Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Excerpts from Cardinal Guillaume Fillastre's Diary of the Council of Constance

The Council of Constance (1414-1418) is a problem for the belief that what Pius IX defined dogmatically in 1870 as it shows that many of the Council fathers held to the logical priority of councils over the papacy. Furthermore, the naïve claim that one will not have doctrinal confusion if one accepts the infallibility of the Catholic councils and papacy are blown out of the water by the fact that this ecumenical council issued a decree that would be later condemned! On this, see

 

Roberto de Mattei (Catholic), Haec Sancta (1415): A conciliar document condemned by the Church

 

"Orthodoxidation" (Eastern Orthodox), Haec Sancta: The Forgotten Hypocrisy

 

The following excerpts are from the journal of Cardinal Guillaume Fillastre who was present at the council. In terms of biographical information:

 

Guillaume Fillastre was licenctiatus in legibus at the University of Paris in 1382. Seven years later, he was appointed official or judge of the Archbishop of Reims, and, in 1392, was made dean of that cathedral. In this capacity, he attended the Gallican Council of Paris in 1406, where he showed himself to be a strong defender of Benedict XIII, the Avignon pope. He subsequently joined the movement for church unity and was elevated to the grade of cardinal priest of St. Mark by John XXIII in 1411. At the beginning of the Council of Constance, he vigorously opposed John and expressed a point of view very close to that of the French nation. After John’s deposition, he aided his greater compatriot Cardinal Pierre D’Ailly to combat the reform proposals and policies of the German and English nations and King Sigismund. After the council, Martin V despatched Fillastre as one of two envoys to the court of France. Two years later, in 1420, he was granted the administration of the archdiocese of Aix and the bishopric of St. Pont-de-Tomières. He remained active in the Roman Curia until his death in 1428. (John Hine Mundy and Kennerly M. Woody, eds., The Council of Constance: The Unification of the Church [trans. Louise Ropes Loomis; New York: Columbia University Press, 1961], 200)

 

Note the following excerpts which clearly show Fillastre et al., believed that a council took priority over the papacy, including the making of cardinals and other papal pejoratives:

 

The tenor of the memorandum of the lord Cardinal of Cambrai was as follows: “Some conclusions, for the proof and defence of which certain prelates and doctors offer themselves to the general Council and beg the Council, now sufficiently assembled, to deliberate on them.

 

“The sacred Council of Pisa has bound the lord Pope and thus the lords cardinals to strive in the present Council by every reasonable way and method for the perfect and complete union and peace of the Church and its due reformation in head and members. To this they are bound not only by the said Council of Pisa but also by the laws of nature and of God . . .” (p. 207)

 

“Further, for the good of the union of no new cardinals shall be created. And to prevent any fraudulent and deceitful claim that there was a creation of cardinals some time since, the sacred Council declares that no persons shall be considered cardinals who were not publicly reputed and revered as such at the time of the departure of the lord Pope from the city of Constance.” (p. 228)

 

[Session X.] On Tuesday, May 14, the Council held a session to deal with the Pope, and again it summoned him and his followers, supporters, and entertainers. Two cardinals, the junior deacons, Conti and Florence, went with four bishops from the four nations to the doors to call them. Afterwards, the commissioners to examine witnesses were ordered to report the testimony of the witnesses. The Cardinal of St. Mark, who had been selected by the others as their spokesman, then rose and reported that ten witnesses had been examined, several bishops, some abbots, a few doctors, and others. He had their testimony with him and offered to read it. But since it was too long, he reported the substance, amounting to proof of the notorious fact that lord Pope John XXIII had administered the papacy disgracefully, dishonorably, and scandalously, particularly as regarded the making of provisions for churches, monasteries, priories, dignities, and other benefices and grants of favor, expectancies, prerogatives, dispensations, and the like. All such functions he had exercised, as he did mot things, in sordid ways in return for money in vast quantities, appointing to each benefice whoever offered him most, whether by explicit bargain or in indefinite sums, before the provision was granted. He still had his gang of go-betweens and assistants, merchants and money-changers, who wielded more influence in these affairs than cardinals and men of honor. Many of them were his own familiars. Almost every thing he owned was for sale.

 

These were notorious facts. In addition, it was generally understood that he had alienated much of the patrimony of the Roman Church, such as the fortress of Radicofani to the Sienese; likewise property belonging to the cardinals’ titular churches and other churches of the city of Rome, as well as outside churches, monasteries, and ecclesiastical institutions. All this property, it was widely said, was for sale in his hands. The speaker cited by name several instances as to which the Council might decide whether the Pope’s action had been lawful. At the end of his speech, the other commissioners, his colleagues, rose and confirmed his report.

 

Then immediately, without further debate, the Patriarch of Antioch mounted the pulpit and read the sentence, four bishops from the four nations standing beside him . . . [For his notorious crimes of misconduct and misgovernment John is suspended from both spiritual and temporal administration in the Roman and the Universal Church. All the faithful are forbidden to obey him.] (pp. 243-44, ellipses in original—while John XXIII would later be deemed one of the two anti-popes at the council, such is irrelevant, as it shows that the council believed such to be the case for a true pope regardless of the occupant of the papal chair; further, note how the council is willing to remove the power of a bishop of Rome for notorious immorality, not simply notorious theological error.)

 

The evils in the Roman Curia, the cardinal said, had not been initiated or carried on by cardinals, who were almost all of recent creation. On the contrary, they had done much to check them. In order to bring about a reform they had compelled Pope John XXIII to come here to the general Council, where a reform might be accomplished. (p. 402)