In 1870 the First Vatican Council vindicated the old Roman vision of an essentially unlimited monarchical authority residing in the pope, thus vanquishing an even older, conciliar, essentially constitutionalist ideal of church governance. This book reconstructs the half-millennial history of that rival and now largely forgotten tradition. - ;In the early fifteenth century, the general council assembled at Constance and, representing the universal Church, put an end to the scandalous schism which for almost forty years had divided the Latin Church between rival lines of claimants to the papal o