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8 Pope Eugenius IV,the Conciliar Movement, and the Primacy of Rome } morimiChi waTanabe Concluding his book Eugenius IV: Pope of Christian Union (1961), Joseph Gill, the distinguished historian of the Council of Florence, stated: Florence had declared that the pope,as successor of St.Peter,is supreme head and authority among men in the Church on earth. Henceforth that is the official , defined doctrine. It will meet with future development and clarification, but the principle was firmly established that the teaching of St. Leo is right and that the Conciliarists were wrong. The Church remained a monarchy. It was not turned into a kind of democracy at a time when democracies were neither known nor valued in any other department of life, and when it would most probably have failed signally within the Church.The Council of Florence, convened and guided by Eugenius IV, was responsible for that and, no matter whether that effect is deemed to have been beneficial or harmful to posterity, that was its most important contribution to history.1 John B. Toews, a young historian at the time of his writing on Pope Eugenius IV (r. 1431–47) and the Concordat of Vienna (1448), noted in his able study:“In his struggle with the Council of Basel he [Eugenius IV] had achieved a precise insight into the suicidal nature of conciliarism and This article is partially based on Morimichi Watanabe, “Pope Eugenius (Eugene) IV (1437– 1447),”AmericanCusanusSocietyNewsletter 20/2 (December 2003):13–22. 1.Joseph Gill,EugeniusIV:Popeof ChristianUnion (Westminster,Md.:Newman,1961),212. 177 its ineptitude for definitive action....... For Eugenius a Church without papal primacy was inconceivable.”2 How and why did Eugenius IV become a most persistent papal opponent to the Council of Basel (1431–49) and also to the conciliar movement? Who were his supporters? In this study, we will first examine his life briefly with the above questions in mind and then discuss a few important theological, ecclesiastical, political, and personal factors that affected the course of his activities during the middle of the fifteenth century. Gabriel Condulmaro (Condulmerio) was born in 1383 of a noble and wealthy family in Venice.3 He gave away his inherited wealth, some say amounting to 20,000 florins,to the poor and joined the congregation of the canons regular of S. Giorgio in Alga, Venice.4 At the age of twenty-four, he was appointed bishop of Siena by Pope Gregory XII (r. 1406–15), an uncle on his mother’s side, but resigned the bishopric since the people of Siena objected to the rule of an outsider. In 1408 he was created cardinal priest of San Clemente by Pope Gregory XII.After the death of Pope Martin V (r.1417–31),he was elected pope on the first ballot by fourteen cardinals assembled in the basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome on March 4,1431,and took the name Eugenius IV.The day after his coronation in St. Peter’s on March 11, the new pope issued a bull in which he confirmed an electoral capitulation limiting papal authority that he had signed and the college of cardinals had sworn to before proceeding with the election (and which we will discuss below).5 The new pope was handsome,tall,and thin.He was grave and dignified in his bearing, so much so, says Vespasiano da Bisticci (1421–98) in his famous Memoirs , that no one could keep eyes fixed on him. In describing Eugenius’s manner of life, Vespasiano also tells us that he drank no wine, but only water with sugar and a little cinnamon,and that for his food he was content with one dish,always boiled.He never ate before the appointed hour and greatly relished fruits and veg2 . John B. Toews. “Pope Eugenius IV and the Concordat of Vienna (1448)—An Interpretation,” CH 34 (1965):178–94,at 179. 3. About the life and background of Gabriel Condulmaro, see A. Chrétien, “Le pape Eugène IV (1431– 1447),” Revue internationale de théologie 9 (1901): 150–70, 352–67; Gill, Eugenius IV; Joseph Gill, Personalities of the Council of Florence and Other Essays (Oxford: Blackwell, 1964), especially 35–44. There are short descriptions about him in many reference works.About Pope Eugenius’s itinerary,see Hermann Diener and Brigide Schwarz, “Das Itinerar Papst Eugens IV. (1431–1447),” Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 82 (2002):193–230. 4. See G. Cracco, “La fondazione...

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