The Reforms of the Council of Constance (1414-1418) by Phillip H. Stump (review)

556 BOOK REVIEWS spite his arresting choice of the year 1789 for the future arrival ofAntichrist, no previous scholar has accorded this aspect of his life and work the degree of painstaking attention extended to it by Smoller. In so doing, she constructs a persuasive portrait of a thinker who in his earlier years had shared both the widespread apocalyptic foreboding generated by the protracted schism and the antipathy toward the claims made for astrological divination long common among churchmen, but who in the last ten years of his life, as his hopes for a genuine reform of the Church waxed and his apocalypticism waned, turned to astrology as an analytical tool to help him confirm his sense that the coming ofAntichrist was not imminent. For by that time, and unlike such contemporaries as Nicole d'Oresme and Heinrich von Langenstein, he had come to view astrology as a rational science that would enable him to make sense of history and prophecy. This portrait is of interest for at least three reasons. First, and beyond the obvious appeal of the reassuringly modest estimate of the earth's circumference that d'Ailly gave in his Imago mundi, because it may help explain the further appeal to Christopher Columbus (who read and annotated them all) of the other tracts of d'Ailly's dealing with astrology which he found bound together with that geographical work. Second, because of what it tells us about the changing fortunes of astrology across the medieval centuries and the appeal it could hold even for intellectuals possessed of some philosophical sophistication . Third, because of the new and helpful light it throws on d'Ailly himself, who, in an effort to harmonize his astrological and theological commitments, and evoking a distinction between natural and supernatural causality, sought to establish astrology as a"natural theology."And it is on this point that Smoller uncharacteristically stumbles. Confused, it may be, by the ambiguity of d'Ailly's handling of the classic potentia Dei absoluta/ordinata distinction, she contrives to portray him as a thinker for whom"there are no natural laws of morality "(italics mine),while at the same time one who overemphasizes the ordained power at the expense of the divine omnipotence. But, without the sort of case that is certainly not made here, the latter claim is less than persuasive,while the former, without extensive qualification, is simply incorrect. Francis Oakley Williams College The Reforms of the Council of Constance (1414-1418). By Phillip H. Stump. [Studies in the History of Christian Thought, Volume LIII.] (Leiden: E. J. Brill. 1994. Pp. xv, 463. $151.50.) Following an eruption of interest in the Council of Constance prompted by Vatican Council II, the flow began to cool, perhaps due to the obstacles presented by the famous Constance decrees,Haec sancta (a council's authority derives directly from Christ) and Frequens (councils must assemble every ten BOOK REVIEWS 557 years), and the censure of Hans Küng, who based some of his early work on Constance. Now two scholars who were "in for the long haul" have come to the fore: Walter Brandmüller, the first volume of whose history of the council appeared in 1991, and this first-rate work on its reform program by a younger American scholar. Neither the method, nor the price, will attract the novice, but—to his credit—Stump spent much effort mastering canon law texts and the art of editing manuscripts, as well as the usual historical tools, before he brought his work to publication. The result is a substantial work which includes a lengthy critical apparatus and a new edition of a central document, the deliberations of the council's Reform Committee. Earlier works on Constance—especially those by Bernhard Hübler and Johannes Haller—stressed either political history, or—more recently—ecclesiology, but Stump adds a third emphasis , the reform ideology itself, for which purpose he adopts the framework of Gerhart Ladner's pioneering study, The Idea of Reform (1959). Ladner's method combines a close analysis of concrete reform measures with an analysis of the images by which the reformers envisioned them, above all their diverse attitudes toward change, as expressed...