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Afterword Reflections on a Half Century of Conciliar Studies } brian Tierney The introduction to this rich collection of essays includes a generous appraisal of my old work Foundationsof theConciliarTheory.1 The editors suggested that, to provide a sort of coda or epilogue, I might explain how I came to write the book fifty years ago and reflect a little on the later development of conciliar scholarship.So I will first describe the origin of the book and something of its content, and then mention some aspects of conciliar thought that were not treated in the book but that have been taken up by later scholars—including in contributions to the present volume. Then, finally, I would like to discuss a broader theme, our emerging understanding of the place of conciliarism in the whole history of Western constitutional thought, and its present-day significance,if any. Writing about one’s own work is a task that must appeal to the vanity of an author; it is a self-indulgent thing to do; but it can also evoke a degree of humility. I remember once long ago complaining to my mentor at that time, Water Ullmann, about my lack of preparation in some relevant field. Walter replied, a little crossly, “And when you are eighty, do you think you will know everything then?” And now that I have passed eighty I realize how right he was and how much there is 313 1. Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the GreatSchism (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,1955;repr.,1968;rev.ed.,Leiden:Brill,1998). that I don’t know. And of course, when I wrote Foundations, there was even more that I did not know about various areas of medieval theology, philosophy, and political theory, all of which would have been relevant in a complete account of medieval conciliarism.But my ignorance was perhaps not altogether unfortunate. If I had tried to write about all the foundations of conciliarism I could only have spent many years producing a sprawling, probably misshapen work that in the end would have been an inadequate endeavor. Because the book dealt with only one class of sources it had a certain unity and (I think) clarity of argument;and of course it was important that the sources I studied turned out to be of considerable significance in the evolution of conciliar thought. As to how the book came to be written: like most of my generation I was caught up for several years in World War II—in my case serving in the Royal Air Force—so I came rather late to academic life.Having survived the war,by a lucky chance I had an opportunity to study at Cambridge. I would have been twentyfour then. I took a hasty, contracted two-year course for the B.A. degree that was made available to war veterans, and then Walter Ullmann agreed to accept me as a research student. Walter was at that time beginning to introduce the study of medieval canon law into the English scholarly world, and he suggested to me as a research topic for a Ph.D. dissertation “Pope and General Council in the Writings of Medieval Canonists.” I accepted, of course, though indeed I knew little about medieval conciliarism and almost nothing about medieval canonists. And it did not at first seem self-evident that the topic would prove to be a fruitful subject for research.In English universities in those days,the canonists were known primarily, if at all, as defenders of papal absolutism in the medieval conflicts of church and state. Hastings Rashdall, in a standard history of medieval universities , summed up their achievement as “a marvelous jurisprudence of spiritual despotism.”2 At that time there were two well-known explanations for the origins of conciliar thought.The most widely accepted one held that the conciliar theories were derived from heretical views propounded by William of Ockham and Marsilius of Padua at the beginning of the fourteenth century. But this account left open the question of whether Ockham and Marsilius had derived their own ideas from still earlier sources.As E.F.Jacob wrote,“In Conciliar studies.....we are frequently told that this or that view ‘is to be found in Ockham’ and there the matter is unsatisfactorily left.”3 A different point of view was presented by J. N. Figgis. He 314 BrianTierney 2.Hastings Rashdall,TheUniversitiesof EuropeintheMiddleAges, vol.1 (Oxford:Clarendon,1936...

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