of the
Church, pp. 240-258, and Francis Oakley, “The New Conciliarism and Its Implications”)
This was certainly the intent of the illegitimate conciliabulum of Basel
which issued Sacrosancta: by making the doctrine of Haec Sancta (interpreted
in a conciliarist sense) a matter of faith, the rump council wished to brand
Eugene IV as a formal heretic, liable to deposition. However, there appears to
be no compelling evidence that the earlier, legitimate conciliar approvals of Haec
Sancta at Constance and Basel intended to define its doctrine (however
interpreted) as a dogma of faith. (Though it is an anachronism to apply
contemporary canonical norms of legitimacy to the earlier councils,
contemporary notions of what is required for a strict dogmatic definition
certainly can be used to evaluate the dogmatic status of past conciliar
pronouncements) Some of those who consider Haec Sancta a dogmatic
definition interpreter it in a nonconciliarist sense and hence have no problem
reconciling it with Pastor aeternus. Others, however, emphasizing the
reform clause and the references to future councils, interpreter it in a conciliarist
sense and claim radical discontinuity between Constance and Vatican I. Even if
one is convinced that a limited conciliarism is implied in the text of Haec
Sancta, such doctrinal discontinuity becomes a dogmatic issue only if the
decree is accorded strict dogmatic status. Unless such dogmatic status can be
established, and I seriously doubt that it can, the most that can be
claimed is that Vatican I corrects any (non-defined) conciliarist elements in Haec
Sancta when it defines the pope’s juridically unlimited primacy of
jurisdiction in the universal church. At least there is how I would assess the
whole complex problem as it is presently debated within Catholic theology. (Patrick
J. Burns, “Communion, Councils, and Collegiality: Some Catholic Reflections,”
in Papal Primacy and the Universal Church, ed. Paul C. Empie and T.
Austin Murphy [Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue V; Minneapolis: Augsburg
Publishing House, 1974], 163-66)